The secret to employee retention and good customer service is running a company by the golden rule, according to the administration of Kahn, Litwin, Renza & Co. Ltd.
“If we treat people the way we want to be treated, we find people are much happier and they don’t leave,” said Alan Litwin, managing director of KLR. “We do a lot of screening to have the right people, and once we have them we don’t want to lose them.”
Norman Leblanc, a recently promoted manager in the company’s tax services group, agreed with Litwin.
“There’s a trend in U.S. companies to use people when they need them and let them go when they don’t,” he said. “When the firm cares about employees, employees care about what they are doing.”
The company, a Providence-based certified public accounting and business consulting firm founded in 1975, prides itself on offering exceptional service to customers.
“Our philosophy has always been that we want this to be a place that when employees arrive in the morning they look forward to their days. Happy employees do a better job,” Litwin said.
To reach that ideal, the company starts with top-of-the-market pay (the average annual salary ranges from $40,900 to $98,500) and employer-paid health insurance. But there is much more.
According to Litwin, the company is a transparent organization that shares everything from its client lists to its financial information with its employees.
“We provide a lot of strategic info to the staff,” he said. “Everybody knows what the plan is, and everybody gets to put input into that plan.”
“I think that plays a really big role,” Leblanc said. “The other firms I’ve worked for, you didn’t know what the goals were. Here we basically know where we’re going all the time.”
As part of that strategy, the company holds an annual strategic planning retreat for new and longtime employees. Litwin said an employee at one of the retreats once told him he learned more in that weekend than he had in the eight years at his previous firm.
“It’s an entirely different environment than any other CPA firm you’ll find,” Litwin said.
The company also helps equip its employees to advance through in-house training seminars and tuition reimbursement plans for those pursuing graduate degrees in anything “remotely related to business.”
In addition to the company’s transparency, Litwin said the company also tries to understand and accommodate the personal lives of its employees.
“We’ve always respected people’s personal lives. Some of the accounting firms work 70 or 80 hours; we don’t do that,” Litwin said.
The company allows people to set their own schedules and take paid time for volunteer work. It also gives ample flextime.
Both Leblanc and June Landry, the company’s marketing manager, said that was one of the motivating factors for staying with KLR.
“There’s a lot of flexibility in that we can come in a little late or leave a little early,” he said. “We tend to get anywhere from three to five weeks off, which helps offset the extra hours during tax season, and we leave early on Fridays all summer.”
The company also sponsors wellness days, offers Weight Watchers classes that employees can attend during work hours, and consistently tries to show employees that it values the work they’re doing.
“We try to recognize when people are going over and above,” Litwin said.
And, according to Litwin, these tactics are getting the right outcome.
“We never had anyone leave permanently to go to another CPA firm locally,” he said.
“When they leave, we leave the door open, and it’s gratifying for us that they come back so quickly.”
