The Wize Way

Episode 157: Retention Secrets Every Accounting Firm Needs to Know

• Wize Mentoring for Accountants and Bookkeepers • Season 2 • Episode 157

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Why do great staff leave — and how do you get them to stay?

In this episode, Wize Talent Coach Dani sits down with Tim Causbrook to uncover the real reasons employees quit (spoiler: it’s rarely about money) and what firm owners can do to build a loyal, high-performing team.

You’ll discover:

✅ The 4 core reasons staff leave—and which ones you can control
 ✅ Why strong leadership is the #1 retention tool
 ✅ How to manage and motivate remote teams effectively
 ✅ The role of recognition, structure, and career growth in retention
 ✅ Practical strategies top-performing firms use to keep their best people

Whether you’re running a small team or scaling past $1M in revenue, this episode will show you how to lead better, retain top talent, and build a business that runs without you.

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PS: Whenever you’re ready… here are the fastest 4 ways we can help you fix and grow your accounting firm:

1. Take the Wize Accountants Scale Scorecard – Find out your potential to scale and the next steps you should follow – Start Your Scorecard

2. Download our famous Wize Freedom Strategy Map for FREE - Find out the 96 projects every firm owner must implement to build a $5M+ firm that can run without them - Download here

2. Need to Hire right now? Book a 1:1 FREE discovery call with our WizeTalent hiring coaches to help find your next team member the Wize Way – Click Here

4. Book a 1:1 Wize Discovery Session – Spend 30mins with our Wize CEO, Jamie Johns, a $7M firm owner who is ready to give you his entire business plan to build a firm that can run without you – Find out more here

Wize Mentoring:

From Wize Mentoring is The Wize Way Podcast for Accountants and Bookkeepers, a show about accounting and bookkeeping practice owners and the many stories, lessons, and tips from their experience of transitioning from a time-poor practice to a business that runs without them. I hope you enjoy and subscribe.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

Today's topic is a really good one about how to actually keep your staff. You know, it's very easy for people to hire well, but it's actually not. But when you do, when you do manage to hire someone, it's great, but then it's actually keeping them. That's the challenge, and everything. With Wize Talent, we don't just help people hire, we also teach them how to keep their staff. So that's what today's topic is about. Just a little bit about Wize Talent.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

For anyone who doesn't know, we've done close to 300 hires, I think it is now, and we help people, we help firms all over the world with every position, whether it's onshore or offshore. We do it all. But the difference between us and other recruiters is that we, basically, we're very transparent, so everything we do is documented, and our clients get to see everything.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

So, Tim, today's a really good topic, obviously, and you've got there's a lot of staff with Causb rooks, so a lot of people that you've got to obviously deal with and all of that. So it's yeah, it's one thing to hire someone, but it's a whole other thing to actually get them to stay with the firm for a long time. So, what do you think are the top reasons employees leave organisations and how can employers proactively address the issues?

Tim Causbrook:

Yeah, it's a great question, and it's one of the things we've never had a big problem with at Causebrooks. I think people stand to stay with us for five plus years and it's worth the very outset talking about stable terminals and how we define those, and we're really looking for stable terminals when we hire you mentioned hiring before, Dani we really want people to be employed at the same place for a minimum of two years, and anything from two to five years plus I would describe as a stable terminal, which is really what we're trying to do. There are four reasons people leave, but overwhelmingly, it's the people side of things. People leave their bosses. I don't know if anyone listening to this has friends who changed jobs during the pandemic. A lot of my mates changed where they were working during the pandemic, and they were stable terminals, and every single one of them was because of their boss. They left their boss like their boss retired or resigned, or got promoted. They got a new boss, they just didn't gel with, and that was overwhelmingly why people left.

Tim Causbrook:

Andrew Wilkinson, who I think he's like a billionaire and he's either a billionaire Canadian or American business owner, he said like the number one trait you need in order to grow your business is to be good at managing people, so that'll keep coming back in today's topic, I think. But people leaving their bosses is number one. Lack of work-life balance would be number two. But number three would be that there's no career, prospects for progression, or they just stop learning. And number four would be personal issues, like maybe they have a kid or they move state or or something happens that stops them from being able to work. That's really outside of the control of the employer. But you'll notice that three out of those four things really can be influenced big time by the employer.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

Yeah, yeah, it's amazing how it really does come back to management. Amazing how it yeah, it really does come back to management. But can you share some common mistakes companies make when trying to retain staff, like especially in today's competitive job market?

