Accountancy is an attractive profession for those seeking a lucrative career. For new starters, there are several different pathways into the profession and qualifications to pursue to solidify your employability and professional credibility.

Within this article, GAAPweb, the UK’s leading job site for Accountancy and Finance professionals, cover what it takes to become an accountant, and the steps you’ll need to follow to secure your objective.

The Basics: What is an Accountant?

In short, Accountants analyse, interpret, and report financial information on behalf of individuals or companies. Employed to provide financial advice, Accountants improve the ways parties manage their finances and, ultimately, increase their profitability.
Day-to-day activities will vary depending on the type of specialism; however, the type of work will lend itself to regularly dealing with financial reporting, tax advice, auditing, forecasting, and budgeting.

While “Accountant” is not a protected title, “Chartered Accountant” is. To become a Chartered Accountant, you must pass a series of exams before completing years of work experience.

Types of Accountants:

Five areas of accountancy, differing in purpose and responsibility:

• Practice Accountants: supporting businesses by helping to manage their finances on a daily basis. Employed by accountancy firms/working with numerous clients.

• Tax Accountants: aiding businesses to fulfil their tax responsibilities. They ensure that businesses meet their tax requirements each year, whilst offering advice on how to reduce legal tax exposure.

• Management Accountants: offering real utility to businesses by managing budgets and taking steps to make a business more profitable. Many management accountant jobs require individuals to look to the future, with both forecasting and strategic planning regular duties.

• Financial Accountants: overviewing a company’s financial transactions, including income, expenses, and liabilities. Seeking to understand how money is processed through the company, Financial Accountants prepare financial statements, offering financial advice to management.

• Forensic Accountants: analysing complicated financial matters through a mixture of accounting knowledge and investigative analysis. Forensic accountants aid the investigation of fraud or embezzlement.

Skills Required for Accountants:

Accountant jobs vary greatly from one specialism to the next. Nonetheless, there is a significant crossover in the realm of professional skills required. To pursue a career in accountancy, you will require:

• Numeracy Skills: it goes without saying that you will require a strong numerical skillset. You don’t have to be a mathematical wizard, just own a level of comfort when working with numbers.

• Attention to Detail: accounting delves into the tiny details, looking for discrepancies or mistakes that aren’t easily spotted. With minor errors leading to financial error, it’s essential that you possess acute attention to detail.

• IT Skills: Accountants will often use relatively complex software to carry out their work. Those who are comfortable with computers will be able to leverage artificial intelligence and cloud computing software to carry out crucial elements of their work.

• Organisational Skills: dealing with large volumes of data, requires you to be an organised individual. The ability to stay organised and prioritise tasks accordingly is essential.

• Communication Skills: accountancy roles aren’t isolated to the Finance Department. Working in accountancy requires you to be able to communicate financial information to those who work outside of the financial remit.

Obtaining an Accountancy Qualification:

Accountancy provides various avenues for you to explore, with different professional qualifications to choose from. Our partner, the Association of International Accountants (AIA), offer leading accounting and business qualifications to further your career.

Attain qualified accountant status by following the required steps for the highest qualification. You will need a minimum of 2 A Level and 3 GCSE passes (including maths and English) to gain entry to this programme. Leveraging a global reputation, qualifications from the AIA offer a clear value to prospective employers.

What Are Accountancy Specialisms?

To build a satisfying and enduring career in accountancy, it's wise to pick a specialism and acquire the skills and qualifications that best match that field.

In short, careers in accounting are split into two broad categories: financial accounting and management accounting. Management accounting focuses on delivering information to people within a company, whereas financial accounting provides information to those who are external to the organisation.

Financial accountancy is the popular choice for students, with specialisms including:

• Audit and Assurance
• Business Recover
• Insolvency
• Corporate Finance
• Tax
• Forensic Accounting

Naturally, it’s wise to research each specialism before committing to a professional qualification, allowing you to match your qualification to your career aspirations.

Securing an Accountancy Job:

Obtaining work experience is essential for those looking to secure their first accountancy job. The ideal scenario is to acquire a training contract, enabling you to work while studying for your accountancy qualification.

Many organisations offer jobs to part qualified accountants whilst you complete your studies. You can also consider:

• Finance graduate schemes.

