Culture & Capital:
People Power in CPA Practice

Sufyan: Hello, everyone. This is Sufyan, once again, your host with another exciting episode with two guests this time. And this is going to be a wonderful, exciting, insightful discussion that I’m going to have with both of the guests. So once again, welcome to the CPA Talk Series where we dive into real conversations with professionals shaping the future of accounting and advisory services.

Our first guest today is Rachel Anevski, Founder and CEO of Matters of Management, LLC. With a career spanning executive leadership in marketing, business development, and human capital, Rachel helps firms unlock growth through smarter talent strategies, operational redesign, and leadership coaching. She holds a Master in Organizational Behavior. She is a certified HR, and she’s currently pursuing her DBA in Organizational Leadership. Beyond strategy, Rachel works closely with managing partners to align people, process, and performance. And she is a co-author of industry book, Accounting for Times: Evolve or Dissolve.

Outside the boardroom, Rachel’s energy shows up in car karaoke. She volunteers work as a CASA and cheering on her kids’ soccer matches. Welcome to the podcast, Rachel.

Rachel: Thank you so much for having me.

Sufyan: You wanna try a podcast karaoke this time.

Rachel: Podcast karaoke, what you got? Let’s sing, as long as we’re doing a medley this morning, happy to.

Sufyan: We’ll arrange another session for that.

Rachel: Lots of fun.

Sufyan: Thank you. Thank you for marking your presence. Another special guest in today’s episode is Ms. Loly Vadassery. She is the Chief Human Resource Officer at Datamatics Business Solutions Limited, also leading Process Excellence and Compliance. With nearly 30 years in HR, her expertise spans strategic HR, culture transformation, organization development, performance management, and leadership coaching. She is an ICF certified PCC coach and NLP practitioner. Loly has coached leadership teams across organizations and spoken at various HR forums. Her recognitions include being a finalist in the LinkedIn Conscious Business Leadership Awards in 2016, featuring in LinkedIn’s Coffee Table book, 2017. CIO views 10 most influential executives in 2022, World Leader Magazine, 2023, Greatest CHROs, 2024, Fearless Authentic Leadership Award Finalist, 2024, and Most Admired Women Leaders in 2025. So Loly, with all those leadership awards and recognitions, do you ever find time to take a regular coffee break or is coaching people as your version of relaxation?

Loly: Yeah, I think I love the fact that because I’m in the HR profession, there’s a role where one can really make a difference. And I think the last 30 years, close to 30 years, I’ve still not completed 30 years, it’s really been a wonderful journey, which I really cherished despite the ups and downs. I think I’ve loved the fact that one can really make a difference in the field of HR and to people in the organizations that one is with. So yeah, I think I love what I’m doing.

Sufyan: Excellent. And thank you so much for marking your presence in the podcast today.

Loly: Thank you for having me here.

Sufyan: Absolutely, our pleasure. So ladies and gentlemen, stay tuned for an insightful and candid conversation. And I’ll directly start with Rachel with my first question. Since you have worked very closely with leadership across industries, how do you see DEI moving beyond our checkbox initiatives into something that truly shifts culture and performance?

Rachel: Wow. I’ve always felt that DE&I is part of strategy. It’s part of who we are, our culture in each of our organizations. So you’ll find at the top of any organization, the way that they design their practice and how they welcome other people into their community, into their family is really kind of a reflection of themselves. So, we always look to leaders to find out how they’re showing up and what their persona is, how that kind of, you know, stretches out. I, you know, the environment now is a little bit tricky. I’ve spoken across the country here in the States to discuss where DE&I is going, especially with our new administration and different feelings about that. And then also, in the public accounting industry. So I feel like there’s some things that are shifting. But where we go in the future is we are beyond what our doorstep provides.

Now we’re looking more at global DE&I. We’re looking at how to bring in participants, leaders, people with specific skill sets from wherever we can find that from. And so it really, in terms of strategy, we no longer have to look at how somebody shows up in their suit and their tie, but more how they show up in their skill set. So that’s where we see D&I evolving to, that it’s no longer where you’re from, it’s what you bring to the table and diversifying the skill sets instead of our people, so to speak. That’s what I’m seeing. And that’s truly what I hope for, that when we choose the people that come into our organizations, that we’re really specific in those moments, and that we leave off what they look and where they came from, and we really focus on, you know, their genius and how that meets our presence in current day.

