A Robert Half executive on the 2024 hiring outlook

Steve Saah, executive director of the finance and accounting permanent placement practice at Robert Half, joined the JofA podcast last week at the Future of Finance Summit in Orlando, Fla. In the interview, he shares recent data that seems positive related to hiring trends.

He also offers insights into the future of in-office work, analyzes the role that inflation plays in that dynamic, and discusses the advantages organizations have with multiple generations in the workforce.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

• How organizations are approaching hiring in 2024, according to recent Robert Half data.
• The reasons for the significant gap between supply and demand in the finance industry.
• The one word Saah used to describe the 2023 economy.
• What Saah thinks about the future of in-office work.
• The hiring advantages of hybrid work models for organizations.

• The relationship between age, career level, and coachability.

Play the episode below or read the edited transcript:

— To comment on this episode or to suggest an idea for another episode, contact Neil Amato at Neil.Amato@aicpa-cima.com.

Transcript

Neil Amato: Steve Saah is executive director of the finance and accounting permanent placement practice at Robert Half, and he’s joining me, the Journal of Accountancy‘s Neil Amato, on the JofA podcast.

Steve, we’re glad to be with you in person at the Future of Finance Summit in Orlando. We’re recording in mid-December and looking ahead to 2024. Welcome to the podcast, and first, what is the hiring landscape for finance and accounting professionals in 2024?

Steve Saah: Thanks, Neil. It’s great to be on with you, especially in Florida in December. But I think in general, the job market is going to remain incredibly resilient as we head into 2024. If you look at a lot of the labor data that has come out recently, we just had the November jobs report. I’m sure you’re aware, unemployment ticked down slightly. It’s now at 3.7%.

If you think about the areas that we tend to focus in accounting financial professionals, the effect of unemployment rate for college grads is probably hovering somewhere around 2.0%, maybe 2.1%, so that’s incredibly low. There were almost 200,000 jobs added in November and overall, the JOLTS [Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey] report shows that there’s still almost 9 million openings across the country.

The big picture, I think for the broader economy and certainly anyone in accounting and finance, the job market is going to remain incredibly resilient going into next year.

Amato: Specifically, you’ve put out some recent data on that hiring landscape we just mentioned, I guess, in a survey released in early December. What are some of the highlights in your mind from that?

Saah: We just put the survey results out, probably about a week ago. We take a poll of many hiring managers across a very wide variety of industries and size of companies, and there were a couple of things that really stuck out to me. The first was that 57% of the respondents said that they plan to hire for new, permanent positions in the first half of next year. Fifty-seven percent — I think that’s a pretty high number.

But there were also close to 40% that indicated that they were planning to hire for vacated positions. Those are positions where obviously someone has left their organization and they plan to go back in and try and refill that type of a role. Then, 67% of those surveyed indicated that they plan on using contract workers as part of their staffing strategy into early next year.

Across the board, when you step back and you think about how people are feeling as they head into new year and plan their hiring outlook, there’s no question that if you go back to the information that I shared about the job market and labor data that’s out there, what we see is that huge gap between the supply and demand. No question in my mind that there’s still [going to] continue to be a huge demand for accounting and financial professionals. Certainly throughout the first half of next year. I’m not an economist. I don’t have that crystal ball, but I certainly believe that that’s going to go out into the first half, if not well, into 2024.

Amato: I’d say from the AICPA & CIMA’s recent quarterly business and industry economic outlook survey, that the sentiment is, I would say, slightly more pessimistic overall than optimistic about the economy. They’re a little more positive about their own businesses. There is some hesitance to hire, but it’s not a really pessimistic view on hiring.

I think the thing that was interesting to me was that it was such a high percentage saying permanent positions. I thought it was going to be, oh, we’re going to hire some people, but they’re all going to be freelancers. So that part was interesting to me. Anything to add on that?

Saah: Well, I would just say that 2023, if I reflect back on it, the word that comes to my mind is choppiness. If you think about everything that was going on across the globe, if you think about what the U.S. economy faced from inflation, interest rates, wage growth, there’s just a lot of choppiness throughout the year.

I think when that choppiness occurs, there are organizations that think about what’s the best way to staff up for their current needs. Some of that is replacing those vacant positions. Some of that is thinking long term and what their strategy is about how they integrate new individuals into their organizations and what roles are critical that they need to staff for today.

But I think to your point, a lot of organizations will turn to contractors in order to bring people in. It’s just a labor model that gives them, again, a lot of flexibility in terms of being able to bring people in that can get the work done today and then gives them a little bit more time to assess how they want to approach that from a long-term perspective.

Amato: Probably a tricky question with a not easy answer. What’s the future of in-office work?

Saah: I think that is a tricky question. One of the things that we see, and we’ve seen it since the pandemic started to wind down, is that disparity between what employers want and what workers want. I think it’s fair to say, not all, but probably fair to say that most companies want people to come back into the office with a little bit more frequency. That certainly doesn’t mean they’re asking people to come back in five days a week, eight hours a day. That’s not the case. At the other end of the spectrum, though, one of the things that we hear from candidates that are looking for new jobs or considering what opportunities are out there, and it’s very consistent across the board, is flexibility and autonomy.

There’s this disparity between those two, and so I think one of the things that you’re probably going to continue to see is this hybrid type of a work environment, where organizations are asking people to come in from time to time. Most organizations have recognized, though, that it can’t be a one size fits all. Organizations that are doing it, what I would say is the correct or smart way, are thinking about coming in with a purpose, not just coming in because it’s Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, or any other day of the week. But why are you asking individuals to come in?