Tim Causbrook:

Yeah, this is a big one. So, retaining people seems to be just as difficult as finding people, and it's definitely harder to find people than it was probably pre-COVID. I think that's partly due to it becoming a bit more transactional. If you're working from home and you're working remotely, for instance, it's not as difficult or perceived as difficult to change jobs. You don't. You know, the commute doesn't change. You're really just you're signing on with a different organisation in the morning from your desk at home, if it makes sense. So retention, I think, is actually tougher than ever before, and I think it's. It's tougher, yeah, for a bunch of reasons we'll dive into.

Tim Causbrook:

I would say, like number one, though it's really failing to um, seek to understand before being understood, as dr stephen cubby says, and what I mean by that is a lot of owners, business owners or employers fail to see things from the employee's perspective and they base rewards, for instance, around what they would want, not what the employee wants, and I've seen this happen in firms in Sydney. Actually, they assume everyone wants more money because they want more money, when in fact some employees want more time with their family, and having an additional day off if they hit their monthly target or something actually makes more of a difference to them and their happiness levels than some more money in their account. So I think really getting to understand what motivates your staff, understanding what they care about, and understanding why goes a long way to being able to retain the staff. You've got to understand them.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

Yeah, well, yeah, and that's the thing, like I think a lot of employers tend to, they think that workers are just grinders, I guess, who just get in there and do the job, and yeah, but that's, I mean. Yes, to an extent, everyone needs to do their job, but everyone also has a life outside of work, right? So they're not robots.

Tim Causbrook:

They're not robots.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

Exactly, yeah, yeah. So how important is employee engagement in retention, like what are some, I guess, effective ways to increase engagement?

Tim Causbrook:

Yeah. So I would say engagement is one of the biggest problems in our industry right now. We were just talking about this with a firm that I work with just yesterday, actually, and I think it is partly due to working from home. It makes employees like it, it makes establishing a firm culture more difficult, it makes it harder to establish relationships, which makes it more transactional, which makes it easier to go to a different place to work. If you can follow the logic train chain, there. We actually have a playbook that goes into this, called the Accountant's Remote Team Secrets, and that details 18 rules practice owners must know to manage remote teams well. So it just shows you how much goes into this, and I encourage everyone to reach out to us at Wize if you haven't read that playbook, because really it gives a lot more detail than I can give in today's webinar.

Tim Causbrook:

But, simply put, there is a good way of doing it and a bad way of doing it, and I would say, like anything, if you're not used to doing it, you're probably not doing it. Well, you know what I mean. No one hops on a bike. I've got two young kids. No one hops on a bike and can just start riding it without a lot of practice, right? And it's not as simple as, hey, the person was working in the office. Now they've got a laptop and they're working at home. It's very, very different. It's much harder to onboard new people. It's harder to manage, I would argue. It's harder to manage underperformance, harder to establish relationships, and build rapport. That doesn't mean it's impossible, but it does mean you have to do different things from what you would do in the office environment. So have a look at that.

Tim Causbrook:

If I can give just one takeaway, there are 18 rules. But if I could just give one takeaway for folks, you've got to have weekly check-ins with your direct reports face-to-face, like on a call like this, if they're not near where you live, and you've got to ask them how they're doing. Find out what motivates them in your six-monthly performance reviews, again, face-to-face, and growing. Find out what motivates them in your six- monthly performance reviews, again, face to face. Find out what their personal and professional lifetime goals are and grow. Your business is the last one, surprisingly. Without growth, there are no opportunities. It's as simple as that. Growth isn't just about making more money for the owner. It's actually about creating more opportunities for your best people. If you don't do that, your best people will outgrow you or outgrow your business. So yeah, so direct report, weekly check-ins, six- monthly performance reviews. Find out what motivates them, what their goals are, and how you can align those goals with the organisation's goals and keep growing the business.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

Yeah, awesome. And what role do recognition and appreciation play in retaining employees? How can companies build a culture of recognition?

Tim Causbrook:

Yeah, this is a big one, Dani. I think I've worked with close to 50 firm owners like individually now, and I would say being able to give timely recognition and appreciation is easily one of the most underrated, underutilised, but important abilities a firm owner has. If you don't regularly show recognition and appreciation, you need to start doing so. It's something I've had to work on. It doesn't come naturally to me. I'll think it, but I won't say it. But the reason why it's so important is that it's like an energy boost for most people, pretty much everyone. Some people need it more than others, which we'll get into in a sec, but basically everyone will get a bit of an energy boost from just being recognized. Okay, it's pretty awkward when you start doing it, but you just have to push through that. Well, it was awkward for me. You just have to push through that and just do it.

