Mother Nature: Accounting’s Next Most Effective Recruiting and Retention Tool?

I want to be abundantly clear: I love my job, and I love being a certified public accountant (CPA). Has it been challenging? Yes. Has it been frustrating at times? Absolutely. Has it been worth it? Without a doubt. Are there changes the profession could consider making? I believe so, and you may be surprised at how easy and effective they could be.

The Road Not Taken

It’s not new information that the accounting profession is losing people (at all levels), and fewer college students are considering it as a career choice. Articles in CPA publications have warned us of this for years, and now national publications like the Wall Street Journal are letting everyone else know too. Perhaps it’s because we haven’t done nearly enough to highlight how the profession and CPAs’ roles have evolved with the world around us. One example of this evolution is the CPA’s important role on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues.

What if our profession did something similar? What if we took a good, hard look at what we’re doing to our people and instead of continuing down the same road we’ve been going down, we strongly consider a different type of ESG for individuals? One doesn’t have to go far to find out what unhappy employees have to say about their jobs, but imagine what potential recruits would find if there were messages from happy employees painting a completely different picture of what it looks like to be an accountant? Perhaps an easy first step toward that future starts with shifting our focus to creating a workplace that has a more altruistic motive. We could take the lead from other industries, such as health care, and create a space that fosters “environmental and social connections for personal growth.” Accounting and finance leaders that recognize the importance of fostering their employees’ personal ESG initiatives have the unique opportunity to be innovative and break the stereotypical mold for our profession.

Mother Nature's Impact on Work Productivity

One solution may be as simple as getting your people outside. It wasn’t until we (society) stopped being outside that we began pouring time and money into studying mother nature’s impact.

When people feel better, they perform better, and research supports this claim. Studies have found that connecting with nature makes us feel better, makes us think better, helps us sleep better (i.e., we’re happier, healthier, and more productive versions of ourselves when we spend time outside). Being around and connecting with nature helps our mood, focus, thinking, and connection with others (which has atrophied significantly in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic). It’s no wonder that over the last 10 to 15 years, the pursuit of certain academic degrees that keep us indoors, like accounting, has dropped, down 17% from 2012 to 2022. However, degrees that get us outside, like environmental sciences, have increased, up 24% from 2016 to 2022.

Redefining Accounting the ESG Way

Putting trust in leadership to support personal ESG initiatives is crucial to having employees taking advantage of them. As a leader, you can support your employees by creating and communicating new initiatives and the reasons for them. Make sure to provide a safe space for employees to provide feedback if they feel like they’re unable to take part in this movement. You can also give examples of things they can do and encourage them to share other ways, ideas, and struggles with the larger group for inspiration.

Here are some ideas to support your employees’ personal ESG initiatives:

• Walking meetings: Encourage taking in-person meetings outside or taking virtual meetings from the phone when appropriate to incorporate some movement and fresh air into them.
• Volunteering opportunities: Working together in a different capacity with colleagues is a great way to foster culture and connect with your organization’s community while getting out into the environment.
• Equipment for working outdoors: Consider providing an allowance for employees to purchase equipment that allows them to work outside more comfortably. For example, screen glare is a real deterrent on sunny days, but a shade hood can be purchased for under $20 on Amazon.
• Open-air office space: If possible, providing a working area where windows or doors can be opened to allow fresh air in has benefits.
• Nature soundscapes: When getting outside isn’t an option, even the sounds of nature have been shown to elicit some of the same health benefits as being outdoors. While an office-wide soundtrack might not be appropriate, perhaps incorporating soundscapes into break rooms or communal spaces may be an option.

As you can see, the opportunities are limitless, the risks are nearly nonexistent, and the potential impact on the profession could be life changing.

I hear from far too many people that there are many employees within their organizations who’ve reported feeling like they can’t take time away for professional development or volunteering because it takes away from the hours that could be going toward their monthly hour budget—this is heartbreaking. I’m sure that management’s intention when communicating those numbers wasn’t to limit their employees’ opportunities to better themselves, nor was it intended to prevent them from engaging positively within their communities. But when the expectation is set that meeting those numbers isn’t really a goal, but rather a requirement, it’s not hard to understand how the interpretation was derived. That being said, if you’re able to enjoy the warmth of the sun or a nice breeze or some outdoor scenery during those hours, suddenly, those goals may not seem as daunting.

We know what the future of the profession looks like if we don’t do anything—the same as it’s looked for decades. Continuing with a “same as last year” approach may be considered borderline negligent. Instead, why not try embodying the “get outside and enjoy nature” approach? We might be able to easily create a working environment that fosters happier, healthier, more satisfied, and more productive employees at little to no cost.

After all, as poet Robert Frost famously penned:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Which road will you choose?

Related Content:

• Why Internship Programs Are a Win-Win Your Company Can’t Afford to Ignore: When you consider all the benefits internship programs bring to both employees and organizations, you really can’t afford not to offer one.
• Mentorship Makeover: Designing Programs With Impact: Forward-thinking CPA firms are going beyond one-size-fits-all mentoring approaches to better engage, retain, and grow their talent. Here are some strategies that can make an impact.