Sufyan: Makes sense. I completely get where it’s coming from. And since we are talking about people, process, culture, Loly, my question to you would be about how are we successfully delivering what our clients expect out of us? So how do you think people-focused culture at a company like Datamatics helps in delivering successful outsourced accounting and bookkeeping services?

Loly: So, you know, Datamatics has always had the people first culture and which has really, really gone a long way in sort of helping us not just get the right people on board, but also making sure that once they’re actually on board with us, they are aligned to the culture of the organization. They’re aligned to this whole thing that, you know, this is what the organization is all about. And I think, you know, I really believe that a single line ethos of the company with respect to the people first culture is we take care of our people and people take care of the business.

And this has essentially really gone a long way in making sure that we have very high levels of people engagement. I would say in the last five months, our employee engagement scores have been in the range of about 88 to about 92%. And I think this is in a way a testimony of the fact that all of our people practices are centered around the fact that how do we make sure that people have a spring in their step when they come to work on a Monday morning, whether in person in office or remotely, right? So, and I truly believe that all of us at the workplace, we spend our best hours during the day at work.

So it’s very crucial that we’re able to build that kind of a space where people can not just thrive, but really grow and do really well for themselves. So I think a lot of focus on people development, leadership development, and so on. So I think these are some of the aspects which have really helped us create that kind of culture within the organization.

Sufyan: I mean, I can mark my testimony to advocate what you just mentioned, really. I’m part of the team, and I completely agree to what you mentioned. And you know what? I was talking– I usually talk to a lot of CPAs and accounting practice owners on a daily basis. And I was talking the other day with one gentleman, and he was like, how do you take care of your employees? And it was more of related to the IT security, cybersecurity-related questions. And I was like, the only reason why we hire the right kind of staff and we keep them happy and we keep them trained and we keep them up to date is also because irrespective of how robust a system you’re building up, if you’re not hiring the right people, they will find a loophole in that. So it’s a very important aspect, not only with regards to the people first approach, but with regards to IT security as well, which probably is an added benefit that no one talks about. Yeah. OK.

So outsourcing, especially accounting outsourcing, is no more an uncharted territory and with outsourcing becoming increasingly common, Rachel, what do you believe are the biggest cultural or operational blind spots firms encounter when they outsource?

Rachel: Oh, boy. So I think that there was a wave of time where you know, there were early adopters with outsourcing, much, you know, the largest companies were doing it. And then you have this middle tier of CPA firms that kind of felt like, well, in order to compete with the big companies, we have to outsource and it was more like a cost strategy versus a people strategy or a skill strategy. And often it stopped there, it stopped at the cost strategy component. And then when we got to the smaller firms, they felt like, you know, the smaller firms make up the majority of the industry, right? So, I mean, that’s market share right there. And that’s kind of where my mind is focusing right now in terms of strategic advantage of outsourcing, because that’s still kind of an untapped territory, if you will, on a mindset level. So if the bigger companies, medium size and larger, went with this cost strategy, where the blind side is, where the opportunity that can exist is in upskilling your staff here or in your firms today in tandem with your outsourced team, right?

So focusing on, again, what skill sets are you outsourcing that are kind of cost managed? And then how do you then redistribute work to provide more meaningful opportunities and engage everyone, the entire team. And so I think that that’s what we’re missing. That’s the blind spot we’re missing, that we’re not looking at this as a whole picture. It’s kind of looked at as a subset of the work we do. Okay, well, we outsource this kind of tax return, or we outsource our bookkeeping services. You know, but it’s not like this is a full functioning department, and this department provides this level service, and it works directly with, in conjunction with, and in partnership with this other team. That’s the part that we haven’t really kind of built and incorporated. And I do see that the smaller firms will have advantage when it comes to that.

And once they kind of get on board with this opportunity and see where they could perhaps reevaluate the skill sets they have on their existing team and leverage outsourced teams, then they’ll really be able to compete and they won’t have so much FOMO, right? They won’t be so much missing out on what larger firms already figured out to a certain level. But that’s really the missing component. And I do think it takes some HR finesse and fanciness to kind of figure that out. We’re not, you know, we’re not the ones thinking about the bottom line necessarily. I mean, most of us in HR do think about the bottom line, but in terms of being people first, we’re thinking all people. And so we don’t look at outsourcing as the cost saving strategy only. Those are our people too.

