CPA Practice Advisor - 21

THE STAFFING & HR ADVISOR
pandemic, and retention remains
paramount. Unemployment is
higher, but not that high for those
with specialized skill sets, so
in-demand accountants could be
tempted to join another company.
For businesses with currently lean
staff levels, even the loss of a single
skilled professional could be a serious blow.
In a separate Robert Half survey highlighted in the 2021 Salary
Guide, more than eight in 10 managers said they are worried about
losing valued employees. Here are
their primary concerns:
* 55% are worried about losing staff
over morale-related issues
* 50% have employees who are facing burnout from heavy workloads
* 37% imposed salary cuts with no
prospect of raises in the immediate future

REMOTE WORK IS THE
NEW NORMAL

SALARIES REMAIN
STABLE

TECH SKILLS ARE ESSENTIAL ...

Median salaries are fairly stable
across the board, though (as ever) the
best candidates in the hottest sectors
will be looking to negotiate a bump
in pay. Use the Robert Half salary
calculator to ensure you're paying
at least market value for your region.

If you're looking to add to your
remote teams, new recruits should
be tech savvy and capable of learning new systems with little or no
in-person training. They need to
be able to work with cloud-based
systems, understand IT security

The pandemic sparked a mass exodus from corporate to home offices.
This was jarring for many workers,
but research in the guide suggests
that few employees are in a hurry
to get back to company HQ. Almost
three in four workers say they want
to keep working from home after
the pandemic.
When hiring, you'll need to
balance the desire of highly skilled
candidates to work from home with
the needs of the organization. Fortunately, you'll be in a much better
position to make these calls than
you were in late March, since your
firm should now have more data
and anecdotal evidence to draw
on regarding the productivity and
morale of remote workers across
your teams.

protocols and be comfortable using
digital communication tools. Homebased workers also need to have
the basic IT skills to solve common
computer and networking issues, as
they won't have hands-on support
from a helpdesk technician.
However, while it's easy to be
dazzled by the new and exciting
world of remote working, keep in
mind that collaborative platforms
like Slack and Microsoft Teams
are much easier to master than
specialized accounting software.
Microsoft Excel, QuickBooks (for
smaller businesses), enterprise
resource planning (ERP) systems
and similar applications remain
the gold standards, and you
should assess candidates' resumes
accordingly.

... BUT SO ARE SOFT
SKILLS
When is an Excel wizard with a
fully equipped home office wrong
for your organization? Perhaps
when their track record or interview performance suggest that
they struggle to collaborate with
colleagues, or that they find it difficult to adapt to changing goals and
circumstances. In these challenging

SEPTEMBER 2020 ■

times, soft skills such as critical
thinking, resilience and flexibility
can be every bit as important as
technical expertise.
The need for these attributes is
not driven just by the pandemic. As
new technology such as AI becomes
an integral part of finance jobs,
you'll place a greater emphasis on
the kind of human values that can't
be replaced by an algorithm.

FLEXIBLE STAFFING IS
THE FUTURE
Flexible staffing - an adjustable
mix of full-time and interim professionals - is a strategy many
companies have long been using
to temporarily access specialized
expertise and scale their teams as
needed without overburdening fulltime staff. It is tailor made for the
current situation. Asked why they
worked with interim professionals,
more than a third of senior managers said it was to remain agile
during the economic turmoil.
Predicting the future has never
been harder. But if 2020 has taught
us anything, it's that uncertain
times reward companies that are
nimble and innovative. ■

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