I think most individuals, when they consider either their current opportunity or potential new opportunities, recognize that there’s a lot of value and benefits to being in office and partnering with the rest of your team. But it has to make sense. It has to make sense for them personally, and it has to make sense for them professionally. I think that’s something that depending upon the organization, depending upon a particular job that one may be doing, there’s a balance there, and that’s not going to necessarily be the same across the board.

Amato: I know you said you’re not an economist, but what I’m wondering is, is part of this resistance to returning to full, in-office work by the employees at all tied to inflation, do you think? Because they know they’re going to spend to go out to lunch if they’re going into the office, and they know how much more expensive it is now to go out to lunch. I don’t know.

Saah: There’s probably some truth to that, Neil. As you and I talked about when we were getting to know each other. I work in the D.C. metro area. I mean, the reality of it is for me to commute in from my home to Washington, D.C., whether I’m driving or whether I’m taking public transportation, it’s expensive. To your point, it’s incredibly expensive to go out to lunch, if I were to choose to do that. But I think maybe more importantly, it probably has to do with where people are in their personal lives and what’s really important to them. And so you think about young professionals, and what they may want out of that dynamic. It may be that they want to be engaged with people a bit more often. It could be from social aspects to just being in the office and surrounded by other individuals.

Compare that to an individual who maybe is married and has two young children at home, and all the things that go into the dynamics of raising a family. With some people, those things may tend to be a little bit more important to have the flexibility and autonomy to not only be responsible for getting their job done in a timely manner with great work product, but also to be able to balance that with all the things that are going on in their personal lives as well.

Everybody is at a different spot, and that goes back to my original point of one size doesn’t fit all. I think the organizations that are managing this dynamic the best are the ones that recognize that you have to think about what a person’s roles and responsibilities are, where they are in their personal life, what’s important to them. Again, the organizations that can adapt to that dynamic are probably doing a much better job of not only attracting individuals in the first place but retaining them as well.

Amato: You use the word dynamic. One dynamic I want to talk about now is the dynamic that is multiple generations in the workforce. You were part of a panel discussion at the CFO Conference in Salt Lake City in spring of 2023. How does that general dynamic of the generations tie into the finance talent picture?

Saah: Sure. Well, in today’s world, as you mentioned, Neil, there is a wide range of generations that are in the workforce. I think the big advantage is that it gives everyone a huge range of perspectives and ideas. You have the ability to learn from colleagues with different levels of experience.

You think about how individuals communicate with one another. I always like to give the example that when I work with people in my organization, there are some people that I call, some that may be on the phone, some it may be on video, while others I email, and yet others that I text. You think about how the different generations like to do everything, from adapting to technology to communicating with one another, the diverse range of experiences and skill sets that they bring to the table. I think it creates an opportunity to really enable individuals to get a very wide range of perspectives and ideas and really learn from each other, and that becomes a two-way street as well.

Amato: We just heard in a session, in this Future of Finance Summit, a little bit about coachability based on level in the organization, but also coachability by age. Apparently, it tends to go down as you advance in age and advance in career, at least based on what we just saw on a slide. What do you think about that, that coachability changes by position or age?

Saah: I actually think that the information that we were given and the exercise in the breakout that we did was very spot on, and it probably is pretty natural. I was having a conversation with a woman who was sitting next to me, and the reality is that I think people just very naturally, over the course of time, start to become a little bit more wedded to their own biases, their ideas, their thoughts, their approach to everything that they do. Again, I would say that has to do without question on a professional level, but it probably does personally as well.

There’s two things that go hand-in-hand with time. That’s age. You can’t change that. That’s going to happen whether you like it or not. I think the other thing is typically how you progress in your career. Over the course of time, most people are going to continue to progress in their careers in some way, shape, or form, get higher and higher levels of responsibility. But again, with that time, increase in responsibilities and increase in age, probably comes a little bit more biased toward their opinions that have been formed over the course of time. I think it’s very natural.

Amato: It does make sense that it would be. Do you have any kind of hopes, dreams, wishes for accounting and finance talent in the new year?

Saah: Well, I think the thing that is probably on the forefront of everyone’s mind, and you and I were joking about it before we started this podcast. That was about technology and, particularly, generative AI and ChatGPT and so forth. I think that one of the things that we have tended to hear over and over and over is the thought that people are concerned about how that’s going to change the accounting and finance profession and really what it’s going to mean to them as an individual. As we progress into 2024 and beyond, I think one of the things that everyone has to recognize is, you really need to come up to speed on that technology, understand it, and really embrace it.

A lot of organizations are looking at how they can both upskill and reskill individuals to adapt to that new technology as certain positions can be automated, certain functions within organizations can be automated. But you also have to remember that most organizations want to think about retaining talent and the institutional knowledge that comes with tenure. If they can do that in certain ways by either upskilling or reskilling the employees that they already have, not only does it enable them to continue to progress in their career, but they retain that talent that’s so hard to find in today’s environment.

Amato: Steve, this has been great. I’ve learned a lot. It’s been fun. Anything you’d like to add in closing?

Saah: I think going back to the survey, the other two points that I would make from the research that we recently did is the No. 1 thing was probably company growth that was leading to hiring plans. I think 66% of those surveyed cited that they were looking at company growth as the primary factor for the hiring plans that they had. But interestingly enough, 77% of the managers that we surveyed indicated that they plan to pick back up on projects that last year were put on hold. It’s really interesting how organizations are looking at that and thinking about what they need to do come early 2024 from a hiring perspective. That’s going to be on the forefront of everyone’s minds.

Amato: Steve Saah, thank you very much.

Saah: Thanks, Neil. It’s great to be on with you. I really enjoyed this, and happy holidays to you and your family.