Sufyan: Yeah, yeah. No, I’m kind of nostalgic for me because I have seen that shift. It’s been almost a decade I’m in the accounting outsourcing space and I have seen, you know, shortlisting those big banners for selling outsourcing services and mid-level companies and now everyone does it. In fact, I would, say the only difference between any other industry outsourcing their customer service, their technical support to offshore versus CPAs and accounting practices outsourcing their accounting and tax preparation work. The only difference I see is 70 to 60, which again is on the higher side with CPAs because they are at least taking a permission from the clients to outsource their bookkeeping, accounting, and tax prep work. So I get what you’re saying, Rachel. On the similar…

Rachel: It’s an extension of the team.

Sufyan: It is. Like 10, 15 years back when we used to talk about outsourcing, it was only about cost saving. But in today’s date, it is about leveraging the talent available in the other part of the globe. And some benefits that we usually not talk about includes having better work-life balance, involving themselves in better revenue-generating activities like advisory work, connecting with industry peers, doing marketing. So it’s not only about cost saving anymore, I completely agree to it.

On a similar line, Loly, with increasing demand from US-based CPAs for outsourced accounting talent, what role can HR play in aligning recruitment and onboarding to meet both technical expectation and cultural alignments?

Loly: Yeah, so Sufyan, the way I see it is that I think in like it’s true with any kind of outsourcing organization, which is a very, very people centric, you know, organization, because when you’re in the services space, everything is about people, right?

In fact, I would go to the extent of saying almost 90% of all business problems are actually people problems. So it’s pivotal that the talent acquisition team, the talent engagement teams are working very closely with business to make sure that people come on board at the right time the right kind of people so that, you know, we do not have the whole issue of putting a square peg into a round hole, right – Number one.

Number two, I think the whole objective of making sure that hiring is happening in time to make sure that you’re able to support the business in a way that the people with the skill sets who come in. So one, of course, is, you know, you may have a ready pool of talent available, now waiting in the wings. Another set of– this is also around making sure that when they are being onboarded and being inducted into the organization, they’re all, in a way, sort of aligned to what the organizational values stand for. In fact, one of the things which we do as part of the onboarding process is to make sure that we are actually evaluating people on some of the core values of the organization, because I think that creates a beautiful fitment.

It’s at times I truly believe sometimes it’s it’s better to it’s always better to hire for the right attitude. Skills, of course, while they’re important, but I think a person with all the right attitude can, you know, pick up skills very quickly. So so I think, yes, it’s a it’s a combination. I think HR plays a very, very pivotal role in terms of making sure that you get the right kind of people on board, you are constantly engaging to see that where are some of the areas where they need probably some kind of an intervention, right, iaddition to the typical, the technical training or whatever that may be happening at the start of the, you know, their journey into the organization, but more so play a pivotal role into seeing how we can develop them into becoming the future leaders. Right. So I think that’s that’s another area. We have dedicated HR business partners for each of the units to really make sure that the people concerns, you know, people have the space to speak whatever they wish to speak, any suggestions that they would love to give to sort of, you know, see how they can enhance the process or as the case may be. So I think it’s a very, very closely integrated role that HR plays partnering with business to really make it happen.

Sufyan: Yeah, I get it. Okay, I’ll shift the gear a little towards Rachel. For the fact that you attend a lot of these offline events, you recently attended the AICPA Engage as well. By the way, we were also there. I’m not sure if you could meet one of our representatives, but since you attend a lot of these industry level events and you speak with a lot of CPAs, those who are already using outsourcing as a support, those who are willing to use outsourcing support and those who do not wish to go that route completely. And I’m sure you must have discussed in your discussion, in your conversation with them about the other benefits like we just listed in the last question that apart from cost saving, these are the benefits. One benefit of outsourcing that we usually miss out and we do not talk about is using a talent strategy and freeing up internal team for higher value work. So can you throw some light on this strategy a little more, Rachel?

