31% of employing companies are facing difficulty finding appropriate staff. Enterprises are facing a tough time recruiting people. Staggering turnover rates, tough competition for hiring local talent, and infrastructure costs are a few among may recruitment challenges that accounting businesses face.
While running a business, the way you manage your recruitment can have an impact on the margins and overall profitability of your business. So, let’s assess the most pressing recruitment challenges faced by businesses including accounting firms and ways to overcome them.
Challenges in hiring:
Amid stiff competition from bigger brands, the brand value affects most business’s ability to grab the attention of candidates seeking a new job. The recruitment strategy can be, relevant, and innovative to overcome these hiring challenges.
Workforce demographics:
Millennials add to a significant number of the workforce, but they’re hard to hold on to, and the accounting sector is no different.
The rise in fresh talent is a good sign for businesses looking to attract talent. However, the training required to get them on par with the requirements costs time and money.
These expenses can be dispensed as a good investment if you are able to retain such younger workforce. The number of such retained/retainable millennials is a mere fraction of the usual numbers from a few years ago.
According to HR departments and CEOs of top brands able to attract a young workforce, retaining is a recruitment challenge companies must face regardless of business size. Only 10% of millennials choose to stay in their current role for the long haul.
To accomplish longevity, modern businesses take initiatives to recruit and keep the workforce under 40. With rising demand for accountants, delivering high-quality services in a timely fashion requires leveraging technology. The evolving technology leaves a gap in the skills required to step to the demand and the conventional learning opportunities presented by the formal education system.
Businesses feel the pinch from such a talent gap, and most companies had to cancel or delay strategic initiatives involving future ready technology because they haven’t been able to find the right people to implement and carry them forward.
A strong employer brand is not a luxury every company can afford. Big firms need no introduction and seem attractive to potential talents. To add to the cost of hiring in the local market, training, and employee development initiatives to help grow the skills of their existing team members rise the operations cost.
Previously bookkeepers, auditors, and CFOs had to spend endless hours to gather, sort, evaluate, review and analyse a company’s finances for strategic planning . But today, technology has assists to ease the process. Despite the automation and technology enabled tools, finding trained talents to keep the process running smoothly happens to be a challenge.
Majority of the candidates naturally prefer to be part of top corporations that are often known to guarantee a higher-growth or higher pay. Giving-up higher-paying jobs with less known companies for lower or similar-paying jobs with top brands is an easier decision.
Summing it up:
Developing a reputation for attracting top talent or being able to spend on par with competition maybe challenging, but not impossible. Focusing on developing a company’s culture to ensure employees love their workplace, getting involved with the local community, and volunteering with other businesses and causes can boost your profile. Referrals are a great way to further your value among candidates.
Additionally, you can take page from the large corporations to leverage on global talent pool. Outsourcing your process can ease the difficulties in finding suitable talents for your practice. Not only does this open the opportunity for you to hire trained talents but, at a fraction of the cost. Many top corporations including fortune 500 companies leverage on outsourcing to successfully navigate challenges and focus on growth.
Boobalan Madhavan | AccSource | www.accsource.com.au
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