Accounting: Why Women Leave – and How to Keep Them

By Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

In September of last year, The Glass Hammer informed readers of the first ever Accounting MOVE Project, which was spearheaded by the American Society of Women Accountants (ASWA) along with Joanne Cleaver, president and founder of the research firm Wilson-Taylor Associates. The project and its accompanying report aimed to find out exactly where the glass ceiling is – and it succeeded admirably. It was revealed that a large percentage of female accountants abandon public accounting firms at the senior manager level.

The 2010 Accounting MOVE Project, released today, documents why women leave the profession. Cleaver and her team conducted hundreds of interviews with women at different stages in their career, as well as with academics, firm employees, and recruiters (among many others) in order to provide a 360 point of view of the industry and find out why its failing to retain its female talent. The study indicates that while that women account for more than half of all firm employees (51.4 percent), only 40 percent of them hold senior manager positions and only 17.4 percent become partners. What’s keeping women out of the top ranks?

Redefining Flex Time

Many women report that a lack of flexibility in their work schedule is the biggest culprit as to why they don’t make it to more senior positions. Interestingly enough, flexibility isn’t a major issue for women in the accounting world.

The study revealed that 43 percent of participating firms coached managers in methods of supporting flex-working and telecommuting employees. 64 percent of firms surveyed train managers to evaluate productivity in lieu of “face time.”

The problem, according to the study, is that for many firms, informal flexibility is seen as the “silver bullet” – there is no formal flexwork schedule, thus no way to measure how effective the program is or how helpful the practice is to the firm or its female employees.

The Accounting MOVE Project suggests “firming up” on flexibility by offering a “toolbox of options.” It also encourages firms to offer separate affinity groups for working moms and working parents, distinct from women’s initiatives. “Firms seem to hold on to flexibility as an easy solution because in accounting, there is a clearly-defined crunch time; the first quarter of the year,” Cleaver said. “This industry has a business cycle that allows for slow summers and it does a good job of offering women flexibility in their schedules, but most firms fail to report how that flexibility translates into business results for both the firm and the women involved. It’s important that firm leadership ensure that conversations are taking place about flexibility; conversations that illustrate how flexibility can lead to career advancement. Women, in turn, need to understand that they can ‘flex’ in different directions. Basically, the question the firm should be asking is how do we connect the dots so flexibility does not hinder advancement?”

Sales and Business Management

So, if the most common cause for women leaving at the senior management level doesn’t pertain to flexibility in their schedules, what is it?

According to the study, a lack of business management skills causes 10 percent of women to remove themselves just before becoming partner. Once they reach a certain level, accountants are expected to begin bringing in clients. According to the Accounting MOVE Project, for many women, it’s a bit of a rude awakening.

“It’s definitely a difficult dynamic to navigate,” Cleaver said. “With business management, you have to be comfortable and properly trained in order to bring in clients and generally speaking, men are very good at making that transition, while women have an incredibly difficult time finding their voice. After all, most women enter accounting because it provides a clear career path and they like numbers, but finding out that they’ll have to deal with sales is a shock. At the senior management level when dynamics converge, women’s business skills are behind and it can lead to a crisis of confidence. Many wonder if they can make that transition and navigate those murky, treacherous waters, only to come to the conclusion that they can’t.”

Combating this problem, this glass ceiling of sorts, is not only beneficial for women, but for firms as well, Cleaver noted. After all, no leveraging the recognized differences in women’s sales and communications skills, loses firms money and clients. The Accounting MOVE Project recommends that firms recast women’s initiatives as a tool for immediate business development and long-term strategic talent development, as well as concentrating business-development training at the rising manager and senior management levels, with goals to increase the client base, retain women, and cultivate talent.

“The key is to concentrate resources at the senior level,” Cleaver said. “Cultivating female aptitude in business development will lead to increased revenue; it’s that simple. If you concentrate resources, everyone wins. I know it sounds like an obvious solution, but it wasn’t obvious to us before we did the study. We can only hope that firms take this information and run with it. I think the biggest problem they now face is figuring out how to translate the study’s recommendations into programs, but once they do they will experience results; there’s no doubt about that.”