Tim Causbrook:

I recently heard a talk which was really in a not-for-profit context, which is pertinent to the issue, actually, and the research found that one of, if not the biggest cause of burnout, was a lack of recognition. This was like a religious context. Think about that for a moment. It was a lack of recognition that stopped these people from being able to perform their tasks over an extended period in a profit context. One of the biggest US stationrry chains of the 90s, the owner and founder used to say to his manager, give the praise, but keep the money. I'm not suggesting that's a saying of Wize, but it just showed that recognition doesn't have to be monetary.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

It can be verbal.

Tim Causbrook:

Now, that being said, if you don't pay market rate, you will lose your best people. It's as simple as that, and you should review your salaries annually, and if you put up your wages, increase your fees by the same margin, if not more. But you know, every week try to find something that you can recognize in your performers, and it might not be that they've hit their goals, because some goals, some KPIs in the Fab5, for instance, take maybe over a year to fix if there's structural or systematic issues that need to be addressed in the business. But you can give praise when you see progress tracking in the right direction, if that makes sense. So, yeah, you've got to have more self-awareness, which we'll get into later on today as well, if you're a leader, and you've really got to start paying attention to how often you recognise the performance of your people or the efforts.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

Would that be like? What's that saying? Like words of affirmation?

Tim Causbrook:

Yeah, definitely words of affirmation.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

What strategies can employers use to, I guess, support career development and growth for their employees?

Tim Causbrook:

Yeah, this is a big one actually. I would just say if you don't have an org chart, like an organization chart or deep and narrow team structures, it's going to be very hard to do this properly. And that's the best place to start is setting those up in your business. We've got a lot of IP, whole webinars on deep and narrow team structures, org charts, how to structure your business for growth, um. But you really need that structure because it acts as scaffolding for that professional career development and growth. It's not enough to just send someone to a training course on how to do company tax returns or trust tax returns, or you know what I mean, or do some up-to-date tax changes training. You've really got to create positions, a hierarchy, a structure for people to be able to climb, and not for the sake of having them climb. But that's just so that we can. We can actually grow without chaos. We can grow structurally. We've got a bit of IP around this in the WizeV ault. I think it's called the senior client manager transitional plan. It's about seven or eight page word document that outlines someone going from being an assistant client manager managing a portfolio of maybe two, three hundred thousand dollars a year in fees to being able to run a million dollar team and be the head honcho of that team, and it's got, you know quarterly targets they've got to reach. It's got the whole, the whole uh trajectory mapped out, because it doesn't happen overnight.

Tim Causbrook:

Ed Chan, one of the founders, likes to say you can't go straight to Friday from Monday. You've got to go through Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and any kind of career development pathway. That's multi-year, right, two or three or four or five years. It's really important that the owner is intentional around having regular check-ins, making clear milestones, and bringing that employee along on that journey so they can see where they're ending up. Again, you can see why we want stable terminals, right, because we're talking about building up our best people.

Tim Causbrook:

I'll just finish this question. There's a great saying, which is, what if I train my people and they leave? We always say, what if you don't train them and they stay? And, Dani, you know this better than I do, but there are so many people in our industry who have even three or four or five years of experience who just aren't senior accountants in terms of their ability, and it's not their fault usually. It's usually because people haven't invested in them because they're too time poor, um, so yeah, I hope that kind of goes somewhere to answering that question, but it's really really crucial. Start with the deeper and narrow team structure. Start with the org chart.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

I really like that quote. I'm glad that you said it, because it is really important, like, if you're not training them, and they end up staying, then yeah, that's, that's not good for anyone. No, so I guess how can organizations balance providing development opportunities, um, while managing operational needs?

Tim Causbrook:

Yeah, it's a good question, and it's kind of a quad one versus quad two or P&L versus balance sheet, which often feels like a zero- sum game, but it really isn't necessarily so. Providing development opportunities will be the quad two, the not urgent but important, the balance sheet play, and then operational needs. That's what we need is quad one, it's urgent and important, right, that's need. It's quote one, it's urgent and important, right? And people often will say I don't have time to think about that, I've just got to get through today, and that's like the person who's trying to hack down the trees in the forest with a blunt, a blunt saw. You've got to sharpen that saw every now and then, otherwise it's just it's wasted energy, right? So, like I said, it's not really a zero-sum game necessarily. I think development opportunities are really about who the future leaders of your business are like today. Who are the people today in your business who could be future senior client managers, future CEOs who could be in your seat right? Properly executed, as we said before, your people will grow as your business grows and you will find managing operational needs becomes easier, not harder, if you've got really capable, loyal people who just need more experience, the worst thing you can do is just hire someone externally to manage them when you could have improved them over that time depends how fast you grow, obviously, but the crucial thing here is accountability. So everyone needs job descriptions with task lists, SOPs, standard operating procedures that govern how best to execute those tasks. And then, at an executive level, when your business is large enough to make it appropriate, you develop your executive team, and I know firms that are building this out around the $1 million mark, but I also know firms that are doing $7 or $8 million revenue per year and they're using the same structure. It just works. So, again, go back to the org chart, go back to the deep and narrow team structure, go back to the job descriptions and the positions, and then the next thing I would say is to look at the strengths and weaknesses of all your staff. In the Wize Hub, we've put a lot of effort into developing the tools to allow you to have kind of like a baseball card for every single one of your employees, including yourself, and you've got to know what their strengths are and what their weaknesses are and play people in position probably my favorite thing about business.

