CAPACITY
PAY to PLAY Can pay transparency help CPA firms attract and retain talent? New pay transparency laws are requiring employers to disclose wages to prospective candidates and/or current employees. Though not required in all states, many employers — including CPA firms — are gambling on using the practice to attract and retain talent. In March 2023, Alex Cheney was laid off from
his role as a senior technical recruiter at a global software company headquartered in San Francisco. Having spent more than a decade in the talent acquisition space, Cheney is a seasoned professional who’s well aware of the latest trends impacting the hiring and recruiting landscape — and now he’s leveraging that knowledge in his own job search. One of those trends is the passing of pay transparency laws, which require companies to disclose salary ranges in job descriptions.
Carolyn Tang Kmet
“As a current job seeker, seeing the pay range of a role has saved me from spending a lot of time applying to jobs that don’t align with my expectations, skill level, or needs,” Cheney explains. Currently, about 20 states, including Virginia, have some variation of legislation designed to address wage disparities and promote fair compensation practices in the job market. Additionally, there are several cities that have passed their own ordinances. One
24
DISCLOSURES
•
FALL 2023
of those cities is San Francisco, where the Parity in Pay ordinance requires employers with 20 or more employees to provide pay ranges in their job listings. “Prior to California passing the ordinance, I worked for an organization where a lack of internal pay equity was uncovered,” Cheney says. “As you can imagine, this news quickly filtered through the entire team, causing multiple individuals to question management.” Cheney says the incident contributed to a significant decrease in employee morale, leading to rapid attrition in a competitive job market, which made it challenging for the organization to backfill its vacated roles. Of course, CPA firms are no strangers to these types of staffing challenges as retaining and attracting new talent continues to be one of greatest issues impacting the accounting profession today. The National Association of State Boards of Accountancy reports the number of new CPA candidates has decreased by 33% in recent years, dropping from slightly more than 48,000 candidates in 2016 to 32,186 candidates in 2021. u
