Episode Details

In this episode, Tim O'Neill, CPA, Senior Tax Manager — Wipfli LLP, joins April Walker, CPA, CGMA, Lead Manager — Tax Practice & Ethics, AICPA & CIMA, live from ENGAGE 2023 to discuss the current environment for recruitment and retention of employees in tax and how to build deeper connections with staff to help them feel more invested in their organizations.

What you'll learn in this episode

• Strategies for employee retention and engagement (1:01)
• Differences between a "manager" and a "leader" (2:48)
• What it means to prioritize outcomes vs. outputs (5:04)
• The notion of no more timesheets (7:20)
• Final thoughts (8:05)
• A page from Tim's travel journal (9:31)

Related resources

• Practice Management & Professional Standards — The AICPA Tax Section provides the guidance and tools you need to manage a successful tax practice and maintain the highest level of ethical standards in tax.
• Reimagining your tax practice — Tackle today's top practice management issues with insights and tips from pioneers in the tax community. The Reimagining Your Tax Practice webcast series will tackle these issues and more in a Q&A roundtable series with tax pioneers from the profession.

Transcript

April Walker: Hello everyone and welcome to the AICPA's Tax Section Odyssey podcast, where we offer thought leadership on all things tax facing the profession. I'm April Walker, Lead Manager from the Tax Section, and I'm here today with Tim O'Neill. He is a Senior Tax Manager with Wipli in St. Louis. Welcome, Tim.

Tim O'Neill: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Walker: Yeah. We're here together today recording at the ENGAGE conference.

O'Neill: That's all right live in person.

Walker: Yeah and yesterday I attended Tim's session which was titled, "Recruit, Retain, Repeat." Welcome Tim. I thought we could share some of your insights with our listeners from your session.

O'Neill: I'd love to.

Walker: I don't think it is a new concept for people listening today that recruitment and retention are a huge problem in tax and accounting profession, that sort of thing. I thought maybe from your perspective, you could share a few strategies that you have found that worked for you for employee retention and engagement.

O'Neill: Yeah, absolutely. Like you mentioned, this is the million or $2 million question.

Walker: Yeah, for sure.

O'Neill: What can we do as leaders to try and increase our retention increase overall employee experience? Really there's no right or wrong answers — it's all very individualized.

But what I found through my experience with AICPA committees, my experience within Wipfli, prior firms or organizations that I've worked with is being an effective leader and authentic is the best way to build these deeper connections with staff and employees that really makes them feel invested in the overall organization. I'm trying to think of some of the more important things that we've done, but it's just so individualized.

It's difficult to an extent, but if you can get across the idea that we don't need to put together these formal programs to help retention. It really doesn't come down to that. It's just about being transparent, authentic and empathetic is a big one that we've seen.

With sessions here there is a lot of talk about being an em