• Accounting apprenticeships, offering practical experience, wages, and regular employment benefits such as annual leave.

If you are struggling to find paid work, consider work experience or voluntary positions. Building practical experience aids your accounting CV, enhancing your employability.

How Much Do Accountants Earn?

According to our 2022 Audience Insight Report, Accountants earn £45,714 per year on average, with 54.6% of our audience reporting a pay rise since 2021. This amount is malleable by factors such as location, specialism, employer, industry and the seniority of your role.

With ample career progression offered within the accountancy sector, one could aim for a goal of Finance Director, Finance Manager, or Chief Financial Officer.

CFOs now report an average salary of £123,008, with Finance Director jobs offering an average salary of £104,422 per annum, up 10% year-on-year.

Ready to commence your job search? Head over to GAAPweb to discover the latest Accountant jobs, as well as senior and management roles from Finance Manager to CFO level. View the latest vacancies and start your job search today.

GAAPweb: the UK’s leading specialist site for finance and accounting, explains how to write the perfect graduate accounting and finance CV.

The accountancy and finance job market can be competitive – especially for recent graduates who are looking to break into the industry – however, there is plenty of reason for optimism. Securing an interview can prove difficult, however, there are certain techniques you can employ to improve your success rate with recruiters and employers.

The first hurdle is your CV.

A first-class graduate accounting CV will help you get your foot in the door. By optimising your CV, you’ll heighten your chances of securing an interview with the firm of your choice.

The Importance of your Accounting and Finance CV:

Building an elite CV that will pass Applicant Tracking Systems and impress recruiters, may seem tedious, but it pays dividends in the long run. With recruiters only looking at CVs for a matter of seconds, you'll need to do everything you can to make your CV accessible, purposeful, and memorable.

Here’s how to up your CV game to give you a fair chance in the finance recruitment landscape.

Areas to Focus on for a Top Graduate Finance and Accounting CV:

Education:

As a graduate, recruiters will show a keen interest in your academic performance. As you are just leaving education, they will not expect you to have an elaborate employment history to show.

Your university education or finance qualification will act as the bedrock for your career, so should be a key feature on your graduate accounting CV. If you are yet to graduate, it’s wise to include a predicted grade or your current average. This will give prospective employers an insight into your academic performance.

A comprehensive overview of your A-level grades should be accompanied by a brief summary of your GCSEs. The total number of GCSEs and the range of grades you achieved for them will suffice. A few key subjects such as Maths, is also worth mentioning.  

Finance Experience:

Employers will understand that your finance work experience will be limited, or even nonexistent. Nonetheless, if you have any experience within the field, you should highlight it vociferously. The more detail the better, from summer jobs, internships, student programmes, or work experience placements, all experience is valuable.

Employers are looking for a true passion for finance. So, if you’ve attended any finance or accounting-oriented insight days or events, then list them.

For those who have had no working experience in finance or accounting, listing any other work experience is still valuable. A strong work ethic is a strong asset for any graduate applicant.  

Hitting Targets:

Goals and objectives are both consistent aspects of the finance and accountancy world. Navigating tight deadlines and quick turnarounds comes with the territory of being an accountant, so you need to make clear that you have the right skillset to do so.

Mention an occasion wherein you have met/exceeded deadlines or targets in the past. For the purposes of a trainee accountant CV, this could be in any type of work, volunteering, or even your studies.

A history of setting financial objectives demonstrates that you adhere to the principles that are key to a successful career in the accounting and finance world. Using precise figures – as you would as a qualified accountant – is important.

Customer and Client Service:

Interpersonal skills are a must for any aspiring accountant or financial professional. The majority of jobs in finance involve a variety of communication and relationship building, either working in collaboration with other members of the finance department or with third parties.

The ability to explain complex financial concepts to individuals without any financial training or education is crucial and a skill that is highly sought-after.

Any experience you have with serving clients and customers will therefore stand you in good stead. Discussing your negotiation and influencing skills and techniques that you have leveraged is an excellent method for demonstrating your aptitude in this space. Providing examples of reaching common goals with colleagues or associates, either within or outside of your team, also provides a little flair to your CV.

