The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) recently published some results from a survey of more than 6,500 finance professionals, the bulk of them auditors, from 150 countries and while the entire thing is packed with fascinating (if predictable) results, two areas in particular are crying out to be highlighted.
Under the “Remuneration” section, the two sections below cover salary satisfaction. The first, how satisfied professionals are with their salaries broken down by type of employer. Those working in government and academia are least satisfied, that is to say a larger proportion of them disagreed with the statement “I am satisfied with the level of pay I receive for the role I perform.” The self-employed and those in the large corporate sector, or what we colloquially call industry, are most satisfied with 41 percent of each group agreeing with the satisfaction statement. Still, the self-employed are the only group where less than half of them reported being unsatisfied with their salaries.
See below:
Another bunch of data conveniently charted out in image form by the ACCA (thank you) provides a breakdown to the above question (if you forgot already it’s “I am satisfied with the level of pay I receive for the role I perform”) by generation. We aren’t surprised the under 43-and-under group are less satisfied than Gen X and Boomers, we are however surprised that Millennials are less satisfied than Gen Z. Maybe because employers bumped salaries slightly when the great accountant shortage panic began and that aligns with a lot of them graduating into the workforce? Feel free to espouse your own theories on that in the comments.
According to the survey, work-life balance is a bigger concern than pay though the two issues are intrinsically tangled up in each other (as the shortage worsens, workloads for those left behind get even heavier).
You know what, let’s throw this one in here too. On the topics of attraction and retention, it appears dissatisfaction with pay is a bigger problem for retention than attraction across all generations.
Check out those Big 4 respondents on the topic of retention:
There’s more worth diving into in the Attract, Engage, Retain report, this’ll do for now.
