How Emerging Technologies Can Help Navigate the Great Resignation

The pandemic has led many workers to re-evaluate their goals amid increasing stress and burnout, subsequently culminating into the Great Resignation. Accountants, auditors, controllers and CFOs were not immune to the Great Resignation as long work hours and stagnant pay impacted employee morale and recruiting prospects. To avoid the detrimental effects on retention and turnover rates, organizations need to make dedicated investments in emerging technologies – particularly in areas such as automation, AI and collaboration tools – to streamline work processes, lessen the burden on employees, and improve productivity.

Burnout Is No Longer Acceptable
The accounting profession, for example, has always suffered from high turnover, with upwards of 20% per year for most firms. On top of that, the industry suffers from hectic tax seasons, which contributes to greater employee burnout and leads to 30.4% of accountants suffering from mental health issues with 51% admitting depression and anxiety leaves them dreading going to work. With fewer CPAs entering the workforce and more retiring, the Great Resignation has put even more pressure on this issue as employees vacate their roles for more lucrative opportunities. Morale is so low that the “Big Four” companies have looked at ways to better attract and retain workers – for example, recently, KPMG in the U.S. announced a $160 million increase in salaries. While these changes are positive, it is also important to establish additional changes to workload, to address the core employee stress and burnout issues.

Reducing Workloads with Innovative Platforms
To create a more manageable workload and foster a better workplace culture, the accounting and finance profession should look to integrate a slew of innovative platforms to drive greater efficiency and productivity, while concurrently elevating the types of work that employees are needing to do each day. Traditionally, the finance sector has been seen as being particularly technology averse, however there is a growing acceptance of the benefits that new platforms deliver to the industry. For example, there are AI-powered platforms in the market today, which can better automate workflows by extracting essential information from contracts and payments and sharing it across teams, allowing enhanced visibility and efficiency. Similarly, given the ever-changing regulatory environment, AI-powered platforms can also ensure that companies generate auditable journal entries and disclosures to reduce costs and prevent costly errors.

Today, much of the accounting and finance industry still relies on carrying out data entry and classifying transactions manually, which is arduous and time-consuming.

Platforms that use AI to identify and transfer critical pieces of information in an instant to minimize risk, enhance compliance, and increase efficiency.

This approach provides increased visibility on other teams’ work, helping streamline and accelerate processes. These AI-powered platforms can also identify patterns or anomalies in data to minimize financial fraud from malicious actors. With AI platforms integrated into their daily workflows, employees can better tackle their projects with other team members and ease work loads. With more manageable workloads, companies benefit from lower turnover, higher productivity and collaboration among accounting/auditing/financial teams, and increased business growth.

Given the increasingly fluid labor market, the accounting and financial industry has a clear opportunity to look at emerging technologies to create more transparency and accountability to the data, but also to foster a better working environment in the future. While there’s no silver bullet to addressing the challenges in hiring, motivating and retaining staff amid the Great Resignation, a holistic and proactive strategy – which includes embracing solutions that can shift employees away from highly manual tasks and provide a single source of truth to crucial financial data – can play an overt role in tackling arguably one of the top challenges in the profession today.

Additional Links and Sources
KPMG U.S. announces $160M increase in salaries (Accounting Today)