Voluntary Work and Positions of Responsibility:

Volunteering work plays a key part on your graduate accounting CV. Under a clear and succinct heading, list your voluntary work, highlighting a variety of transferable skills that can be applied to relevant finance and accountancy roles. Volunteering is looked upon favourably by employers, as it demonstrates that a candidate has taken the time to improve themselves outside of work and education.

It is also worth mentioning other positions of responsibility that you held, perhaps while at university. A place on a student council, captaining a sports team, or managing a society are all relevant points to mention.

These snippets of information serve to demonstrate the soft skills that you have developed during your fledgling career. Inevitably, this section of your CV will shrink as you gain more experience in the finance and accounting world, but for now, it has clear value.

Observe Job Adverts:

The most proactive approach for job applications is adjusting your CV to use specific language that mirrors the job advert that your application is for. If the job asks for a high level of Microsoft Excel aptitude, for example, that is something that you need to highlight. This is all about spotlighting that you have the skills the employer is seeking.

This process naturally adds to the time spent on job applications; however, if you put in the time and effort, you will reap the rewards.

The Final Touches:

There are always ways in which you can go above and beyond to improve your graduate accounting and finance CV. Here are a few extra tips:

• Adding additional languages you can speak, including the level at which you can speak and write. Bilingual candidates have a natural advantage.
• Reference specific software: IT skills are an expectation for finance graduates, so try to emphasise your capabilities, with reference to specific software.
• Format: use a professional font with high readability and ensure there are no grammar or spelling errors present on your CV.
• Keep it short and sweet. Your graduate finance or accountant CV should not be any longer than two sides of A4.

Making Your Graduate CV Count:

Make a long-lasting positive first impression. It’s imperative to stand out, so make every word count.

By keeping the document succinct and highlighting your squalities, you raise the likelihood of getting interviews substantially.

Search and apply for the latest accounting and finance roles for newly qualified accountants and graduates or seek further career advice on GAAPweb today.

Asking for flexible working arrangements now feels like a thing of the norm. Those requesting hybrid working policies may have compelling circumstances in mind, such as disability, safety, health, environmental concerns, or financial matters; or, put simply, a desire to increase productivity and maintain a happy work-life balance. With finance and accountancy professionals demanding more flexibility in their workplace, it’s time to ask why the middle-ground looks so desirable.  

The Impact of COVID-19 on our Working Arrangements:  

Following the outbreak of the pandemic, the majority of finance and accountancy professionals were required to adjust to a new way of working; transforming living rooms into offices, and homes into places of work.  

Adjusting to the newly coined term, ‘hybrid working’; a model that offers both remote and office work, we saw a shift in companies promoting the ‘return to work’, offering a healthy balance of home/office time.  

The right to work from home certainly impacted people’s behaviours and opinions surrounding flexible working. So, why are our GAAPweb audience fans of a flexible model?  

What is Flexible Working?  

Flexible work describes a myriad of working options, compromising on where, when, at what time and how long one works for. From part-time hours to flexitime working, allowing employees to choose when to begin and end work; employees of 2022 are certainly reaching for a balance between structure and autonomy.  

Prior to Covid, we did see flexible working structures in place. Job-sharing for one, allowing two or more people to share a workload, or compressed hours, shortening the working week, reallocating work into fewer and longer blocks of time.  

The plethora of flexible options on the table may not once have appealed to a wider audience. However, since having a work-from-home taster, many workers are seeking the chance to conduct the best work of their lives, from places where they are most productive.  

The Benefits of Flexible Working: 

The appeal of flexible working stems from different directions. For those who adapted from full-time office work to a flexible model during the pandemic, it demonstrated huge cost savings and a better work-life balance by saving the hours once lost to the commute. With the need for a morning coffee being all too tempting, savings were made not just from travel, but from our caffeine fixes and lunches.  

Aside from savings on expenses and time, flexible working gives us the perfect moderation between interacting with colleagues, cementing workplace culture and boosting dopamine across the team, alongside productive ‘head down’ time. With fewer distractions at home, finance professionals can be left to their own productivity.  

Arguably, the high demand for flexible work comes down to the versatility it provides. Having the freedom to have a change of scene can induce creativity and fresh perspectives, and boost productivity. For companies offering a hybrid model, employees enjoy the structured freedom of coming together at the office for collaborations, meetings and socialising, combined with the space needed to stay on top of the game.  