Rachel: Oh my God, yes. So I would say that the first four years of a young CPA’s life is spent in a high cost, low value type of work. Okay. And I mean that in terms of low value, it is not valued by the client. Right. So the client doesn’t see this type of work that is held in the expertise of zero to four year experience level. Yet we have an industry that is saying we underpay our staff at this level. Right. So it poses a significant talent issue. What industry has tried to do is entice more people to come into the industry because we’re losing some top level. So again, we’re talking talent strategy. It’s brilliant to, especially in terms of future leaders, transformational leaders, and the future of our sustainable, independent accounting firms, to take this type of work and create a bubble for it, if you will. And instead of utilizing this type of work as catapult work, like, you know, the building blocks, or you need to learn how to do level one, level two tax returns before you get into a multi-state tax return or anything complicated, young professionals coming into the industry have access to information to do more intricate, detailed, difficult work, in fact, they’re seeking it. They want it.

They want to have something really challenging to use ChatGPT for or to, you know, leverage technology and figure it out. That’s where their mindset is going. And so wouldn’t it be a brilliant opportunity to use this time to challenge, give our young professionals or professionals coming into this industry, into this market marketplace, challenge, development, communication skills, business acumen, marketing, and really kind of train them to be future leaders and leverage a team that their head space and their desire and passion is for the type of work that we otherwise would be floundering to give to this level of employee. That type of strategy is what’s going to make all the difference for what our companies look like in the future.

Okay. So, and I wish more people would see it that way, more leaders would see it that way as a five to 7-10 year strategy, how to maintain independence in your firm and do it this way. And instead of doing it the way we’ve always done it before, which is a very common CPA chat, right? Well, it’s not broken. We’ve done it this way before. It works. It feels good. I’m comfy and cozy in this space. Loly is like, she’s smiling. She knows what I’m talking about here.

And it is a mindset change. And I, and having gone to the, the system of conferences this past season, there is some tipping point happening where we’re talking about leadership development more in a forward-thinking way than we’ve ever done before. My concern is that there’s only a portion of people who have access to this. Again, there is a large underserviced market in the public accounting space that either are not getting the information, don’t know how to get the information, or aren’t leveraging the information to be able to do this work. They’re still kind of looking for the person to work in their office so that they can teach and train, but their own delegation skills are limited. And their own ability to then, you know, connect with people like you and your team is limited. Those are the people we have to get to. That’s where the.

Sufyan: Please push them to us. It’s all welcome. Please push them to us.

Rachel: Absolutely. LinkedIn, are you listening? For sure.

Sufyan: Great. That’s right. Great. No, I get that. And I mean, when we started this discussion, your first question, Rachel, to me was, what’s the time here in Mumbai? 30 p.m. That’s exactly when I start working and I work till 3:34 a.m. And this is what I have been doing since last 18, 19 years. My mom calls me an owl for that because I stay awake all night and I sleep in the daytime. And it’s a bit of a challenging working fashion for a lot of a lot of us it’s very difficult to adapt to this kind of a working schedule so again back to Loly, outsourcing brings both opportunity and some challenges like if I talk about myself, the only reason I could grow in whatever I had been doing is only because I took it as an opportunity. But again, the challenges were obviously there. One of the biggest challenges to work a little late in the night. And then there are some other cultural level challenges as well. So what are the key cultural or engagement levers your HR team use to ensure high morale and ownership among internal operations team working for the CPAs in the outsourced fashion?

Rachel: It’s a good question. Yeah.

Loly: Thanks, Sufyan, for the fantastic question. I think, you know, again, like I know I may sound a little repetitive when I say this, but I think being in the people business is all about making sure that people can bring their whole selves to work. People can actually bring out how does one get the best out of people, right? That’s always the challenge. How does one get people to give that discretionary effort, go the extra mile and really make sure that they are completely engaged.

So I think a whole lot of a plethora of things that we really sort of lean on to is really making sure that right from the time people are onboarded, the first thing is, is that clarity of what is expected out of people. I think if you really look at dealing with people sometimes can also be very, very simplified, so to speak, that once people know what is expected out of them, do they have the wherewithal, right? And that is where maybe the L&D function steps in to see that, okay, there are some gaps, how does one bridge the gap? The third aspect is in terms of how well are we able to engage them, right? How well are people being able to see that, okay, this is the growth path for me. This is how my career path looks like. So clarity on how the career path is. What are some of those skills that one needs to develop along the way so that people are able to see it, right?

