Welcome to Episode 9 of Reality Cheque

Its finally here, the annual CA ANZ Remuneration Report is out and you can find it here: 

For those who aren't across this report, it is pulled together from data obtained via a voluntary survey completed by CA’s in Australian and New Zealand.

Before we go further, a big thank you to episode sponsor Aider for supporting this episode.

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Back to the show..

This is not just public practice focused, including those working in commerce, government, not for profits, etc. 

In this podcast Shaye kicks off by touching on the report highlights: 

• 70% increase in respondents from last year, with 7700 CAs participating.(Shoutout to Dave & Paul for helping to promote more activity across the membership base. https://www.fromthetrenches.com.au/podcast/2022/10/24/action-required-does-caanz-deserve-a-pay-rise)
• The split was still fairly similar between men and women respondents from 2021. 
• Total remuneration has grown by 11%
• Gender Pay Gap has reduced 4%
  
  

Then Shaye & Becc dig further into the data:

Comparing Data & Assumptions:

• Hard to compare to last year as the data presented is not apples for apples.

Who actually got paid more:

• Becc questions if the pay increase really is because the accounting profession is seen to be attractive or is it just representative of the desperate fight for talent
• The entry level salaries have increased in public practice with a decrease in salaries for those who have been around for 20+ years. 
• Is this because we need to pay our teams more, but aren't raising our prices enough?
• How long is this redistribution of wealth sustainable for? 
• Shaye compares to what's happening in the States where the partners have increased their income greatly in the last year, but not so for their staff
  
  

Compliance is not dead:

• The firms that leant into compliance and charged for it in the last few years would have done really well in the last few years. 
• But how many below mid-tier charged well for all that grant work?

Gender Pay Gap:

• Shaye talks through whether the work on closing the gender pay gap has been good enough (spoiler alert - both Becc & Shaye say no)
• Becc surprised that transparency was more important than flexible work by the respondents to help the pay gap
• Why don’t people believe there is a gender pay gap when the data proves different?
• Becc & Shaye discuss what they believe will actually help close this gap faster

What keeps us motivated:

• Across the board and unrelated to the gender pay gap, men & women across Australia & New Zealand across all ages note flexible workplaces as the most important factor beyond remuneration

What would we like to see:

• More like for like comparatives in the report
• One page analysis that breaks up just whats happening in the profession, more granularity needed.
• More analysis of the gender pay gap and understanding of the data
• CA ANZ, CPA, IPA get together on the gender pay gap like they did on mental health
• A redo of the CA ANZ Narrowing the Gender Playbook that has more teeth https://www.charteredaccountantsanz.com/news-and-analysis/news/accountants-urged-to-act-on-uncomfortable-numbers?cid=E~D~GPG_Launch~CAANZ~202202 

Captain Obvious:

What gets measured gets done