Now businesses have established the technology and practices to allow employees to work remotely, could the hybrid model be the future of company success?  

The Reality of Flexible Working:  

In 2021, our audience survey revealed that 93% of respondents wished to continue working from home post-Covid, yet just 14% would want to work from home every day. This year, our salary survey, surveying over 1,400 finance and accountancy professionals, revealed that only 21% of respondents have been offered hybrid/remote/flexible working as an option. 

Such a disparity in figures demonstrates that the jury is still out when it comes to the future of financial and accountancy working patterns. With the recent volatility of the economic climate and the knowledge that our job seekers feel secure in their current roles, it will be interesting to see whether new job seekers, seek flexible working as a priority, or even deal breakers in their job search.  

Senior Financial Accountant jobs across GAAPWeb monopolise the hybrid working option, with 46.24% of jobs offering flexible working. This is swiftly followed by Financial Reporting Manager roles at 44.78% and Accounts Payable Clerk positions at 42%. With the hybrid working model infiltrating the job market, from senior to entry-level positions, will we see a conservative or proactive approach from businesses in the future?   

Starting a new job is daunting at any stage of your career. Whether you’re at the beginning of your finance or accountancy working life, or a seasoned professional embarking on a new venture, it’s safe to say that the changing landscape of the post-pandemic recruitment market will impact onboarding remote employees.  

Remote onboarding in a hybrid world presents a new set of challenges for candidates and managers alike, from integrating into company culture to adjusting to a new form of online communication. Our own job board reveals a plethora of remote working careers, with 46.24% of Senior Financial Accountants offering hybrid/remote roles. As the leading specialist accountancy job site, with an experienced and engaged audience, GAAPweb has a wealth of knowledge to share about combating the challenges of remote onboarding. 

Integrating Company Culture:  

Learning how to onboard a new employee remotely will ensure a successful remote working relationship. Remote working has been shown to increase productivity, decrease absenteeism and reduce turnover; so, refining your onboarding process is imperative to secure and retain new talent. Starting a new venture from home comes with its own set of challenges for managers and new starters alike, yet by taking the right actions, remote onboarding will feel like a natural and engaging process.  

Advocating for gender equality in the workplace is a challenge which remains prevalent across the finance sector. As the UK’s leading specialist accountancy and finance job site, GAAPweb remains committed to closing the gender pay gap and promoting gender equality across the finance profession.  

To champion efforts to promote gender diversity, GAAPweb have been a signatory of the Women in Finance Charter through their annual Women in Finance pledge since 2016, when the Charter was launched. The charter aims to empower productivity and harness the talents of women in financial services by tracking and promoting the representation of women in senior managerial roles in financial services. For 2022, the target is to maintain 50% gender diversity within the senior management team of Reach Work, the legal entity of GAAPweb. In addition, we have conducted a detailed exploration into diversity within the sector through our annual Salary Survey.  

This year, Women in Finance has reported that female representation remained flat at 33% for the first time since the charter began. The lack of progress resonates with our 2022 Salary Survey, demonstrating that despite female representation being higher than or equating to male representation in almost half of the surveyed job titles, including 52% of Management Accountant roles, 50% of FP&A Analyst jobs and 46% of Accountant positions, senior roles were still monopolised by male employees, including CFO’s (76%) and Finance Directors (75%). Our findings demonstrated that efforts to achieve equal gender representation were most notable within the mid-level finance and accounting roles, with those in senior positions suffering large pay disparities. Head of Finance roles demonstrated a £11,760 difference in average salary, whilst Finance Controllers had a £6,085 pay gap on average.  

To drive change, Women in Finance has placed a greater emphasis on recruitment practices. As highlighted within our salary survey, the average salary for male respondents stands at 20% higher than female respondents, with the average salary for male accountancy and finance professionals coming in at £74,830, compared to £59,844 for women. Taking an active role in gender diverse recruitment will allow firms to adhere to the Charter’s principles of setting targets, establishing accountability frameworks, and accessing progress to drive momentum across their initiatives. 

75% of firms are channeling efforts into a diverse recruitment drive, focusing on a range of practices:  

Diverse Interview Panels:  

• One in six signatories have stated that they are addressing the diversity of their interview panelists, ensuring that under-represented groups are involved throughout the interview process.   

