The power of meaningful work

Although the unemployment rate has slightly increased to 3.7%, the Australian labour market is still as tight and candidate short as what it has been in the last 2 years.

Thomson Reuters in Leading Australian SMEs in 2023’s Changing Economy described the situation as “businesses have struggled to attract, hire and retain staff, and this has become a key hurdle to growth across all sectors.”

These problems are affecting all types of businesses, including accounting firms.

As we approach the start of a new financial year, there is every indication that talent attraction and retention problems are going to continue.

All businesses need to ask the question that ESS BIZTOOLS posed to accountants a few months ago: “Is the firm offering services that are interesting and challenging enough?”

This is one of the key differentiators.

In that article I quoted Andrew Geddes, one of the Joint Founders of the Financial Management Research Centre (FMRC), which supplied management guidance to a wide range of industries. I believe that the responses that Andrew gave relating to the accounting industry apply to most other businesses.

“Firms need to vary the work being allocated to team members – not just relegate them to the same task all day every day.”

In the accounting industry, Andrew suggested that partners should take less experienced accountants with them when they make client visits. This way, the inexperienced accountant could observe the reaction between the partner of the firm with the client as they discuss a wide range of business issues.

A similar approach could be made in virtually every other industry, if there was an encouragement for an experienced team member to mentor a less experienced team member in the “business relationship” aspects of a role. This approach will enable the less experienced team member gain a broader understanding of the total role of their business and an appreciation of what they could achieve within this business.

Thomson Reuters went on to comment that “THE POWER OF MEANINGFUL WORK” is extremely important.

We will discuss all aspects of the importance of skills attraction for businesses in our complimentary webinar on Wednesday 24 May at 12pm AEST. Click here to register.