Young UK accountants call in sick to avoid busy season

Long-standing working practices in the accounting sector are pushing young workers to take time off for the sake of their health. A new study has found that more than a quarter of young professionals believe they have an unrealistic workload, while more than half take time off during their firm’s busiest periods.

The infamous ‘busy season’ in accounting is a period when the industry’s professionals handle a huge spike in volume, due to various financial reporting requirements. It usually occurs during the lead-up to key financial deadlines, such as the tax-filing season or the year-end financial reporting period. During the period, firms are determined to milk every last drop of profit from this work – which critics claim means the sector is understaffed at this time of intense pressure, and pushes many lower-level staff to breaking point.

Examples pointed to include a famous case from EY, and one particular team leader in Hong Kong, who made headlines for issuing orders to ‘work until 11.30pm every night, and at weekends'. With workplace mental health an increasingly prominent issue in the professional services sector, it was not a message that was well-received. Even so, firms do not seem to have changed, if their youngest staff are to be believed.

New research from AccountsIQ has polled 251 young finance professionals between the ages of 18 and 35, who have up to three years’ experience. The analysts have subsequently found that 96% of young accounting professionals are frustrated with their current roles – while many of those feel the expectations placed upon them by management are at best unrealistic, and at worst detrimental to their health.

According to AccountsIQ, 33% of respondents said they don’t have enough time to complete the tasks they are given, while 27% went as far as to say they have an unrealistic workload. With 41% complaining that expectations for what they can do are too high, and 39% noting that management rarely appreciates their efforts, it is little wonder that they do not feel especially committed to their employers.

In the short-term, 54% of young accountants in the UK said they take time off work to intentionally avoid busy dates in the work calendar, such as tax and reporting deadlines. Of those, 44% admitted to doing so by calling in sick as opposed to booking – hinting at a grave impact on the mental and physical wellbeing of staff that busy season has – and in the long-term, that may lead to a crisis in terms of retention and recruitment for accounting firms, which is already struggling to recruit amid perceptions of unattainability among young professionals.

Darren Cran, CCO, at AccountsIQ commented on the results, “Poor morale, frustrations with workload and lack of technological resource among younger professionals threaten to undermine the long-term vitality and performance of finance and accounting. We need to see closer attention to nurturing young finance professionals, who have a different set of attitudes and expectations of their employers than previous generations.”

The study did point to one key way in which employers could resolve these issues, though. A 95% majority of respondents said they need better technology at work – especially when it comes to analytics – and 30% backed this up by saying that having better software and the automation of more of the burdensome tasks they undertake would improve the culture in their finance function.

Cran concluded, “These young accountants coming through the ranks are already tech-savvy and understand the power of automation and how it can be leveraged to improve their workstreams. It’s important for leaders to provide them with modern tools that remove the manual work they themselves had to endure, to keep them motivated and engaged.”