Staff Retention - A Growing Issue

Staff retention in the audit field (and the CPA market in the U.S.) is in major shambles these days. Business Week notes that it is one of the top priorities for 2005.

I believe one reason that people leave companies is bad technology. I just visited a company yesterday that continues to have over 100 bodies in a department (not auditing) solely due to the fact that technology is poorly implemented.

Translating that to the audit world and also noting that more younger people are entering the workforce, I believe that the quality workers will gravitate to companies that implement technology. Smart people don't want to waste their brain cells working on administrative tasks that clearly could be automated (i.e., various audit tests).

I see this as a growing problem unless companies start to truly adopt technology better both in their transaction processing and audit departments.

Feel free to comment to me at rich@auditsoftware.net