Tim Causbrook:

And I versus school. I hated school, but at school you've got to try to be good at every single subject. I know a couple of people who got 100 on their end- of- year certificate. I'm about, I know, yeah, four people, I think you've got 100. Not many people get 100% in Maths, Science, and English. You know language, whatever it is right. In the real world, you only have to be good at doing one or two things, and then you work, especially in business. You work in a team of people who complement you.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

Yes.

Tim Causbrook:

Right. So it's not about, yeah, all-rounders necessarily. So figure out what people's strengths and weaknesses are, help them create their own self-awareness to know what they are as well, and then put them in a position and continue to invest and train them, and it will create dividends. Leaders create other leaders, and I've seen that most clearly working closely with Ed and Jamie. It's just the way it is. So, yeah, there's quite a lot there, but I hope that kind of answers the question.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

Yeah, no, it definitely does. How does offering, I guess, flexible work options or promoting work-life balance affect staff retention?

Tim Causbrook:

It can be critical. Actually, we've found that over the last five years or so and this really comes into people leaving for personal reasons I think that was the last one I said of the four reasons people leave Obviously you can't know everything about them and you're not their friend, you're their employer and they've got to willingly volunteer information about their personal life.

Tim Causbrook:

But you mentioned before, Dani, like t hey're not robots, they're people, right, and so you know, things outside of work can affect their performance or even their ability to hold the job. Young parents are the most obvious example, right? You can let me know if this is right. But my hunch, just from all the hires we've done recently, is that it's increasingly becoming like the deciding factor for employment, the work-life balance, all the flexible work options, whereas probably pre-COVID, it was more purely down to salary expectations, because there were no flexible work options. Like there was no flexible work, there was no real question of the work-life balance. It was like nine to five in the office, and that was it.

Tim Causbrook:

But I think there's a bit of a trap here because it can feel like an employee's market. I've seen firm owners kind of go too far, too far in that direction, and I would just say the key thing here is to make sure your individual arrangements still work for the business. So whatever you decide on, it must suit the business. So whatever you decide on, it must suit the business. You can't build a business to suit every individual request purely because there's one business, and there could be dozens of employees. It just creates chaos. So if someone said, hey, I want to work, it's a five-day-a-week full-time position, they say I only want to work three days a week. If it really is a five-day position, you've got to find someone who works five days, or if, I mean we delve into it probably, I think, in another question here but um, yes, the next one if, if, uh, for instance, someone is client facing, they're applying for a client manager role, and they say I can't work nine to five, can I work one to nine? And you say I can't work nine to five, can I work one to nine? And you say, well, office hours are nine to five, that's when the clients are going to be calling, that doesn't really make sense.

Tim Causbrook:

Or if you're a bit like of an old school firm like mine, and you have an office and clients do come into the office all the time and they say I want to be a client manager, but I want to work 100% from home, again, if you have a culture where the clients come into the office, that's not going to work. Um, so I think it really depends on your business and what your business needs. But Jamie Johns likes to talk about um changing with the times, and if you fail to change with the times, you end up like Kodak, right? So, it's just an expectation that people can work from home two or three days a week, and you've also got to try to make sure you can build the business so it works if that's the direction it's going. You've got to get better at managing remote teams or distributed teams, if that makes sense.

Tim Causbrook:

Like another one, for example, is if you have fairly junior accountants, say offshore, and they don't really overlap at all with their production manager, like how is the production manager going to mentor and train them if they're never in, you know, on a call together? Yeah, I have seen it work, but that's probably the exception to the rule. But you've got to do a lot more to make that work. So I think there's a bit of a balance there. Right, you've got to. You've got to go where the market's going. It just seems to be the market's going, and you've got to do it well and intentionally. But also, you can't be everything to everyone just because there's one business and there are lots and lots of different people as you grow. Yeah, I hope that makes sense.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

It does. It absolutely. So, yeah, moving on to that set like the second part. What advice do you have for companies struggling to implement flexible work policies?

