Nov 10, 2024

HR Challenges for the Accounting Industry

The accounting industry is notoriously busy. The goal is to save clients money, which involves many moving parts (especially during tax season).

While trying their best for their clients, accounting firms often struggle with human resource management. This can easily fall through the cracks until a major problem comes up.

In the same way that a reactive approach is not best for money, it's also not the best for HR needs. Instead of waiting for a big issue, accounting companies should identify and prevent common HR challenges.

Accounting businesses, including CPA firms, face several HR challenges. From managing talent to navigating complex employment laws within a changing landscape, coping with these issues can be difficult.

At the same time, accounting companies must also navigate dynamic financial regulations and tax codes for their clients. Identifying and resolving common HR issues is the best way to prevent these problems from interfering with the core accounting activities.

In this guide, we'll review some of the top HR challenges in the accounting industry and how reliable HR software can help.

Hiring

Staff management can be a top challenge for accounting firms. Hiring and managing staff is a specific skill set that accountants may need to have. Additionally, not all accounting businesses can afford to hire a dedicated HR professional to handle hiring or training.

The demand for qualified accountants exceeds the supply, making it very difficult to hire new staff. Skill shortages are an issue, but the lack of quality hiring processes only amplifies the challenge. Ineffective recruitment and hiring practices plague many accounting businesses.

The hiring process is expensive, requiring a lot of money and time. Streamlining talent search and acquisition with software can help you attract and hire the right people.

How Moonworkers Can Help

Our Talent Directory is one of the most helpful tools for hiring new accounting talent. You can search, contact, hire, manage, and pay new contractors to fill in the gaps. Furthermore, while a team member may start as a contractor, employment opportunities could open up further down the line.

The Talent Directory facilitates prospect chats, helping you assess a large pool of potential employees. This assists in hiring, as you can thoroughly vet potential candidates. Should you identify a qualified candidate, you can enter them into your HR and payroll with only a few clicks. In addition, we offer a talent guarantee, ensuring that we've carefully screened all contractors before showcasing them.

Onboarding

Hiring is the first step, but after you hire a new employee, you need to help them transition to the role. The accounting industry is a highly specialised field. Bringing on new team members is difficult for this reason.

HR must identify potential talent, but without the proper training infrastructure, even a good hire can become a flop. Likewise, accounting businesses must ensure that all workers receive the appropriate training and tools to complete their jobs.

Onboarding is a critical step in bringing on new talent. But handling this amongst a busy client load can take time and effort.

Training talent is just as important as identifying it. You can avoid many issues with proper onboarding and set your employees up for success. In the end, sufficient training helps both the employee and the company.

How Moonworkers Can Help

Managing an accounting team is a challenging task. Ensuring everyone understands their responsibilities and follows the correct procedures is vital for the customer experience. Delays or failure to follow the guidelines can lead to severe problems for accounting clients.

Automated onboarding workflows on Moonworkers help to prevent these concerning issues. You can create different workflows based on the specific position, ensuring that each person understands their responsibilities and is on the same page. This feature generates onboarding checklists, new hire paperwork, and more. Customising your workflow is fast and easy. Leverage our standardised templates and add the tasks.

Include specialised training and overall company procedures to set employees up for success. Easily monitor your team's progress with a single dashboard and identify any workers needing help or additional training.

HR Challenges in 2023

Do you have HR challenges in 2023? These five HR strategies can help you improve employee retention and create a more stable workforce.

Staff Retention

Getting new qualified employees is only part of the team management issues in the accounting industry. Once you've brought on and trained a new team member, you want to keep them. But this is easier said than done in many cases.

Losing qualified team members is just as detrimental as hiring the wrong ones. Losing a team member means you must begin the hiring process over again, which costs time and resources. Keeping quality talent is more cost-effective and better for clients than a revolving door of accountants.

According to the AICPA's Private Companies Practice Section CPA Firm Top Issues Survey, accounting firms of all sizes ranked qualified staff recruitment and retention as one of their top concerns. For this reason, keeping skilled workers is vital in the accounting industry.

It's not always possible to keep every employee, of course. Retirement, work-life balance, burnout, financial incentive, and more reasons can contribute to an employee's departure. But, at the same time, HR cannot control the market or the competition regarding hiring.

However, HR software can help with employee retention in several ways. First, it provides features and solutions to improve the workplace experience and help increase the chances of retaining talent.

How Moonworkers Can Help

For accounting companies looking to retain talent, Moonworkers is the top solution. With our Rota planner software, accounting teams can accommodate employee schedule requests and share schedules with all employees. Planning out shedules far in advance helps ensure everyone is on the same page. It also allows workers to plan their personal lives. Furthermore, team members can request accommodation changes directly from the platform, where management can approve and implement them within minutes.

Making employees feel rewarded for their efforts plays a significant role in employee retention as well. The Moonworkers platform also offers a vast range of perks. Reward employees with discounts and other perks that they'll love. It's a small way to show appreciation and provide recognition.

Leaves management

The accounting industry is notorious for long hours and demanding work schedules, especially during tax season. But if you want to retain great talent and get the most from your team, they need work-life balance. So while there will understandably be times when you need all hands on deck, ensuring downtime and time off is vital for the longevity of your team.

Holiday pay can be hectic to manage for accounting firms. There's a lot to consider, including various requests for time off, managing the workload when someone is out, and calculating holiday pay for payroll.

With the right tools, holiday management can be a reality in the accounting world. This affects management and makes time off more stressful and less appealing for employees. This is the last thing you want, as your team needs breaks to re-energise.

However, software assistance can make a world of difference. For example, HR management tools simplify and streamline holiday management in the accounting industry. This is great news for management and employees alike.

How Moonworkers Can Help

Moonworkers makes holiday management much easier for accounting businesses employing hourly workers. Enjoy integrated payroll with our Rota planner that takes care of your employee holiday pay calculation and allowance and ensures compliance.

Furthermore, the Moonworkers software also handles scheduling management. When an employee requests time off, you'll see which shifts must be covered and who's available. You can even promote open shifts and allow other employees to request the extra shift.

Solve Your Accounting HR Challenges with Moonworkers

HR management is a critical component of every business; the same holds true for the accounting industry. Hiring, onboarding, retention, paid time off, labour regulations, and more are complicated HR challenges within the accounting industry. Handling the above is extremely difficult, even if you have a dedicated HR team.

With the right software solutions, you can streamline your accounting HR. Simplify the job for your HR team and empower your business to handle all HR duties easily. Automating many aspects of HR can alleviate challenges with payroll, time off, hiring, retention, and more.

Moonworkers is here to help small and medium businesses achieve optimal HR efficiency. Our platform offers several features to support accounting businesses with their HR needs. Request your demo to learn more about how Moonworkers can serve your business.