The remote partner represents a small but growing part of the professional landscape, their rise a reflection of the major changes that accounting firms were forced to make during the lockdowns. But while they’re a distinct minority today, the increasing sophistication of collaboration solutions — combined with the still-unresolved challenges with the talent pipeline — indicates their numbers are likely to rise.
Jennifer Wilson, co-founder of Convergence Coaching, a remote work-focused leadership and management coaching and consulting firm, estimates that remote partners make up about 5% of firm leaders nationwide; adding in those who were already partners and then went remote, her estimate grows to about 10 to 15%. But she predicted this proportion will likely grow over time as more firms realize they’re no longer as bound to geography.
“It’s just going to become more common because firms are getting smarter about hiring based on talent, not geography,” she said. “They’re looking for a certain skill set, a certain cultural fit, a certain leadership set of attributes and they shouldn’t care that it’s local or not. It’s more important that the fit is right than the geography. There is now enough support for cross-geography work and collaborations these days. The technology works. It’s proven. We’ll see more.”
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Randy Johnston, executive vice president of accounting-centered IT consulting firm K2 Enterprises, estimated that remote partners make up about 5% of the total population of accounting firm leaders, and the number will rise.
“I think we’ll see a lot more,” he said. “It’ll be a long time, the culture has to shift a lot … and won’t shift fast enough for the percentage of change very quickly, but if we had this conversation 20 years from now, I don’t think it would be much of a conversation because you wouldn’t worry about it so much, it would just be kind of natural, so I expect it to well exceed 50%.”
The idea of a partner who spends most of their time out of the office, or works with clients remotely from the office, has been already normalized over the years, especially at large firms. While there may have been a time when a partner saw everyone in person at their headquarters, even the most dedicated office dweller today does at least some of their work online.
“We used to say any multi-office firm has already been working remotely,” said Wilson. “It’s not that far a leap for them to make the jump.”
Another factor is the strong demand for high-quality talent, combined with the diminishing number of accounting professionals. Douglas Slaybaugh, a CPA career coach, noted this issue is exacerbated by the retirement of older experienced accountants with no one to replace them. While pipeline strain is felt mostly in the staff, manager and senior levels, it’s a problem increasingly being felt at the partner level as well.
“Boomers are leaving and there’s not as many coming up the ranks,” said Slaybaugh. “Partners will start to feel a crunch in the ranks, losing some of their most experienced professionals.”
But while necessity does play a large role in the rise of remote partners, it’s not the only factor. Remote partners can serve as a key player in not just a firm’s recruitment strategy, but its growth strategy as well.
“They can expand into other niches more readily,” said Slaybaugh. “They tend to have more geographic coverage because, if you think of the traditional model, you’re a firm, you’re in one location, you’ve got maybe another office, you’re very hyper-local or regional. You start adding remote partners, suddenly you can work all over.”
This is especially advantageous for smaller firms hiring from metro areas with bigger firms. Johnston said that, many times, such remote partners bring with them new processes that the small firm may not have known about, so they can serve to upgrade their workflow.
“Remote workers tend to bring the process from their predecessor firm with them, and they become the process if there is no process at the firm,” he added. “You go into a small firm, discover they have no processes, adopt the ones you’re familiar with and that becomes how they do things. Small firms can become sophisticated since they inherited a larger firm’s processes.”
Wilson noted that even if small firms don’t have as many resources, they can offer a lot to these remote partners in terms of lifestyle. A firm in Lincoln, Nebraska can tell job candidates they don’t need to do an expensive daily commute to the office. “You can go visit clients, but for the most part you don’t need to come into the office every day, and that will save you time and money,” said Wilson. “Now Lincoln will need to pay New York pricing for that talent, and that could be a barrier, but oftentimes it is not.”
Wilson added, though, that the flow goes both ways. Just as there is much a small firm can offer a remote partner who lives in a big city, a large big-city firm has a lot to offer for someone who lives outside the metro area too. That’s especially true for an accountant who is “stuck in a one-horse town where everyone is super-traditional, no one is evolving their firms, technology is not being utilized, and policies are really traditional,” said Wilson.
“You work in this tiny town in Oklahoma and your firm’s options are not great, but you’ll be living there because maybe your family is there so you’re not moving,” she added. “Well, guess what? You could work for a great progressive firm because we don’t care where you live, and you can have this fantastic career working for a firm you love and respect in a bigger city right from your small town. So we see both and they’re both effective.”
Johnston cited changing business models as another reason we’re seeing more remote workers. Many professionals who worked remotely during lockdown found it suited them and did not want to return to the office. This led to a lot of them leaving their more traditional firms (sometimes after being acquired) and founding their own firm, using a remote model.
“Most say, look, we worked remotely during the pandemic,” said Johnston. “I want to start a firm with a remote work style. Then, just as the old saying goes, ‘birds of a feather flock together,’ so they start finding other people like that.”
Firms don’t necessarily have to be new to make this shift, though. Atlanta-based Aprio, a Top 50 firm, was founded in the 1950s but chose to lean heavily into remote work during the lockdowns, according to Larry Sheftel, Aprio’s chief human resources officer.
“Aprio created a remote work model at the onset of the pandemic, and we continue to evolve our approach,” he said. “We currently look for talent located near one of our physical locations or located in an area where we will soon establish an office. If we are seeking a unique, specific skill set we may hire a partner who is fully remote.”
Other firms, like Top 50 firm Schellman, have always been like this. While technically headquartered in Florida, CEO Avani Desai said the firm has always conceived of itself as a remote-first company. All of its partners are remote partners. “We believe talent has no bounds,” she said.
“We wanted to tap into top-tier talent from coast to coast,” Desai added. “It was a strategic move to get the best and brightest to work here, to thrive, and it worked.”
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