Benchmarking Your Benefits: The Key to Recruiting and Retaining Accounting Talent

The world of work has changed, and employers are struggling to keep up. As a result, employees are navigating growing disconnects between the cultures and benefits their employers offer and what they want in their professional and personal lives. As that disconnect grows, especially in remote and hybrid work settings, more employees are finding creative ways to cope or land themselves at a new employer.

Recent workplace trends illustrate this point: There’s “quiet vacationing,” where employees pretend to be working while they’re tending to personal things or taking an actual vacation. There’s also “coffee badging,” which is when an employee pops into the office just long enough to be seen and then goes back home to finish the rest of their workday remotely. And then there’s “polyworking,” where remote employees have a secondary job or side hustle, and some are even juggling two full-time jobs throughout the workday.

With these rising trends in mind, organizations may want to consider rethinking their employee benefits packages to assess whether they’re offering not only what their employees truly want and value but also what will retain their best and brightest.

Here, four experts share how CPA firms can benchmark their benefits to stay ahead of their competition, position themselves as an employer of choice, and create an environment and culture where employees feel valued and want to stay.

Managing Changing Employee Expectations

Randy Crabtree, CPA, co-founder of Tri-Merit Specialty Tax Professionals and “The Unique CPA” podcast host, says a lot of the trending workplace behaviors we’re seeing right now are a result of bad workplace culture: “If you’re being micromanaged, you might start sneaking around. If you’ll be punished for seeking time off or needing flexibility, you’ll look for ways around that.”

This is likely true among people stuck in firm work environments that haven’t adjusted to the reality of a post-pandemic world, where old standards and ways of doing things are still being held onto too tightly. As a result, firms commonly make attractive promises on paper to woo talent, but then those benefits are undermined by the actual workplace norms or members of management that don’t support them. In a changing labor market, firms that fall victim to these realities then tend to face higher-than-average turnover and talent gaps.

“COVID instigated shifts in the labor market that created more competition for talent,” says Lauren Winans, MBA, CEO and principal HR consultant at Next Level Benefits HR Consulting. “People have different options than they did before. Ultimately, this influences whether you as an employer are able to retain and attract employees.”

Arguably, understanding how to attract and retain talent isn’t as simple as it used to be. Carol Semrad, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, principal at HR consulting firm C. Semrad & Associates, says one of the more significant challenges facing accounting leaders today is managing the expectations of a multigenerational workforce. Currently, at many firms, there are up to five generations working side by side.

“Different generations want different benefits,” Semrad stresses.

Crabtree keeps it blunt: “The next generation of people coming into the profession don’t want the same experiences as those before them.”

Susan Stutzel, CPA, business performance coach at PartnersCoach, agrees, as she’s experiencing firsthand the changes among younger recruits: “We’re seeing generations entering the workforce asking for clear growth and development opportunities more than any generation before them, for instance. They also have a deeper human need to be connected to the work they do and to each other.”

“It’s not just about salary and benefits anymore,” she continues. “It’s about the organization itself, which can either cultivate an environment that employees value or one that adds to the dissonance of burnout the profession has been known for.”

Ultimately, while enhancing benefits and flexibility may be needed, Stutzel cautions firms to not only shine a light on their benefits packages but to also look at the bigger picture regarding their approach to managing talent. Here’s where thoughtful benchmarking comes in.

Benchmarking for the Big Picture

Benchmarking is, of course, a crucial step in building competitive benefits packages that can lead firms toward greater recruiting and retention results. However, when benchmarking is done holistically, firms should also learn more about who they are as an organization.

In other words, walking away with data isn’t the only thing to focus on—gathering data to form a well-developed and clear vision for the future of the firm is what’s important. Firm leaders should be able to use their benchmark findings to define what they currently offer as an organization and inform them on what benefits or cultural changes should be prioritized.

To get started, “You can benchmark yourself in an industry capacity, geographically, or based on specific competitors,” Winans says. “The key here is going into the benchmarking process with the intention to ensure you gather the right data and examine the right aspects of your benefits programs and organization. How you approach your data gathering will ultimately influence which recommendations you adopt from your benchmarking study.”