Secondly, in terms of engagement, I think, you know, we’ve always believed, you know, we all know of the adage that people join organizations, but we end up leaving because of their immediate managers. So we have very, very closely curated programs, one of our flagship programs, which has been successfully running for the 10th year in a row. And I must tell you, the program is so aspirational that the initial couple of, you know, cohorts that we had when we started about 10 years back, we actually had to mobilize people to actually attend. Right. And sort of, but from the third batch or the fourth batch onwards, we actually had people saying, you know what, we want to get nominated.

So all the last couple of years, the cohorts that we’ve had and the beauty of the program is that these sessions, we have about six modules. So we have the first, what we call as Ignite 1.0, which is for the first time managers. Okay. And then there is an Ignite 2.0, which is for the mid-management professionals. And both these programs have been so well received. We actually have people coming and saying, you know, we would love to be part of this upcoming cohort because we see the transformation in the people who have actually attended these programs. So that becomes a huge testimony to the fact that these levels of engagement– I mean, today, I would say that almost 75% of our mid-level leaders are all homegrown. Right. They’re all homegrown. They’ve been with the organization, grown with the organization. In fact, some of our senior leaders too.

So so I think it’s been a journey where that the investment in people has really paved a huge dividend and really making sure that multiple levels of engagement, right, so again, to come to the point, like I said, so every leader who’s gone through an Ignite certified program, whether the person is a first time manager or a mid-level manager, right, has been able to sort of inculcate those values, those, you know, what we as an organization stand for. So when they are in a way ignited, if I should say, is that, you know, they in turn are able to pass it on to the other team managers, and that’s where it becomes a ripple effect.

So it’s a continuous ripple effect where, you know, that people see that, you know, okay, I’m being led by a manager who really cares about me, right? COVID and post-COVID, we actually introduced into the organization, we got a couple of external therapists, counselors to come on board, right? It really helped a lot during COVID. Even post-COVID, we see that today, I mean, the reality is that it is It’s a tough thing for many people, right?

People are balancing work, trying to balance everything in their on their personal front and providing that safe space for people to be able to speak and, you know, have that psychological safety that, you know, we have people.

So one is, of course, the dedicated HR business partners who keep speaking to people and that, but the other is also getting in professional help wherever it warrants. And I think That has gone a long way also in terms of making sure that people feel a lot more engaged. They know that they can come and share, even if it is, it may be a seemingly inane request or it may be something which is seemingly innocuous, but it may hold a lot of weight for the concerned individual. So having that ability to do that has gone a long way in helping people to sort of stay engaged.

In addition to all the other fun events that we do, right, we have Yeah. Every second month, I know, Sufyan, it’s just been a couple of months. So one of the first upcoming events is when we have our Independence Day celebrations, right? And every year we come up with a new theme. And so also our Datamatics Got Talent, Datamatics Premier League, which is our annual cricket tournament, which is again received so well. And you know, you have people participating. I mean, in fact, I must tell you, this is one event where we have even the clients who are sitting in US, UK, wherever they may be, actually cheering on. So we’ve started live streaming it on YouTube. Yeah. Even some of the clients, when they can’t be here in person, they’re sort of putting in comments and cheering the team on YouTube. So yeah, I think it’s a blend of multiple things, which really make sure that we’re able to keep those higher levels of engagement.

Rachel: So can I just jump in on this for just one second? Sure. So in my doctoral research, it kept coming up. The framework that I’m using is human capital theory. And what you’re talking about is the retention component. My doctorate is on transformational leadership and its ability to retain future leaders in CPA firms. And so that human capital theory says if we invest in our people and they know about it through transparency, that they’re going to stay longer. It’s kind of that glue that keeps them. I’m hearing that all over what you just said, right? Our people know that the management have invested in them, that they care about them. This is the magic. This is the actual time and dedication that is required for people to want to stay. And just one word, you call it engagement, I call it belonging. Belonging is culture. Right. So once when employees feel like they’re they’re connected, when they’re belong to something, whether it’s an actual team, right, your cricket, you know, fanatics and everything. And I love to watch. So you’ll have to give me that link when it, when it’s going on.

From that, from all of the fun activities, from the investment in their education and leadership development, all of those things, that’s the systematic approach, it’s the behavioral approach that retains employees. And quite honestly, I wish more people were looking at it from a more holistic, you know, top of mind way of thinking about it. It does come from HR. It doesn’t necessarily come from top level CPAs because they’re focused outwards and we’re focused and our clients are the people, you know, so so I commend you for doing all of this. And, you know, one of the hardest thing is things ever is to keep people engaged, as you call it, or for me to keep people to feel that they belong.

