AGNES KING
Australia’s biggest accounting firm, PwC, plans to fast-track graduates in its tax practice to manager level within two years instead of four, using a new training program designed to make graduates more relevant to clients earlier in their career.
If successful, it could see PwC *graduates earning more money sooner, up to $90,000 by 2015.
“We’ve compacted what a grad would have learnt over the first three years of their career into four weeks in the first two months they’re here,” PwC tax partner Warren Dick said.
“If we are successful, the grad of today will have the capability in two years of what we previously have expected in three or four years,” he said.
The new regime is PwC’s response to downward pressure on fees.
To maintain margins, big professional services firms are sending low-level work offshore to gain the benefit of labour arbitrage.
This creates two issues: low-level grunt work on which graduates *previously cut their teeth is no longer readily available, while outsourcing engagements require a different *partner-to-staff ratio that includes fewer graduates and more managers.
“This does help to address our response to that,” Mr Dick said.
These trends could dramatically alter the career path for accounting graduates, and also have the potential to flatten the hierarchical management structure of big accounting firms.
The first batch of 43 trainees to *graduate from PwC’s new tax academy in April will work more directly with directors and partners. If successful, they should be pulling salaries of between $70,000 and $80,000 by 2015.
“At the moment, we haven’t changed the charge-out rates,” Mr Dick said. “Over time, we may review that. It’s too early to tell if they really are more billable or utilised.
“It’s possible with this training, *earlier exposure to more technical work with clients, and working earlier with partners and directors, our people will become skilled earlier and advance earlier than they might have in the past.
“With advancement come [higher] charge-out rates at an earlier point in time,” he said. However, there are questions about the implications for older graduates, who joined PwC’s tax practice last year or in 2010.
Mr Dick said those graduates would be put through the same fast-track *program until November to bring them up to a comparable level.
The two groups of graduates will make manager level at the same time, intensifying competition among those keen to make partner. This is not necessarily a bad thing in PwC’s view.
“If our young people are better skilled and more relevant to clients at a younger age, that’s a great outcome for everyone,” Mr Dick said.
Clients would argue a big part of this relevance comes from experience.
The overhaul of the training regime coincides with fresh leadership of PwC Australia’s tax practice.
“We did a total rethink on this *particular program, including *workshops with all levels of staff from partners down to current graduates and external professional educators, to develop a program that embeds *learning in the fastest possible way,” Mr Dick said. He said the “on-boarding” of new graduates took too long in the past, and expectations on learning were below their capability.
PwC has no hard and fast milestones to prove the program’s success.
“The true test will come over the next six months.”
But Mr Dick said “early *success measures are very positive”.
Partners are setting harder tasks which graduates are completing proficiently.