Tim Causbrook:

Yeah, well, actually, it's in question if they don't have a policy around it, you've got to have one. So I was working with a firm recently who had it was a bit of a disaster, but they had someone work from home, a new staff member, and they take like an hour to respond on teams or whatever they were using and, um, they didn't know when they clocked off or clocked on. And I said, well, you really need to have a policy that outlines like when they, when they come on board, basically the outlines that, they sign on and sign off on MS Teams and let you know when they're working, they sign off, when they go on their lunch break. And if they don't respond within five minutes on MS Teams, you start to wonder what's going on. We always extend trust, right? We always extend trust to people, but trust can also be broken pretty quickly, and so I would say, actually, create some policies around it.

Tim Causbrook:

If you have teams that aren't going to be working 100% the same hours, aim for a 75% overlap or an 80% overlap, or structure the daily huddle in such a way that everyone still manages to be on that huddle. Some people have daily huddles at the end of the day. I'm thinking more American firms. It's really the daily huddle for the next day, because the production team is kind of working while they're sleeping or having dinner or whatever. But again, just make sure it works, make sure you build up policies around it, and then just stick to those policies. Yeah, and then just stick to those policies.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

Yeah, the crossover time is really important, like that's currently what we're doing, like Krizz, Paulina, and I obviously, Paulina's in Mexico, Krizz is in the Philippines, and I'm in Australia. So, yeah, you've got to have that crossover time so that we can all work together. So, how can leadership styles influence employee retention? What leadership practices help? I guess, foster loyalty.

Tim Causbrook:

Well, this is a really interesting topic, and it's probably too big to really do it justice here. But if people leave their managers, then we've got to figure out how to become good managers. I would say leadership is just your ability to implement. Is your ability to implement being a good manager, if that makes sense? Leadership is all about the execution of the management role. People leave their bosses, but the same is also true of the opposite, right? People stay because of really good bosses.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

Yeah.

Tim Causbrook:

So I would say it's probably the number one growth inhibiting factor of firms that come to Wize Growth. Their ability to win clients is never the issue, but their ability to maintain staff is very much. And Jamie John said that to get past a million dollars in revenue, that danger zone, he's doing seven million now, but to get past a million in revenue, that danger zone, he's doing 7 million now. But to get past a million, he had to pivot from being client fanatical to being staff fanatical. And while clients are people and staff are people, it's just very different. I think it's a very different skillset, even though the same people who are good with clients can be good with staff.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

It's a very different skillset being able to motivate and retain good staff. I'm thinking back to our managers' meetings, Tim, when Jamie and Brenton always ask you how your week is going.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

Oh yeah, out of 10. Where would you say you're at? That stuff's really important because it's like just a check-in, just to see what's going on with your staff, to make sure that everything's okay, and it's not even. I mean, yes, it's work- related, but it's also personal, like if we're not having a great week. Personally, they're they're happy to listen, like it's not like they're just here for work, sort of thing. They'r e happy to listen. It's not like they're just here for work, sort of thing. Yeah, they're happy to listen to our personal. Yeah, they are.

Tim Causbrook:

Yeah, I like what you said there, Dani, because I was thinking the same thing. Like we practice what we preach, we are a distributed team at Wize. While we're not an accounting firm organisationally, we run it exactly the same way that we encourage our members to run their firms. And it's kind of funny you mention that because we almost give a 10 out of 10 for Wize and then a 10 out of 10 for personal, and often Wize is higher than the personal, which is funny.

Tim Causbrook:

But I remember one of my employees, a long time ago, was going through a lot of turmoil personally, and we thought she was upset about something at work. We asked her what was going on and she said the work's the best thing about my life right now and and that was really touching me, a really touching moment. I've never forgotten what she said. And you know you spend a long time at work. You spend more time at work than with your families really, usually, right, so let's endeavor to make it a harbour for people.

Tim Causbrook:

And yeah, if you're going to be working with someone for five-plus years, you'd hope to learn a bit about their personal life in that time. And I think Jamie and Brenton are really good about sharing what's happening in their personal lives. I know some people I've worked with recently at Wise Grows have really said it's been really tough to get their staff to open up to them. And if you're not opening up to your staff, you can't expect them to open up to you. So you know Jamie and Brenton will say if they're not having a great week for whatever reason, and so yeah, totally.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

Yeah, it's definitely about building that relationship. Yeah, so what role should managers play in retaining their team? How can they be better equipped to do so?