Loly: Rachel, in fact, yeah, thank you. I mean, you’ve articulated it so beautifully. In fact, I must add one more point to this. On the CPA side, on the outsourcing side, the F&A side of the business that we’re talking about, our diversity ratio stands at almost 60 to 65%. Okay. And at an organizational level, yes, we are at about 45%, which again is, I could say, one of the best in the industry. And this is largely being towards the sensitivity of, you know, how we handle or how we sort of manage the women employees, right?

So whether it is somebody who is looking at getting married, you know, embracing motherhood, any of these events, which are in a way life-changing, I think those are some of the crucial moments when we really can be there for people. Like I’ll tell you, you know, we actually sort of make sure that for any female employee who’s looking at going the family way, okay, what kind of relaxation can we provide in terms of making sure that the person is not stressed?

Right? So we’ve actually said, told people that we will make sure that maybe some of the KPIs that they don’t need to. And let me tell you, the percentage of people who may actually need that, this may just be about 5%, 95% of them, even when we tell them, you don’t need to be stressed, take it easy, they actually overachieve. That’s the level we have seen. Right? So there may be just 5% of the people who really have, let’s say, an issue where they need that support, but 95% of them have actually overachieved on their KPIs. So, yeah, and we’ve had a lot of boomerang employees over the years.

Rachel: That’s excellent.

Loly: Yeah, a lot of boomerang employees. But I love that.

Rachel: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the wellness factor there, that’s something that has been gaining a lot of speed. And I love also that you’ve engaged some organizational psychologists, right? They don’t necessarily call IO anymore, the Industrial Organizational psychologists. My background, my background, my education is all organizational psychology. But the fact that you’ve gone out and collected the insight from this level of you know, attribute to your company is pretty cool as well. And making sure that all employees are kind of cared for. And that’s really what you’re talking about is recognizing that a certain group at a certain time may need a little extra something. We also find that the personalization at any level of employee is also an engagement, belonging, and retention factor. So the recognition that you’re even looking at a small subset of your employees that might need a little lift is brilliant.

Loly: You know, when we continued working in a hybrid model, right? There were some instances where we had some of the employees say, you know what, we’d love to come to office all days of the week.

Rachel: Because they wanted to change.

Loly: Yeah, they said that, you know, this is where, you know, we prefer being at work in the workplace. In fact, during COVID time also, we were completely operating out of home, right? It was a fully work from home situation. But there were employees who came back saying, when are you starting office? We want to get back to work, right? We want to get back to a physical office because we feel so much more at home there. It sounds ironic.

Rachel: Yeah, they’re connected.

Loly: I mean, they enjoy, you know, that that togetherness of being with people, learning from one another, growing and having that kind of a healthiness. Yeah, I mean, I can go on, but yeah, Sufyan.

Rachel: Of course.

Sufyan: No, I’m enjoying it. I’m definitely enjoying this discussion. And I am I connected with my personal journey with Datamatics as well. So, Rachel, it’s been just four months that I have joined Datamatics. I had been working with different other accounting outsourcing companies before, and there is a reason why I joined Datamatics. And I’m seeing that happening practically as well. So I’m completely getting what Loly just mentioned. But thank you so much for both of you for such a wonderful explanation of why it is so important and how. On the other side, I mean, we talked about employees being happy with us, culturally being the right fit, so on, so forth. But on the flip side of that, all this has also increased the demand of good employees. So this question is actually for both, but I’ll go to Rachel first, that hiring has never been this competitive. So what changes have you seen in what top talent wants? And this is for both, for an outsourced model employee and for an internal in-house employee, both. And how can firms adjust to keep up?

Rachel: Wow. So this conversation has actually been happening for a very, very long time. It has always been competitive marketplace, no matter where you are in the world, for this type of person, this industry. When you know you always need a certain type, like there will always be a job for a CPA, there will always be a job for an accountant, necessary and needed, right? So it’s steady, and you see kind of throughout the history, kind of where it’s ebbed and flowed, where there’s been more and then less, more and then less. And I’ve researched this at nauseam to find out, you know, is there a specific moment in time? No, we’ve always been competitive. We’ve always needed staff.

