A professional accounting firm trains articled assistants, staffs audits and serves partners who own the clients. The firm's real asset is the associate who qualifies and stays, and that depends on what the next five years visibly look like.
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Share your requirementsA chartered accountant firm is built around partners who hold the clients and sign the work, supported by qualified managers, semi-qualified staff, articled assistants and a support team. Articled assistants are in the firm to complete their training, so their time with you is fixed and they leave when it ends. Audit, tax and advisory teams work to external deadlines and often at the client's premises, with staff spending days away from the office. Qualified associates are in demand elsewhere, and partners often carry both client relationships and the firm's people decisions with little time for either. See also HR for professional services.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
Each batch spends its term learning, then leaves just as it becomes productive, so the firm trains continuously and keeps little of it.
A newly qualified associate sees larger firms and companies offering more, and the firm has no clear answer about progression.
Staff spend days at client sites, and travel, working hours and who goes where become unspoken sources of resentment.
Each partner guards their own client list and staff, which blocks moving people across teams and makes a partner's exit or retirement a major risk.
Several statutory deadlines fall close together, and the team is asked to deliver all of them with no formal plan for who does what.
Standards vary by partner, so staff learn different habits depending on which team they land in.
Client files are on laptops, phones and shared drives, and people leave with knowledge and sometimes files.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Retention and Attrition Management; Career and Succession Management; Performance Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a chartered accountant and cpa firms business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A planned rotation across audit, tax and advisory, a named guide for each assistant and a short exit conversation, so the firm learns from every batch and may keep the best.
What this coversHideA planned rotation across audit, tax and advisory, a named guide for each assistant and a short exit conversation, so the firm learns from every batch and may keep the best.
What a qualified associate becomes in two, four and six years, with a fair pay range at each point.
What this coversHideWhat a qualified associate becomes in two, four and six years, with a fair pay range at each point. The succession and leadership development work covers it.
One set of working papers, review notes and appraisal criteria used by every team, with partner-specific differences kept small and written down.
What this coversHideOne set of working papers, review notes and appraisal criteria used by every team, with partner-specific differences kept small and written down.
A single deadline calendar for the firm, with staffing agreed across teams in advance and leave handled early.
What this coversHideA single deadline calendar for the firm, with staffing agreed across teams in advance and leave handled early. The workforce planning work supports it.
Clear rules on travel time, working hours at client premises and compensation for time away, applied the same way for everyone.
What this coversHideClear rules on travel time, working hours at client premises and compensation for time away, applied the same way for everyone.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
A route from qualified associate to manager and partner, and a plan for the partner transition.
A view of who leaves after qualifying, when, and what would have changed the decision.
One appraisal standard across partners so feedback and progression are consistent.
A structured start for articled assistants and new associates, including confidentiality and working-paper standards.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why associates and managers leave consulting, accounting, legal and advisory firms, and how to ask about progression, workload and partners at exit.
6 min readRead article
How to spot an unmanageable workload before it becomes an exit or an error, what to look at, how to talk about it and what to change, without guessing.
5 min readRead article
A two-hour exercise that names the roles you could not fill quickly, who could cover them, and what readiness would actually require.
7 min readRead article
A review can only judge what was agreed beforehand. How to set expectations that are specific, written and revisited, so the review stops being a surprise.
5 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Treat articleship as a pipeline. Offer the best a clear role at the end, keep a friendly alumni link and build a reputation that brings the next batch.
Usually because the next step is unclear and pay lags. Showing the path and revisiting pay at qualification removes the main reasons.
Agree a common deadline calendar and a short list of shared standards. Moving people across teams in peak weeks is easier once partners see the whole calendar.
Write a policy on travel time, hours and allowances and apply it evenly. Unwritten arrangements cause the most unhappiness.
Client handover, staff reporting lines, who holds the relationship and a timeline. Start well before the date, not at it.
The first call usually looks at how articleship is run, why newly qualified associates leave soon after qualifying, and how partners share staff during audit weeks. From there, a clear path after qualification, or a common standard for what every partner expects of an associate, is often the sensible first job. Anything we take on is written down and agreed with you before work starts.
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