Tim Causbrook:

Yeah, it's a really good topic, a really good question. Ed Chan's in my brain about this one, talking to me right now. He lives rent- free in all our brains, I think, and he says managers' ultimate goal is output or productivity, right, to get through the weekly billing, the monthly billing. But they can't hit their monthly billing targets if they don't have staff. You know, so if you don't retain your teams, like that's the meta goal, right, that you need to tick off to actually do the goal, which is hit the billings, so managers really become managers. Client managers really become client managers, irrespective of equity, in my opinion, when they start caring as much about retaining their staff as the owner used to, about retaining their staff as the owner used to like when I started this whole journey with Ed back in 2019, you know, the owners were the ones who were really concerned with retaining staff. The staff didn't care.

Tim Causbrook:

But as soon as you're doing a million dollars in fees and you need four or five or six or seven people to achieve that goal, you start to really take an interest in getting the right people, retaining them, improving them, motivating them, whatever it is, and so there are a lot of things we can equip our managers with. There are tools and there are policies and there's training. Number one, I would say, is that people aren't taught how to be good managers. It's a redundant kind of way of doing things. It's not redundant, but a kind of broken way of doing things. In every organization I've ever been in university for profit, whatever it is, you get really good at the thing, and then you become a manager, which just has never made sense. You're good at coding. If you're a software engineer, you're good at doing tax returns, or you know you're good at winning cases, cases, and all of a sudden, you've got to manage people. It's a completely separate skill set, frankly, and just because you're good at the technical thing really has no bearing on whether or not you'd be good at the manage the managing thing, part of it. And so, one thing I would suggest if you're a Wize gross member is to send your managers along to our monthly masterclass. It's on a Friday if you're in Australia or New Zealand, it's on a Thursday if you're in the States, and if they can't make it because of time constraints, I know it can be pretty. I think it's like after hours on the East Coast, for instance. All the videos are recorded right. Go and watch those videos once a month with your team, because if you're not building up your managers, the managers build the business. So if you're not building up your managers, you've got to do all the managing, if that makes sense.

Tim Causbrook:

Some practical tips, so the first one there is really to actually find soft skills training, and I would start with us at Wize, and make sure your staff watches it. It's a quad two, so they're not going to watch it if you just tell them to schedule time in the calendar once a month where you all watch it together and have a Q&A afterwards. But in terms of things they can actually do, you know, in their business on a day-to-day basis, managers should do a weekly check-in with their team, like we've already discussed, Dani. You should do a weekly check-in with their team, like we've already discussed, Dani. You should do a net promoter score survey, like a monthly or bi-monthly net promoter score survey, for your team members, like for your staff, so they can provide anonymous, transparent feedback without worrying about the repercussions. And you should do six- monthly performance reviews as well, where you're checking in with them and seeing how they're going.

Tim Causbrook:

If there's one quality that you could work on building, it's self-awareness, but it's really really crucial. Leaders have self-awareness, and when I go through this list, I do think of Ed, just because I've known him, had the privilege of knowing him for five years, and he kind of embodies all these things as a leader. We looked at all the things not to do, if that makes sense. One of my heroes, who died basically this time last year at the age of 99, was Charlie Munger, and he said if you're coming at a problem, it's often more helpful to invert the problem than to try to solve it. So you know, if you want to become rich, well, how do people who are poor? Do the opposite of what makes people poor, and you become rich, if that's it. It's a really crude example. But here we thought, well, no one's really that great at being a leader, necessarily, when you're starting out, so we're probably doing a lot of things wrong. And if we do the opposite of those things, you will just become a better leader, if that makes sense. So it's kind of a negative thing. But the list is. There are 10 things. I'll just give you a taste of the summit now.

Tim Causbrook:

The first one is bad leadership is saying it's not me, it's you. So bad leaders blame other people. They don't take accountability. Number two is don't understand how their actions impact others, so they literally lack self-awareness. They might be upsetting their staff, which will get lower productivity out of them through their body language or what they say, without meaning to do that. Again, your job is to motivate people to get the most productivity out of them, right?

Tim Causbrook:

Number three is too much ego, like they haven't worked out their personal stuff yet. I've never met a good leader who had a lot of ego. I just have never met someone, and I mean, I'm sure there are out there. I know a lot of narcissistic, probably types are attracted to leadership. I would argue they're not good leaders, though. It's the difference, right? Number four is that they make decisions based on their own perspective and needs, not on, again, not seeking to understand before being understood, as Dr. Covey would say. They don't seek, ask for, or want feedback. Again, that's an ego thing, right? They don't want to improve. Sorry, they don't want to improve, but they don't want to. They take criticism personally, not constructively, right? So they're never going to improve, and they're never going to be able to give constructive feedback to their people. If everything's personal, you kind of know it's a culture of fear, and that just stifles improvement, continuous improvement; they take the challenge personally.