I think now what we’re seeing is this, I’ll use cricket as an example. But here, I’ve definitely seen a changeover between baseball and lacrosse. And I’m gonna say it this way. There is a timing factor. So children who used to play baseball and think baseball was the best thing ever have moved over to lacrosse. Lacrosse is faster, it’s timed, get it done. Parents know there’s a start and an end finish when you play baseball. You could go extra innings. On and on, yeah. Right, on and on and on. And so what has happened is our timing has changed. And so I think if another sport comes on that kind of gives cricket a competition level or is a time differently, you might have, you know, you might see the competition in the way that I view it.

What’s happening is people are choosing other industries that the timing and the dollars make more sense for. We have an industry that is predicated by still heavily the billable hour, which creates this issue. Now, if we, on the strategy side, if we bring people with different skill sets in and teach them what they need to know, because these are all very teachable moments. You have an education component, that’s the feeder. But once you get on staff, you all know, I mean, Loly knows for sure, we teach them how to do the work at every single level. The work happens and the knowledge really happens on site when you get involved with your companies. So it’s a matter of bringing the people, all different kinds, psychologists, data experts, and economics, mathematics, engineering, sales professionals, all of these types of people that we could then train and teach to do all of the work.

But you have to kind of splice and dice the type of work that you need to get done. So look at it from more of a project management aspect than the business of accounting. And that’s hard for a lot of people. It’s hard because it’s non-traditional. It’s not what we’re used to, but we have to adjust to the timing. We have to adjust to the fact that people don’t like baseball the way that they like lacrosse anymore. You know, like, and I love baseball, don’t get me wrong and all of these things, but it’s a change. It’s a really, really big change and we need to get on board with that change. We need to start opening up. And you see kind of middle tier firms and big firms who do this now, we need to start taking a leap of faith and trusting in our curriculum and our onsite development. That’s where I think focus needs to really be.

Instead, what we have are all of these moving parts and being in the fastest business transformation we’ve ever experienced ever. It requires investments that our small and medium firms don’t have the capital for, which is why also you see what’s happening in the industry, this influx of private equity. And so hopefully that while I’m not a supporter of this type of environment, I do see its need and necessity to help facilitate a change and facilitate a different mindset on how we can do business to further attract and retain future leaders, CPA firms. I know that’s a long-winded answer, but there’s so many things going on, and I don’t think that there’s one answer. I think there are multiple answers along the way.

Sufyan: Thank you. Thanks, Rachel. Are we connected? OK, my screen just froze for a few seconds. OK, we are already in the 44th, 45th minute of this podcast. So one last question to Loly. Would you like to share the best practices for HR and L&D teams to facilitate a smooth upskilling journey for the employees?

Loly: Yeah, I think– Sufyan, the L&D team plays a very pivotal role in sort of partnering with HR again to see how they can, you know, like I love the way Rachel put it, every individual, you know, there are a lot of skills which can be easily transferable and easily trained. And, you know, that’s that’s one of the areas, whether it’s technical skills where L&D plays a key role, but also in terms of, you know, developing the people skills, the leadership skills in people, right? And really carving out a path for them. In fact, I think the whole aspect that the L&D team can sort of build on the people capability is something which is so ingrained within our people strategy at Datamatics is that everything that people do is to see, and you know, the way the world is changing, I think you need to really see that people can also adapt to that kind of a change.

So how do you get people to stay curious, to stay interested, stay interested in making sure that they themselves are willing to put themselves out of the comfort zone and get into a journey where they’ll have to be on a constantly evolving journey. So I think L&D team plays a very pivotal role that the whole journey happens. It’s one of the things that we’ve been able to do successfully, and I think I talked about the leadership development program. Another thing, which is very closely sort of in a way, again, a partnered effort between L&D and the HR teams is to really make sure that we are having a culture of innovation, right? A culture of making sure that people are constantly trying to do things, you know, challenging the status quo, doing things differently and not just saying, oh, we’ve been doing this all these ages so we can continue to do that. So that is something which is being encouraged.

The other aspect is in terms of coaching intervention, right? It’s about close to two and a half, three years back, we launched, you know, what we call as iRise, which is a coaching intervention within the organization. And I think that has, again, we’ve seen some phenomenally transformative results in people. We’ve actually seen people get transformed. And this, of course, as of now, it’s mainly for the mid to mid-senior kind of levels of folks. And I think these are some of the key initiatives which have really, really helped in the people transformation piece. And the results are there to see, to really contribute to making their roles, enhance their own roles, and therefore contribute to the growth of the organization.