Targeted Training:  

• Specific training for recruiting managers and resourcing teams is to be prioritised by one in eight firms. Equipping those within the recruitment process with the skills and incentives they need to deliver equal opportunities will be a mandatory practice.  

Accountability Frameworks:  

• An accountability framework allows firms to evaluate the measures they need to take to close the gender pay gap. Having vetted members sit on interview panels helps to ensure that diversity and objectivity holds a prominent place in the decision-making process.  

The Strategic Approach:  

• With one in seven signatories noting that they reviewed or are reviewing their approach to recruitment, it is reassuring to see that firms are taking an active role in monitoring the changes implemented to aid gender diversity.  

External Recruitment Partners:  

• The use of external recruitment partners and job sites have been pushed by one in six signatories, to source diverse candidates and aid the overall target to level the gender pay gap. This practice combines well with a market mapping policy, to proactively identify and source female talent.  

• Building the pipeline of female talent within each individual organisation is an essential measure to working towards the closure of the gender pay gap. Evolving practice has become more granular with organisations focusing on tracking the impact of their programmes implemented to aid gender diversity.  

More than a quarter of signatories discussed the programmes they have introduced to develop female talent, ranging from focusing on building networks to enhancing the understanding of an organization's culture and politics. Alongside this, 1 in 12 signatories have introduced programmes to encourage women back after a career break.  

Has the pandemic and associated candidate shortages driven up salaries and bonuses for finance professionals? What other changes have taken place for those working in accountancy? To help answer these questions we’re asking AIA members to complete our latest salary survey.

As the UK’s #1 specialist finance and accountancy job site, GAAPweb want to understand the impact that the pandemic has had on salaries and working lives throughout 2021. Our survey will explore key themes such as the gender pay gap, working hours and salary shifts.

This survey will allow you to compare your salary with colleagues and the wider industry average and your responses will help us to understand how the accounting and finance industry has changed over the last year.

For the opportunity to benchmark your salary and have your say please take a couple of minutes to complete our confidential survey.

Specialist job board GAAPweb has just published its 2021 Audience Insight Report, exploring how the past 18 months impacted the salaries and working lives of finance and accountancy professionals.

At the start of 2021, we asked over 1,000 members of the GAAPweb audience to share the details of their working lives and how things had changed as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic. Responses were analysed by the GAAPweb team and collated into our 2021 Audience Insight Report.

This year’s survey responses revealed a highly educated and professionally qualified workforce, ranging from Finance Assistants and Bookkeepers to CFOs and Finance Directors. However, despite their credentials and career achievements, many members of the GAAPweb audience faced considerable challenges in the past year.

With significant cutbacks reported across salaries, bonuses, and benefits alike, employers have been reducing rewards in response to pandemic related costs and losses. A minority of respondents felt the impact of the pandemic on a greater level while spending time on the furlough scheme or being made redundant.

Fortunately, most continued their professional lives in a state of relative normality, reporting little year-on-year change in terms of working hours, job market confidence and feelings of job security.

The positive outlook of our audience is compounded by the finding that significant steps have been taken in recent times to address severe inequalities within the profession. The gender and ethnicity pay gaps within finance and accountancy closed by 3% and 16% respectively in 2020.

Download your free copy of GAAPweb’s 2021 Audience Insight Report to benchmark your salary and discover more about your profession.

How have the lives and livelihoods of finance and accountancy professionals been impacted in the past year? Take part in GAAPweb’s annual audience survey to have your say.

Filled with unexpected twists and turns, the past year has been more turbulent and tumultuous than any other in recent memory, with individuals and organisations around the world subject to a barrage of unique and largely negative effects.

GAAPweb – one of the UK’s leading specialist finance and accountancy job boards and a trusted partner of the AIA – wants to learn and share with you more about how your profession changed in 2020.

How many finance professionals have been on furlough? What has been the impact on salaries and bonuses? How has the accountancy job market changed and adapted?

To help answer these questions and many more, we need Accountants, Finance Managers, Credit Controllers, Analysts, CFOs and other finance professionals of all levels and titles to disclose the details of their working lives and their experiences over the past year.

We also want to ask you about established trends and recurring themes that have been identified in previous GAAPweb audience surveys.

