Would You Pay Your Accounting Manager $6,700 Per Week?
You’ve hired a Client Accounting Manager for $100,000/year. Happy days! Add on some benefits – let’s say 20% - that’s around $2,300/week.
But after 3 weeks you’re thinking maybe they aren’t quite what you thought. The vibe from the team is that the Senior Associates know more than the Manager. Plus they are doing a really poor job at coaching – never available and just keep making demands of the team. You monitor it – but it gets worse.
You know how this ends. After 90 days you have the Dear John conversation, pay them 3 weeks notice and ask them to clear their desk. Oh well the cost was only $34,500 [12wks + 3 wks x $2,300] and some work was billed out. Your firm Administrator though questions this – sends you to the Accountests Bad Hire Calculator to see what the real cost was.
Your simple salary cost has forgotten a whole host of other costs:
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Recruiter fee
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Management and accounting team time during recruitment (espcially interviewing and selection) – for 3 candidates
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Testing and assessment of 3 candidates
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On-boarding time from your accounting team and firm owners – including introduction meetings to the team and clients,
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Lower productivity of the new starter AND your accounting teams while the new starter learns about the team and the clients
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Senior leadership time deciding how to handle poor performance you're seeing
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Performance management processes / meetings
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Termination costs
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Celebration with the rest of the leadership team the day they leave the building
Ouch. When you add all this up it’s $80,000 for 12 weeks ‘work’ - $6,700/week.
And you still don’t have the position filled.
How high up on your firm strategy goals is improving your hiring and on-boarding processes?
Giles Pearson | After 18 years as a partner with a large public accounting firm, Giles founded Accountests to help those recruiting accountants make better hiring decisions