Jacksonville, Fla. — Oct. 8
Only 14 percent of hiring managers in the accounting and finance fields are willing to negotiate employee development opportunities during the hiring process even though 26 percent report most employees leave their companies because of lack of career development opportunities, according to Accounting Principals’ latest “Workplace Insights Survey.”
Other top reasons include employees leaving for a better work-life balance (21 percent), as well as the need for increased compensation (21 percent).
Surprisingly, the survey shows salary is the thing finance hiring managers are most willing to negotiate (39 percent), ahead of vacation time (11 percent), flex time (11 percent), device benefits, such as phone bill reimbursement (7 percent), or title (4 percent).
Talent retention is becoming a larger challenge facing finance and accounting hiring managers. The survey showed that 39 percent of finance hiring managers said their company has a harder time retaining talent than three years ago.
Knowing that employees are looking for development opportunities, one way to reduce attrition could be to hire and promote more from within. Yet the survey found finance hiring managers slightly favor looking outside for new talent (55 percent) over training internal talent (45 percent) when hiring for positions at their organization.
Additionally, hiring managers noted that despite knowing employees are leaving for lack of career development opportunities, they are not particularly concerned about it — only a small minority of hiring managers said employee development and upward mobility keep them up at night (14 percent and 10 percent, respectively).
Instead, their top concerns are split between recruitment (25 percent) and team effectiveness (24 percent), the survey showed.
Source: Accounting Principals
