Paul Lyons from recruiters Ambition looks at they key employment trends for Australian accountants this year.

Redundancies to continue in the finance sector

Finance sector redundancies will continue well into 2009 as institutions react to continuing global shocks. Until now it has been principally the investment banks that have shed staff in Australia, but this will spread to more resiliant sectors such as insurance and superannuation. Accountants most at risk are those in contract, project and shared-service roles. Compliance and risk jobs are holding up, as are reporting positions, and cash and payroll.

Flight to quality: companies to upgrade to better staff

A clear characteristic of a downturn is the flight to quality by everyone. Organisations focus on upgrading their staff and individuals reassess their position and analyse whether they can move to a company with better security and prospects.

Once the uncertainty has eased and we have more certainty that we have reached the bottom, we’ll see organisations starting to upgrade their finance teams. Finance managers and CFOs will look for opportunities to replace people of average skills and attitude who they had to hire in the boom times when better candidates were much harder to attract. Although good people are still difficult to find, there are more accountants to choose from now and the time pressure through the recruitment process is far less.

We are already seeing companies raising the bar in terms of required performance and attitude, then counseling people out through a performance management process and hiring people with a better “fit” (read better skills, better attitude). This trend will continue and the market over the next few years will slowly shake out the lesser performers and raise the standards.

Increased focus on hiring the best people

Arising out of the above upgrading trend are the challenges for employers to avoid recruiting other companies’ cast-offs and for individuals to communicate that their redundancy was genuine, and not due to a performance or attitudinal reason.

CFOs under the spotlight

We are seeing extreme pressure on CFOs as they become stretched and each aspect of their position comes under the spotlight – steward, strategist, leader, manager of financial information, risk profiler etc. We will see an increase in CFO-level recruitment as individuals opt out and organisations look to upgrade on quality.

Pressure on existing finance staff

CFOs will experience greater pressure on themselves and so will their teams because their productivity has to rise to cope with fewer people to do the same or more work. As the months roll by, the wear and tear on the teams will increase, mistakes will happen and morale will start to fall. People will then seek to move even if there are few opportunities in the marketplace. Leaders have to find ways of keeping morale and energy up and we’ll probably see a rise in the numbers of contract staff hired to cover for resignations or increasing workloads.

Finance sector to bounce back

The financial services sector was the first to experience the mass redundancies in late 2007, and then consistently throughout last year, as the investment banking, private equity and funds management sectors cut front and back-office headcount. With asset prices falling like a stone in the real world, we’ll likely see the bottom of the cycle this year, which will cause the financial sector to invest again, kick-starting the cycle. With front and middle-office heads being hired, the banks and financial services firms will again be in the market for the best contract and permanent accounting staff.

Paul Lyons CA CPA is managing director at Ambition Group Limited