Traditional grad training needs a shake-up, says mid-tier

HLB Mann Judd managing partner Tony Fittler says accounting graduates who are kept in the ‘learning the ropes’ phase too long risk becoming disengaged, and businesses will lose out on “higher level” work productivity.

“I guess the traditional model was to bring people in as cadets or graduates and they learn the ropes by hands-on experience over a couple of years. I think the training needs to be as such that you can get them at a higher level of skill quicker,” Mr Fittler said.

While it “used to make sense” to train accounting graduates for a couple of years, he said graduates want to see increased value from their work in a shorter time frame. This can be achieved by moving through training processes more efficiently.

“[The traditional training model] used to make sense because people could actually learn how things work and how the system works, so there was an advantage to it.

“I do think we need to try to capture the advantage of having the hands-on experience but actually trying to move people through it quicker so [graduates] can see that they are actually gaining skills more quickly.”

Giving accounting graduates more complex work earlier on has the joint benefits of keeping graduates engaged and allowing the business to capitalise on employees’ work productivity.

“If you look back at auditing, people used to sit there and tick off all sorts of receipts and invoices and  I think frankly it’s not very interesting work, and if you spend three, four or five years studying to come out and then you’re ticking receipts, it’s not very exciting,” Mr Fittler said.

“From our point of view, we’re getting [accounting graduates] to provide the higher level work quicker rather than having them for a couple of years where they’re just learning the ropes.”