Attracting Generation Y – Becoming an Employer of Choice
 A chat with Kathy Kelly, Partner, BOYCE Chartered Accountants
 Getting the Right Team on the Bus! Workshop

Welcome to our October newsletter and the start of the warm weather, footy finals and the spring racing carnival!

Firstly I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the accounting firms that attended our 3 day Leadership – Advanced Practice Management Workshop. With more than 80 in attendance sharing thoughts, ideas and brainstorming over the 3 days, it was no doubt another great event, the largest for our signature event on the Gold Coast. Congratulations for making the effot to change the way you currently manage and lead your firm and we look forward to working with you all to fulfil your goals and vision in the future.

This month’s newsletter focuses on a hot topic of ‘people, people, people’ and the HR issues we are confronted with every day. The skill shortage facing our industry and the recruitment process to becoming an employer of choice!

I also have the opportunity to share with you a chat with a BRW Top 100 Firm and winner of Mustard Group’s Accounting Employer of Choice 2006 and hope to share some of the key elements to how this firm has earned the right to have this award sit on their mantlepiece.

Finally I will share two special new releases from GPL Network, one is a new workshop for your team, and the second is the release of an online suite of products known as the GPL Accountants Business Academy, with a host of self help tools to advance your firm together with a GPL implementation process.

Create a focus and start developing a plan that will take your accounting firm from good to great!



Paul Jansz
Managing Director

Attracting Generation Y – Becoming an Employer of Choice
It’s been well documented that our industry is in a skill shortage crisis. With a number of employees also choosing the commercial market we as employers need to change our management style, thinking and approach to cater for the new ‘Generation Y’ team members coming through our ranks.

While employment rates are still at an all time low, the need to retain team members and attract new employees is becoming an ongoing challenge. At our 3 day leadership advanced practice management event on the Gold Coast in mid-September, one of the 12 Essentials of Leadership was ‘People, People, People – How to Attract and Keep the Great Ones’.

GPL Network has always been passionate about delivering a message and creating a plan to become an employer of choice and I know a number of firms have commenced this process. If this is not a part of your current business plan, make it a strategy as a part of your future vision. Let me break this down for you into bite size chunks…

Attracting the great ones
One of the top three attributes of a great leader was their ability to find great people - first who, then what. Let me say that again, first who, then what…

It’s important to remember that with today’s technology potential employees will do their due diligence on your firm so you must make sure you make a good first impression. Ask yourself, “What do I look like to the outside world?” Do I have a professional and up to date website, brochure and market presence? You only get one opportunity to make a first impression, make it a good one!

Development programs
Time and time again I see the major point of difference in accounting firms is their ability to have a structured technical and non technical training & development program. For each team member there needs to be a training & development program. Research shows that training & education are two major factors where you will retain and attract new employees. What is your plan? Create a point of difference and travel on the road less travelled and ensure you have this as a part of your ongoing development of your people. I would then encourage you to put an informal appraisal process in place to assess the development of each team member and more importantly create a two-way communication stream. This should be done every 3 months, with an informal chat every 3 and 9 months and a formal chat every 6 and 12 months. Continue to advocate change and provide autonomy, responsibility and accountability.

Nurturing recruitment firms
While most of us may have had an indifferent experience with recruitment agencies, they do play a major role in our market. I encourage you to conduct a detailed analysis on the agency before you engage them to search for you. There are a number of GPL Network firms that have nurtured recruitment agencies as you would an ‘A’ grade client with tremendous success. Therefore when competing for a quality candidate, make sure you are at the top of the list. That should be your goal! Nurture them with coffees, lunches, dinners, flowers, fruit baskets… basically do what you need to do to make sure the cream of the crop comes to you first!

Team referral programs
Possibly the most cost-effective way to attract great people is to introduce a ‘team referral program’. One of our GPL Network firms on the Sunshine Coast has had tremendous success with this strategy and offers a $2,000 bonus to any team member that can attract a new employee. $500 is paid up front, $500 is paid after 6 months and $1,000 paid after 12 months… not a bad little system! It also shows one, team members are happy with their employer and want to encourage friends to join the firm, and two, the costs are substantially lower than that of a recruitment agency.

A chat with Kathy Kelly, Partner, BOYCE Chartered Accountants
At our recent 3 day leadership event we had the pleasure of Kathy Kelly from BOYCE Chartered Accountants being present. BOYCE Chartered Accountants’ Cooma office was awarded the Accounting Employer Of Choice 2006, and I had the pleasure of chatting to Kathy.

Paul: When did you realise as a group being an employer of choice had to be a part of your vision?

