With skilled worker immigration dropping in both 2020 and 2021 as a result of COVID-19, it’s led to a mass skills shortage of accountants hitting Australia hard. Larger firms are recruiting local accountants at higher competitive salaries, leaving SMBs to face many staffing challenges surrounding accounting hiring and retention.
And with the federal government’s Centre for Population suggesting that migration won’t start to increase until the end of 2022 – 2023, it leaves many Australian businesses struggling to find the right talent. In this post we’ll be looking at the impact of the accounting talent shortage, as well as how you can overcome it as a small or medium business owner.
The Effect of the Accounting Talent Shortage on Australian Businesses
While it’s not just SMBs affected – 77% of the top 100 accounting firms are having difficulty finding and retaining staff according to the Australian Financial Review 2021. The shortage of accountants can have a much bigger impact on smaller and medium Australian businesses in the following ways:
Increased workload and burnout
For existing teams taking on all of the current workload without additional support it means your team are being bogged down and stressed with repetitive and ongoing tasks. Which often has a knock-on effect with missing deadlines and not hitting targets. For the team, it’s the quickest way to burnout, stress, increased pressure, and low retention rates in employees which simply compounds the problem.
Hiring the wrong talent
With a smaller, less qualified talent pool to choose from locally, many businesses are at risk of hiring the wrong talent that doesn’t suit their business needs or ethos. And the costs of this go beyond monetary. To read about the risk of hiring the wrong talent, take a look at our post here.
Hindered business growth
While your teams are busy trying to keep up with the day-to-day tasks, there’s very little latitude for being innovative and taking on the work required to grow the business. Which can lead to stagnation, or in the case of rising costs, negatively impact your bottom line.
How Talent-as-a-service Addresses the Shortage of Accountants
We have been helping Australian businesses tackle the accounting talent shortage through our unique talent-as-a-service model. Unlike traditional outsourcing, our model means we handle recruitment, management, and support for high-quality and degree-educated accountants who are dedicated to your business.
They operate as an extension of your team, with a sole focus on knowing and operating in your specific business. Here’s why this can turn your shortage of accountants into an opportunity.
A huge pool of candidates
Hyderabad, India is an excellent accounting alignment to Australia due to the natural strong work ethic, excellent business school education and exposure to well established accounting firms. With a high availability of talent across a variety of accounting roles, university education is one of our minimum baselines for recruitment and this gives Australian businesses a huge pool of highly educated and experienced accounting professionals to tap into.
Secure the best talent
Our recent poll on LinkedIn showed that 69% of businesses want the best talent from talent-as-a-service and that’s why we have a strict recruitment process for success. With 6 stages in the process that evaluate candidates on both their technical and professional skills and their values and ethics, we can find the best and the right talent to suit your business.
Grow and scale
You can use our talent-as-a-service model to hire for repetitive tasks like bookkeeping to free up your existing team members. Or we can help you recruit high-level accounting executives to handle strategy, business advisory, or management accounting for you and your clients.
Plus, as we help you manage and support this talent, it reduces the management burden on you to give you back the time to put into your business. Thus, helping you with the time and resources to grow and scale.
Increase retention and lower costs
The longer you retain staff, the more effective and efficient your business is likely to be. Not to mention, you’ll be able to keep a seamless transition for clients, and your business while reducing recruitment costs.
Ultimately the shortage of accountants in Australia isn’t going away any time soon, and for SMBs this means it’s time to leverage other opportunities to get back on level pegging. If you want to use our talent-as-a-service model to solve your current staffing and retention challenges, while opening up a lot more benefits, learn more here or get in touch: https://www.talentformula.co/our-solutions/
