An audit firm sends small teams to client sites for weeks at a time, then pulls them back to review. Independence concerns, travel, junior churn and the long road to partner shape every people decision.
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Share your requirementsAn audit firm builds engagement teams of a partner, a manager, seniors and several juniors, and sends them to client premises for fieldwork. Teams change with each client, because staff are often rotated and some pairings are avoided. Working hours stretch during fieldwork and year end, and travel to plants or branches is common. Reviewers are stretched, juniors are many and often fresh, and the number who stay to become managers and partners is small. Knowledge sits in working papers and in a few people's memory. 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 client needs a different mix, so staff meet new colleagues often and nobody owns the development of a junior over a year.
Travel to client sites for days or weeks strains families, and the people with young children or elderly parents quietly leave.
Managers review many files at once, so feedback to juniors is brief and late, and learning is slow.
Sampling and ticking can occupy a junior for months, with little sense of progress, and boredom drives exits.
Many seniors leave before reaching manager. The firm then promotes late or hires laterally, and trust in the pipeline fades.
Partners hold client relationships and sign opinions. When one retires or moves, the clients and the knowledge are not ready to pass on.
Staff are strong on standards but weak at difficult conversations with a client finance head, and engagements suffer.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Career and Succession Management; Organisation Design; Learning and Development. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
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.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
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.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
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 audit firms business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A simple grid of technical areas, sectors and soft skills for every senior and manager.
What this coversHideA simple grid of technical areas, sectors and soft skills for every senior and manager. The competency and talent management work builds it.
Assign juniors so that over a year they see a range of clients and tasks, not the same testing repeated.
What this coversHideAssign juniors so that over a year they see a range of clients and tasks, not the same testing repeated.
Short practical sessions on questioning, explaining a finding and handling pushback.
What this coversHideShort practical sessions on questioning, explaining a finding and handling pushback. See communication skills training.
Notice period for travel, rest after long fieldwork and cover for personal needs, written once.
What this coversHideNotice period for travel, rest after long fieldwork and cover for personal needs, written once.
For each partner, the people who could take over clients and sign off, with a plan to prepare them.
What this coversHideFor each partner, the people who could take over clients and sign off, with a plan to prepare them. The succession planning work covers this.
A single record of who worked where and in what role, to support review, rotation and growth decisions.
What this coversHideA single record of who worked where and in what role, to support review, rotation and growth decisions.
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 skills grid and talent view across seniors and managers, so staffing and promotions use the same facts.
Named successors and development steps for partners and key managers, ahead of any transition.
Practical training for client conversations and explaining findings, so engagements go more smoothly.
A single record of staffing, rotation, development and decisions, kept in a way you can stand behind.
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.
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A two-hour exercise that names the roles you could not fill quickly, who could cover them, and what readiness would actually require.
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A flat structure works until the founder becomes the only route to a decision. How to tell when you have passed that point, and how to redesign without a reorganisation.
8 min readRead article
Plastics training dies when it waits for a free Saturday. Tie it to mould changes, purges and cold starts, use one-point lessons and a visible skill ladder, and protect it in peak months.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Rotate in steps, keeping some continuity in each team. Pair a new junior with a senior who knows the client and write a short handover for the file.
A visible route and a date by which they will be considered, honest feedback on gaps, and responsibility that matches the grade. Delay without explanation is the usual cause of exits.
Share it across the team, give notice, rest after long assignments and ask early about constraints. Fairness matters more to staff than the amount.
Yes. Start years before a transition, with joint client meetings, shared sign off steps and a named successor. Late planning loses clients.
Yes. Explaining a point clearly and holding a position politely are learnt skills, and short role play sessions on real engagement situations work well.
We would ask how many juniors reach manager, who will succeed your next partners and how rotation is decided. A common first project is a skills grid with a partner succession map. Scope is written down for you to accept or change.
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