Kathy: As a leadership group, we realised this about 3 years ago. With 6 offices and 150 team members all up it was important that this was a part of our future direction as employers. My Cooma office has 42 team members and only Jono (Jonathan Forrest) and I as partners, so strong leadership with firm consistent decisions is the key.

Paul: What do you believe you do differently?

Kathy: I’m not sure if it’s different, but as I mentioned earlier strong leadership is very important. We run a senior team leaders conference each year and concentrate on the team’s ability to hit the KPI’s such as productivity targets and turn around times on jobs. Monday morning workflow meetings are religious, partners and managers, and managers with their team members to monitor the results daily and measure them weekly. As a part of our leadership we’ve learned to be honest and provide feedback that is straight to the point. Gen Y expects that nowadays. Continuous reviews were highlighted again in the 3 days on the Gold Coast and setting the expectation both ways is critical. Another key for us is ‘respect’ and the ability as a management group not to sweep things under the carpet, but deal with it. Our team respects us for that.

Paul: How important is training & development with BOYCE CA?

Kathy: Critical. We’ve created a structure that involves a weekly training program and we have a plan that is set out 12 months in advance on the basic core knowledge, e.g. tax and super, as well as other technical and soft skills.  Over the past couple of years we have focused heavily on developing the soft skills of our team with leadership training, buddy programs and a more formal induction process with structured feedback.

Paul: Couldn’t agree more Kathy, and how has that affected the culture with 150 team members?

Kathy: We are very generous with our people! As you say and we have said for a number of years getting the right team on the bus is so important and that drives our culture. The mix between our younger team and older team is important and we have a great balance. We play hard and work hard! Having said that, we are committed to constant, clear and consistent communication on the performance, direction, goals and objectives of the firm.

Paul: I know you have a full time HR Manager, which is fine for a firm your size, what advice would you give other firms?

Kathy: Develop good systems and a good structure! I know we may be a lot larger, but it’s one of the most important positions within our firm, and it’s a role that partners traditionally get dragged into and something they are not good at. My advice would be to look at a part-time resource of a HR Manager to create the systems & consistency and if you find that they have spare capacity they can always do chargeable work with the new workplace relations laws. Look at it as a cash flow neutral resource; someone that can add valuable chargeable partner time and drive your systems. We have a stack of things still to do and more benchmarks to strive for!

BOYCE Chartered Accountants was benchmarked against 250 accounting firms throughout Australia. Mustard Group identified that BOYCE Cooma’s employees rated their employment relationship better than their peers in other firms. BOYCE Cooma becomes only the fourth firm and the first rural based firm to earn the award since its inception in December 2002.

'GETTING THE RIGHT TEAM ON THE BUS!’ WORKSHOP
Possibly the most important 1 day workshop for your team is about to hit your capital city... ‘Getting the RIGHT TEAM on the Bus!’ is all about building a team that is working together to achieve a common goal. The Eleven Secrets you and your team will uncover and brainstorm on the day are:

  1. Developing your team core foundations – values, communication, commitment and environment.
  2. Where is your bus headed? – your vision.
  3. Working together as a team – what are your core job processes?
  4. Getting your team in the right seats on the bus – organisational structure, job descriptions, KPI’s and expectations.
  5. Who’s doing what? – Partners, managers, professional team and administration.
  6. Your selection process & induction – create the process of the person you want, the advertisement, the interview techniques and your sales/branding.
  7. Your training process – create a 12 month development program.
  8. Meeting KPI’s – set the KPI’s.
  9. Contributing to the team – introduce initiative & proactive thinking.
  10. Personal development – set goals and plans for personal development.
  11. Creating a truly awesome team environment – a plan that everyone on the bus is committed to!

Check out www.gplnetwork.com for further details and book your tickets NOW as places are limited!

 
Top Performing Accounting Firms

GPL's Top Performing Accounting Firms

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Jason Cunningham – The Practice (Melbourne)
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Bernadette Pitcher – BMP Accounting Services (Melbourne)
"I could not believe the instant results in Growth and Liquidity. We had billed a similar amount for
about the last 4 years however this year we bill 50% more, and with an increased capacity look to
double that again...
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Michael Papandrea – Wilson Watt Papandrea (Canberra)
Specifically we have seen 60% - 70% growth over the last few years. We originally had just under $2.0m in fees when we commenced and over a 2 year period we have had amazing growth without acquisition. The growth is really just a by product of getting productivity sorted out and allowing the 3 partners to spend less time doing the work as the team are now producing efficient numbers. That has allowed the partners to get out there more and find new...
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