For example, our 2019 survey found that the overall gender pay gap within finance and accountancy had grown by 1% year-on-year to reach an appalling 26%.

However, we also noted that change may be on the horizon, with the gender pay gap for several senior leadership roles including Finance Manager, Financial Controller and Finance Director shrinking annually.

Your response to our audience survey will help determine whether the events of 2020 reversed, accelerated or had no impact on such trends, while also allowing us to identify changes impacting finance and accountancy professionals.

Fill out our survey today to find out how your profession changed in 2020.

Since working remotely, you may have noticed some changes in your team. The workplace culture may be shifting, communication could be on the decline and there might be fewer opportunities for training or socialising with your team. If 2020 has taught us anything it’s that things can change very quickly. Managing change is tricky, and for many team leaders, what worked before may not be working so well now.

For these reasons, we decided to come up with 7 tips for effectively managing a remote team.  

• Trust your team 
• Be adaptable 
• Offer support 
• Embrace the culture shift 
• Don’t let training opportunities slack
• Socialise with your team
• Have your own support network 

Trust your team 

Our first tip for managing remote employees is to trust your team. Working from home means that team leaders cannot so covertly check up on their teams. Although communication is incredibly important when managing change, the key to keeping afloat with the goings on in your team is not to constantly check in, chase and micromanage, but instead to empower your team with trust.

This means maybe communicating less with your team than you think you should but making the communication you do have more purposeful. Rather than having three short catch-ups during the week, have one, longer catch-up where you can really feel that you’ve made progress, such as introducing a new project or solving an issue, rather than using your catch-ups to check up on your team. Check in with your team in the morning, set expectations or goals for the day, and then trust that your team will get on with it. 

Be adaptable  

When it comes to managing remote teams, you need to be aware of the different living situations of your staff. Some people are having to deal with distractions from children or housemates while other colleagues may be living alone and dealing with feelings of isolation and loneliness.

Managers must adapt the way they manage and communicate according to these different situations. It may be necessary to adapt our expectations too; make reasonable adjustments based on different personal needs. Then, if someone hasn’t met these expectations or is consistently underperforming, explore the reasons why.

Offer support

For many of us, the role of a manager has become a lot more supportive than it once was. With the ongoing pandemic and changes in living and working environments, employee wellbeing should always be at the forefront of our minds.

Look out for any changes in performance and notice those who are struggling. There is a direct link between employee wellbeing, and motivation and productivity at work, so if you do start to notice a change in the behaviour of your staff, decrease in morale or productivity, this could be a sign that they need additional support. Listening and observing are two key factors in providing support to your employees. Ask your team how they feel and really listen to their answers - making sure you’re hearing what people need so you can make reasonable adjustments.

Embrace the culture shift

Keeping everyone connected when working remotely is paramount, but how do we make sure to sustain a happy and productive workplace culture when the team has been separated and are now working in entirely different environments? A culture where all people are working from home is very different to a culture with people who have become accustomed to working in office. Of course the culture will naturally change because we’re all working from home, but forcing a new culture that you think will fit this “new normal” will not necessarily work as culture comes directly from people and if the people want something different, then culture will naturally shift.

The one thing that should remain unchanged are the values which underpin the company’s culture. These should always remain at the forefront of our minds and if the culture shift is still aligned with these company values, then it should be fully embraced. 

Don’t let training opportunities slack

Don’t let training opportunities slip just because we’re working remotely. Continuing to invest in your employees’ progression and learning can help boost morale in the team by helping them feel valued. If you’re stuck for ideas, GAAPweb has come up with a useful guide for some of the best free online resources for Accountants that will help inspire you to upskill your employees. 

Socialise with your team  

It can’t be all work and no play! Keep the culture of the office alive by creating regular socials and opportunities to connect with colleagues. Keeping your staff connected with each other is a key part of managing a remote team and imperative for maintaining mental health and morale. The more connected your team feels, the more likely they are to approach each other for help or opportunities for collaboration.

Have a support network 

As the team leader, you may sometimes feel a bit isolated from the rest of the group, so having your own support network can be a real help. We suggest creating a community of managers or team leaders where you can discuss the challenges of running a team remotely or managing others, swap tips and maybe even learn from other’s mistakes. 