Additionally, feedback on your firm’s current benefits package and culture is an important part of benchmarking. Employee surveys alongside industry data can provide a more comprehensive perspective that’s needed for effective change. “Firms that stand out from the competition are engaging their people early and often,” Stutzel stresses.

During the benchmarking process, Crabtree encourages leaders to consider not only the firm and its talent as it is now but also how they could be years down the road. For instance, firms should ask themselves if they need to transition from general to specialized, and that might mean upskilling, reskilling, and continuous professional development needs to be a bigger consideration in the firm’s approach to benefits and recruiting.

“Sometimes, as an industry, we get a little too satisfied or complacent with what we have rather than looking at what we could have,” Crabtree says. “If we focus on profitability only, for instance, we miss thinking about work-life balance, how we’re affecting the people we work with, or how we’re attracting people into this profession.”

Overall, asking future-focused questions will project the vision forward and point toward the kind of employee benefits that’ll attract and retain the right people. “What a firm offers, in many cases, is going to be what makes prospective employees truly consider your firm,” Semrad says. “Maybe they can get a higher salary elsewhere, but if you’re going to provide flexible work options, help with childcare, student loan repayment, professional development, or better retirement benefits, for example, those things can be differentiators that make people think.”

Above all, Semrad advises that firms “account for attractors that have real meaning to people.”

Getting Started With Benchmarking

For most firms, it’s recommended that benchmarking become an annual process. Winans recommends starting benchmarking around three months into each benefits cycle so employees have had time to get familiar with any new benefits or other changes that took place as a result of the prior study.

When planning the study, large firms may be able to employ their benefits provider or broker to help lead it. In this case, firm leaders should discuss the purpose and parameters to help inform the choice of data sets. Among smaller firms with fewer resources and only a handful of employees, a more granular approach to planning and completing the study may work. These firm leaders can pursue one-on-one conversations with staff, collect feedback, and use what they learn to design an improved benefits offering for the next cycle.

Regardless of firm size or demographics, certain items are going to be important to all employees: competitive salary, health insurance, and retirement plans. “These are simply the basics that every firm needs to provide,” Winans says. “But beyond these foundational benefits, leaders also need to consider their people and be open to exploring offerings that fit what they value and how they live.”

“Obviously, large firms will be able to offer more and have more variety, but smaller firms can, and should, compete in different ways,” Semrad says. “If you have really well-trained leaders who interact with their people well, they can home in on what folks need.”

Accounting for Culture

Learning people’s needs and addressing firm culture is really the point of big-picture benchmarking. For the culture assessment, there’s one primary question to ask: How are people treated?

Leaders learn what matters to their people by getting to know them. With that knowledge, they can build an organizational culture that values every person’s experience in it.

“Weak cultures are based on rules, while strong cultures are based on relationships,” Crabtree says. “Put your people first—not the business, and not even the clients.”

Semrad says, over time, the deliberate prioritization of a relational culture becomes a powerful magnet: “People who are treated like people at work talk about it. Other people who are looking for jobs pay attention, so you want to build this care for people into your culture alongside your informed benefits offering.”

Changing times require change, but that doesn’t mean firms should recklessly rush into the newest thing or panic over the latest trend. What it means is that an accurate assessment of the bigger picture of what each firm is and can become is more important than ever.

“The truth is our industry is taking a lot of heat right now. We’re facing several pipeline issues, challenges in getting and retaining talent, and battling the overall perception of who we are and what we do,” Stutzel says. “We need more firms that are truly living out their values—firms that make promises on day one and then live them out every day, in every encounter, and on every project.”

It’s not just employees or firms who benefit from this type of big-picture benchmarking—it’s the profession itself. “Having a people-first culture solves a host of problems,” Crabtree says. “The productivity and positivity we’re looking for comes when our people know they’re valued.”

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• Why CPA Firms Should Prioritize Employees’ Mental Health: Promoting mental health services as an employee benefit provides CPA firms with an abundance of positive benefits, including talent retention.