Tim Causbrook:

That's been a big one for a lot of leaders I've worked with, like Ed. Maybe he does take stuff personally, but you would never know that guy's like a robot when it comes to challenge or pushback, 'cause I've worked with him through my own firm and through other firms in the change implementation process. He just doesn't take things emotionally or personally; he's just purely objective, and that means he's there for the other people. They're not there to service his emotions. He's kind of emotionally empty, so he can just completely focus on them, right? Number seven is that they're still searching for happiness and fulfillment. Sounds a bit woo-woo, but Jamie gave this keynote, and he kind of goes into all of these and explains with concrete examples in more time than we have here.

Tim Causbrook:

Number eight goes back to ego. Again, ego drives the decisions and actions. Again, if that's the case, you're probably not going to be praising the team. You know I've got a saying in my firm, like when my firm does badly, I take the blame. When we do really well, it's all because of my staff, not because of me. Warren Buffett, my other hero, Charlie Munger's business partner, says he always praised specifically and criticised generally. I don't know if people have heard that one before, but I love that one as well. Number nine is worrying about the team, not worrying about the team, but worrying about themselves all the time, like how the team's making them look. And number 10 is finding it hard to give praise to others. There's a lot of overlap there, and if you work hard at those 10 things, you will just be a better leader. I can guarantee it. So I hope that kind of makes sense.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

What do we have to do so? What role does company culture play in retaining employees? How can businesses shape a positive and inclusive culture?

Tim Causbrook:

Yeah, the culture stuff's really, really tough. I would start by defining it. You've got to define what the company culture is that you're striving for. Too many firms don't even make that step, and you can't hope to build a good culture if you don't know what that culture is. And again, I was in a not-for-profit organisation context on the weekend, and they were talking about how to retain the culture of that not-for-profit as it grew and new members came in, which will, you know, always change things. But how do you keep that culture there? I think of the culture as it's a bunch of values that would traditionally be embodied by a person. But if you take that person out, you want those values to sort of permeate the way you do things. So ethics is involved, service offering is involved, and goals are involved. How you achieve those goals is important to the values of the organization. The culture. I think it's a really important one in terms of retaining employees, but also getting new employees, because the people do contribute to the culture. Right, you can have a strong company culture, but new people will invariably influence it, and so you've got to make sure that you're upfront about what that culture is, even in the hiring process, which Dani's way, you know completely across more than I am right. But you've got to make sure that you're looking for like a good fit. It, you know, and that's why we interview them, isn't it, Dani? Because we're trying to get a sense of that. It's not just how good they are like, it's not just the metrics, like the cv or the interview questions that they answer, you know, before, before we do the interview, or even like the test results and all that in the reference, it's that people side of it. Are they a good fit? Are they a good fit for the business, and will they contribute to that culture?

Tim Causbrook:

One of the values we embody at Wize and in our firms is a culture of continuous improvement. This is just to give an example. Just give people a concrete example. Very, very hard to have a culture of continuous improvement if there are egos running rife and if you have a blame culture. So, we have a policy at Wize, in the WizeV ault, called no- blame culture, and we're massive on metrics, but we would never attack people personally for not being able to achieve a certain metric.

Tim Causbrook:

The manager has to look at that person, look at the situation, help them understand, while they're trying to understand what was blocking them or stopping them from achieving that, and then remove that blockage, and so it's a culture of support. So you can't have continuous improvement and challenging people to grow because growth is uncomfortable. Most people shy away from growth, and they can't achieve what they want to achieve because it's too hard personally. So if you're pushing people to be the best they can be and you're continually striving for better results, you have to equally support them just as much with IP, training, tools, and check-ins. Otherwise it's out of balance and they will just kind of they will leave ultimately. So that's just one example, but I would say, yeah, write down the company's values, mission statement, what you'd want the culture, what you'd want to embody that culture, and then start building out policies to help implement that culture, to make sure it stays at the heart of the business as it grows.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

Yeah.

Tim Causbrook:

Yeah.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

And what you said about like the whole no-blame culture, that is definitely a big one. I remember when I first joined, it was a shock, like a good shock, because my previous employment was just everyone was just blaming everyone. It started with the manager. The manager was just.

Tim Causbrook:

At the top, yeah.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

So, yeah, coming into Wize and seeing the way it's supposed to be was so amazing. But how can organisations ensure that their values align with their employees?

Tim Causbrook:

Employees' needs and aspirations, yes, so the aspirations can be twofold. Aspirations could be like material aspirations, but also, I think values in and of themselves are aspirational, like no one's really achieved them. Like if I want to be truthful or kind, every day I've got to work at being truthful and kind. It's like if it's a value, it's something I'm striving to live by, and striving is the key word. I'm not always going to achieve it. So Jamie's actually really good at this. He will kind of. I don't know if apologise is the right word, but he'll. He'll verbalize if he hasn't met his own values, or like a benchmark, if that makes sense.

