Summer School: Why Upskilling Now is So Important

Having trouble recruiting and retaining qualified tax specialists to help with your clients’ ever more complex financial affairs? Shifting your tax accounting practice to provide expert advisory services year round is key to required scalability as demand grows for in a rapidly changing environment in the tax and financial services. Some recent statistics prove the point:

• There are 62,000 tax accounting, payroll and bookkeeping services in Canada
• 99% of them are small with less than 100 employees, but the vast majority are solopreneurs
• Non-employers number 39,000 while employers are just over 22,000
• These small businesses make an average of $247,000 in revenue and 87% of them are profitable

Clients are needing so much  more than tax filing assistance:  with year round assistance required due to CRA errors, omissions and service delays (see this year’s Taxpayer’s Ombudsman’s report on the surge in complaints), aggressive  audit initiations and digitization problems in general,  tax filing has become a source of stress against the backdrop of significant life event changes. 

That’s where training more help comes in and Knowledge Bureau can help this off season.  Consider the benefits:

• Income Generation: Companies with comprehensive employee training programs have 218% higher income per employee than companies without formalized training.

• Increased Productivity, Allowing for Scalability: When employees receive the training they need (and want), companies are 17% more productive.

• Increased Retention: To maximize investment in the hiring process, consider that 59% of employees think training directly improves their performance, and 45% are more likely to stay in their role if they receive training.

Most important: over 90% of employees say they won’t quit if they get development opportunities and 92% of employees think workplace training impacts their job engagement positively.

The Key Insight: Recruiting talent with the multiplicity of skills required to engage in sustainable year round practices in the tax services is not a one-and-done task: finding and training the right people for the evolving roles requires three diverse skills:

• Client relationship management and interview skills

 • Tax knowledge and tax software proficiencies

• CRA relationship management

Bottom Line:  Knowledge Change Management Can Be Expensive. But it doesn’t have to be. These are skills taught in every course at Knowledge Bureau with industry tested solutions.   Upskilling is turn-key when you develop a workplace training plan with Knowledge Bureau; proudly offering the most current tax, accounting, financial and tax planning courses available in Canada.

Check out the DMA- Specialist Programs in personal tax, corporate tax, accounting services and small business management and enrol your team in fast tracked, customized skills programs to prepare your expertise in time for tax season 2027!