Are you a manager in the Accounting and Finance profession? If so, we would love to hear about your experiences, tips or advice. Please get in touch on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter to share your ideas with us.

As one of the UK’s leading specialist finance job boards, GAAPweb is well poised to explore the attitudes and opinions of high calibre professionals operating in practice and industry across a variety of sectors. With a large, active, diverse audience at our disposal, we decided to reach out to the GAAPweb community with a survey that asked about how the Coronavirus pandemic has affected their working lives.

Results from our survey reveal that the overwhelming majority (97%) of Accountants and other finance professionals have been working from home since the start of the UK Coronavirus lockdown in March. Since then, less than a third of those respondents have been told when they will return to office-based working, while 70% remain in the dark.

53% of our audience had the opportunity to work from home prior to the pandemic, meaning that although many had some idea of what to expect, there were also a significant number who had to make the transition to remote working without any real notion of what was to come.

In this report, we take a closer look at the experiences our audience has faced over the last six months, weighing up the pros and cons to determine whether remote working works for finance and accountancy professionals.

Remote rhythms

When asked to rate their own output at home versus at the office, the majority (78%) of respondents agree that remote working encourages more productive days. For the most part, those who feel more productive at home do so thanks to fewer distractions (58%) and fewer or more effective meetings taking place (17%). It appears that, given the opportunity to get on with their work alone and in peace, finance and accountancy professionals have thrived.

However, some job titles were more prone to feeling less productive while working from home, particularly those in lower level roles such as Accounts Assistants and Finance Assistants. Respectively, 45% and 54% of these professionals feel their output is impacted negatively while operating remotely, perhaps struggling without face-to-face direction or assistance from their managers or mentors.

Additionally, a relatively high number of some of the most senior finance professionals such as CFOs (36%) and Finance Directors (31%) also feel that working from home hinders their productivity. Their broad, high-level responsibilities combined with little opportunity for off the cuff conversations may mean that these senior professionals are not benefitting from the fewer or more effective meetings to which their teams refer and actually end up spending longer on telephone and video conferences than they would usually spend on face-to-face meetings.

These senior managers and their employers must work out how to increase productivity, both for themselves and their teams, if remote working is to continue in finance and accountancy. Meanwhile, the mid-level professionals who have quickly found their remote rhythm should take this opportunity to effectively ‘manage upwards’ and thus mark themselves for a potential future pay rise or promotion.

Risks and Rewards

Half of the members of the GAAPweb audience agree that the greatest benefit of remote working is dodging the daily commute. Meanwhile, 15% favour the increased flexibility in working hours and a further 12% are most enamoured with the money they have saved while working remotely.

Despite the fact that removal from the office environment has resulted in an uptick in productivity for finance professionals, these individuals still crave social interaction in the workplace, with 32% agreeing that not seeing colleagues in the office has been the biggest challenge of working from home.

Without the usual cues to switch off and go home, working remotely has also caused some finance professionals to work harder and for longer than they might in the office. 14% said that the greatest challenge they have faced is trying to work and live in the same place, while another 14% said they had been taking fewer breaks and were worse off for it.

Does remote working work for Accountants?

93% of respondents agree that they would like the opportunity to continue to work from home even once usual office work can resume, so they can continue to enjoy time and money saving benefits as well as their more productive professional lives.

Before the pandemic, 35% of those permitted to work from home did so once per month, while 28% worked remotely once per week. Post-Coronavirus, 47% would like to work remotely a few times per week, while 32% want the freedom to stay at home as often as they like and 16% want to be remote every day.

The overwhelming majority (93%) of respondents agree that, overall, their employer adapted to remote working with speed and success. However, 44% of respondents acknowledge that employers could have done a better job of supplying equipment and resources (25%) and communicating the latest developments (16%).

The success of future remote working in accountancy is dependent on the actions that employers now take in response to their employees needs and concerns. To continue benefiting from the increased productivity within their remote finance teams, employers must ensure that staff have effective, fully equipped workstations in their homes, that healthy work/life balance is encouraged and that opportunities for socialising and collaboration are enabled, virtually or otherwise. Considering that mid-level finance professionals have adapted to remote working with the most success, it would perhaps be wise for employers to consult these individuals and learn from their triumphs.