Tim Causbrook:

I think it's really important that leaders embody that to their staff, like that they're not always perfect. He'll say things like Dani, you probably can think of a better example. But he'll say stuff like, oh, I'm not perfect. No one's perfect. Do you know what I mean? And it's really encouraging when I hear that from time to time, it's not often, obviously, but from time to time. But I mean I have seen issues in the past where employees' personal needs and aspirations have been at complete odds with the values of the organisation, and that's led to, like, it can lead to resignations ultimately. So I think it's important again to find out what employees' needs and aspirations are, and their goals and dreams. And Dan Martell's got that saying, which is like part of the wise book now, like if the goals or aspirations of the employee are bigger than the vision for the business, they'll outgrow that business. And so it is really important that you make sure that stuff's aligned.

Tim Causbrook:

One way you can do it is in the net promoter scores and in the check-ins and in the in the six monthly performance reviews, and we've got the career wheel, which is a. I think it's probably this is the first year we've really had that um and been implementing that at wise and that's a big part of of of the values and the and the needs and aspirations. So it really creates the framework that you can have these difficult conversations with your staff and your managers. You can train your managers to have those difficult conversations as well. I would just document I would always document those performance reviews, including the career wheel stuff, and and you can talk about it at an organizational level where issues do arise and I know, dani, you've been working behind the scenes with Jamie and the team to look at four or five solutions to every one of the eight career wheels. Where they're below an eight, which is just absolutely golden IP for retention, I'd say it's probably the core thing for retention is that career wheel.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

How can companies ensure that their compensation and benefits packages are competitive and attractive to retain top talent?

Tim Causbrook:

It's pretty simple. You've just got to know what the market rate is. In Australia there's two or three reports that come to mind that you could purchase, I think, on an annual basis, or maybe even like six monthly basis, biannual basis, that outline the market rates bottom, average and top for all the positions you could think of in an accounting firm, for all the capital cities of Australia, the suburban centres and then the regional centers, because it does change, because you know the cost of living is different and you've just got to know what, the market rate is to ensure that you're being competitive right. And over the last few years, it's changed, probably at a faster pace because of inflation, I think, primarily right. It's changed at a faster pace than in the past. So you know if you're not looking at that stuff at least annually.

Tim Causbrook:

You've really got to do that. In terms of benefits packages offshore, it's important, and again, Dani can speak to this, but it's important that you understand the context of your offshore staff and the country they're in and what is common for them in an employment scenario, so you can do your best to match that. And in terms of benefits, I mean the biggest one that comes to mind is a bonus structure. It's been a privilege working with firms over the last three to four years now, and seeing the owners want to make more money so they can pay their staff more in bonuses. Like I said earlier, it's not just about the owner making more money. They want to grow their business so they can reward better, reward really their key people, and Ed said that before in the past. Ed said you've got to run a profitable business, not just for the shareholders but the other stakeholders, even though they might not be shareholders like have equity other staff but the other stakeholders, even though they might not be shareholders like have equity other stuff and so if you don't run a profitable business and other businesses do and they can offer maybe the same compensation but better benefit packages, like they can offer bonuses again, you will eventually lose the top talent.

Tim Causbrook:

Top talent, I would just define as performers, output-focused people. It's not really to do with how many years they've been in the profession, it's the performers. Underperformers won't get excited about bonus structures because they know they won't be able to achieve them. It's the whole thing. Like Mark Zuckerberg gets paid a dollar a year, Warren Buffett gets paid $100,000 a year, which is not much to be CEO of the seventh largest business in America, right, but it's because he knows his value is what he can do in growing the business. So benefit structures can attract top talent, but you've got to be running a profitable business in order to pay them out and retain that talent.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

But I might jump to the very last question, Tim. So if there was one piece of advice you could give to business leaders about staff retention, what would it be?

Tim Causbrook:

Become better leaders, like developing self-awareness. It's as simple as that. I wouldn't even worry about the other things if you're not a good leader and the reason why I say that is you could have good work-life balance, pay good salaries, do everything else the business just won't grow if you're not a good leader, because your people won't become leaders. So even if you grow with fees, you'll find you're having to do more and more and more and more as the business grows. You won't be able to delegate leadership. It's just not scalable.

WizeTalent Coach Dani:

In other words, yeah, Tim, thank you so much for all that information. I hope that helped everyone. I hope, in other words, yeah, Tim, thank you so much for all that information. I hope that helped everyone, like I hope that helped answer everyone's questions. Thanks for tuning in.

Wize Mentoring:

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