Sufyan: Thanks. Thanks, Loly. Now, one last question for Rachel, and I’m moving back to where we started from. Having a unified culture for both the teams is at times challenging because, I mean, if I give you a quick example of how we work with CPAs when they go for an outsourcing solution, It’s always going to be their system, their process, their platform, their software. Everything is going to be the CPAs and the accounting companies that they are currently using. And we get into their system, we remotely access that, and we work on their system itself. So first of all, there is no hassle of transferring the files from here to there, and then nothing goes out of the network and everything remains in a very limited environment.

So technically, strategically, we can standardize the processes and we can have a unified approach across. But firms are managing teams across locations. You know, it is so common these days that not necessarily the outsourcing team, but the in-house staff is also working from a different location. So especially with the outsourced hybrid structure, how can they build a unified culture that drives performance without micromanaging.

Rachel: I love this question so much. I love this question. So, and in just the last 48 hours, I’ve been asked to work with a management team in the UK to help teach them how to manage hybrid teams in different cultures. So this is something that is top of mind of a multitude of organizations that are global or thinking global. So the first thing is, in the community of CPAs, we rarely teach through transition. So we rarely teach the three-year accountant how to become, how to go from teaching, how to go from learning, because your job from one to three years is just to learn, and then to teach three to seven years, we teach the people below us. And then, you know, seven years and beyond, we are sales professionals. So we don’t teach these transitions throughout.

We also, in these transitions, when somebody becomes a supervisor or a manager, very few firms have the ability L&D, HR, to then teach that new leader how to lead, how to manage, how to manage hybrid, how to manage across teams, how to manage cultural teams, how to delegate work, how to communicate across different styles, the approaches, performance reviews. I mean, I could go, there’s like 20 different modules of things you would need to kind of arm yourself with to be a leader or manager that can then manage multiple types of employees on a hybrid model, in office, outsourced, offshoring, all of these things, because this is what the new workplace environment looks like.

But it requires a mindset, a leader’s mind, a manager’s mind. It requires empathy, which is not necessarily a teachable attribute. Sympathy is teachable, empathy might not be so teachable. So, and it takes time, right? So, we have to recognize and meet people where they’re at and structure our own selves. So you have to be able to have the time and dedication, ability to learn, desire and passion to manage others, to be able to do this. And If we don’t start with educating those people, it’s not a quick fix. It’s not let me wave my wand and now you’ll be able to manage different cross-cultural teams. It’s not like that. It’s approach and responsibility, transparency on that. This is part of the job of a person. It’s not a transactional experience. This is not, let’s give work out, and then we’ll wait for it to come back, and then we’ll have conversation. No, this is a matter of understanding how we do business, how we are all aligned, and then multiple touches in terms of incorporating, and to Loly’s point again, having all of our people feel that sense of belonging.

And to do that really takes individuals that are nurtured in a way to lead. And so if we’re missing the moments to teach them, then we’re missing those moments to lead all teams. So I think we have to start at the beginning and we are several years away from really being able to exercise this. This is not just somebody has it, somebody’s got the, you know, they could do it because it’s innate. This is, this is something very new and requires multiple moments of education.

Sufyan: Well, thank you so much for such insights. Rachel, any closing note from both of you?

Rachel: Look, I think it’s a wonderful time to be in business. With so much change happening, it’s exciting in an industry that for 100 years has looked exactly the same. So I welcome the change. I welcome all of the opportunity for all of us to do better work together.

Sufyan: Yeah.

Loly: Yeah, I would just say that and I know it may sound cliche coming from an HR person, but I think it’s all about people. It’s people who can make all the difference. And as long as we truly– I love the phrase Rachel used in terms of give people that sense of belonging and the fact that they can– I think people will be magic. And I think the future is about no matter what AI and no matter what happens, I think the focus on people transformation is key. And it’s people who can make all the difference.

Sufyan: Well, some golden words. Thank you, both of you, for joining us today and sharing your insights. It was a real pleasure having both of you on the podcast, and I’m sure our listeners will take away plenty of valuable perspectives from this conversation. Thank you very much.

Loly: Thank you, Sufyan. Thank you, Rachel. Lovely meeting you.

Rachel: Likewise.