If Alan H. Litwin, managing director at Providence-based Kahn, Litwin, Renza & Co. Ltd., had to sum up his management policy with two words they would likely be: communication and prioritization.
At KLR, which has 130 Rhode Island employees, “we’re very concerned with making sure that our employees have a balance between their professional lives and their personal lives,” Litwin said last week.
In a recession, workloads can change and some clients – such as banks – need work done at the “drop of a hat,” he added. But talking to employees and making sure their work is prioritized can take much of the stress out of their days, Litwin said.
Many other firms, however, have not been as successful in managing their employees’ stress levels, according to an international survey released last month by Robert Half International, a staffing firm with more than 360 offices around the world and 19 in New England. The survey, of 4,800 finance and accounting professionals, showed that 48 percent of respondents in the United States said finance employees had higher stress levels than they had last year. Internationally, 39 percent said they were more stressed.
Only about a third – 32 percent – of firms in the United States said that they had been unaffected by the recession.
And stress levels may get worse, with the outlook for finance and accounting firms “uncertain,” according to the Journal of Accountancy. That trade journal reported in its May 2009 issue that a survey of 1,183 members of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants found that “more than 50 percent of the financial executives surveyed had implemented compensation freezes.”
Seeing the potential for further spending cuts and layoffs in the industry, AICPA issued a statement on April 15 – the unofficial end of the busiest season for some financial professionals – urging its membership to take managerial steps to curb layoffs. It suggested unpaid furloughs, cutting annual raises and cutting partner salaries. AICPA even suggested using better “poor-performance management” systems, including expediting “the warning and discussions time frame in an effort to move up the firing date of chronically poor performers.”
But good performers shouldn’t be worried about their jobs, Robert Half International CEO and Chairman Max Messmer said in a statement.
Still, Robert Half International Vice President and Regional Manager Luke Howarth, who oversees the Providence office, said the economy has affected the majority of firms’ workflow and stress levels.
“The main cause for the higher stress level is that there are less people in most organizations, doing more,” Howarth said. “And, generally, when you get into any type of economic positions like we’re currently experiencing, companies stop hiring or slow their hiring.”
Howarth said he’s starting to see a lot more temporary staff – especially in accounting, IT and administration – being hired to alleviate stress. And he said he’s seen an increase in traffic at Robert Half – his Providence office interviews between 60 and 80 people a week – looking for work in the Rhode Island area.
Stress, Howarth said, can be alleviated by simply adding a few staffers. As for morale – that’s not as easily remedied. “When you have such sour news out there, it’s just really tough to keep moral high,” he said.
Warwick’s DiSanto, Priest & Co. Principal Lori J. Conaty said her accounting and finance firm’s work hasn’t become “more stressful,” rather “it’s more a question of being sensitive to our client and their needs and the situation they may be encountering in their business.”
She added that many of DiSanto, Priest’s clients have become more focused on being leaner and better companies. “And they look to us for help with that,” she said.
Because DiSanto, Priest’s services do not concentrate on just one industry, it hasn’t been as affected as some of the larger, more concentrated finance firms, Conaty said.
Litwin says that keeping employees happy and employed has allowed KLR to seek out new business in the last few months.
“We’re getting a lot of opportunities from companies using smaller CPA firms that can’t handle all their needs,” Litwin said. “On the other end, we’re getting a lot of proposals from companies using national accounting firms that don’t want to pay that kind of overhead.”
The month after tax season closes is usually one of the slowest of the year, but KLR has remained busy, he said. And although KLR reports that it’s managing the increased business well, many of the firm’s clients are experiencing a more stressful year than they would like.
“A lot of our clients are under a lot of stress – both financially and in operations – and when you’re working with people you’re very closely aligned with them,” Litwin said. “So we’re doing a lot of consulting with them and trying to help them through a difficult time in their industries – in that way we end up sharing that stress with them.” •
