Many Chartered Accountants take retrenchment as an opportunity to spread their wings into positions requiring greater commercial expertise and experience. Senior financial positions are mainly ‘control’ positions and this makes a lot of accountants assume that they can move into other positions easily. They start turning down purely financial roles and aim at the non-financial ones.

This could be the right move for those who possess both financial and non-financial expertise. It may be a disastrous one for the unlucky ones who will wait until they have lost all hope of getting even that purely financial job they were initially refusing.
After getting retrenched it is always wise to sit down and re-strategise. Use your analytical skills to assess your life, objectives and career path. Decide what you want to do. Look at the opportunities available to you. Do a personal skills assessment. Find out if you need to add other skills to those you already possess.

A chartered accountancy qualification on its own is not necessarily the best qualification for a role requiring greater commercial expertise and exposure. Many consider that accountants do not do well in non-financial positions. Accountants have a reputation of being risk-averse individuals who maintain the business but fail to grow it. The problem with market sentiments is that there is nothing you can do to change them even if they are wrong.

A decision to change a career path should not be forced upon you by retrenchment. It should be well thought out and planned without the pressure of fearing that your retrenchment package will run out before you get another job. Take time to get expert advice from a human resources expert. They know the job market as much as you know your GAAPS and IFRSs. Explain your situation, what you are thinking of going into and ask for their opinion.

All jobs require skills – this includes the guy who brings your tea. You just can’t handle tea sets the way he does. There is a need for accountants to appreciate other roles and their respective qualifications. As a retrenched accountant, it will certainly do you a lot of good to take a marketing course. Diversification also works in qualifications and experience. Learn how they market the products and it will increase your chances of landing a job requiring greater commercial exposure.

Today’s markets and ways of doing business are dynamic. Change management is a necessary skill. If you are comfortable with waiting until the beginning of the next financial year to change the way you report financial data, you’d better stick to a purely financial job.

So make the most of the opportunities that retrenchment can present but do so wisely and realistically.

Let’s see – that means that she had studied at a university for four years, passed two rather challenging qualification exams, and completed articles while experiencing the indignity of being paid goat-herder wages, all in a quest to be referred to as a CA(SA). Several years later, she decided that it was not worth her while to continue paying the Institute its annual membership fee of around R4200, as for one reason or another she felt she wasn’t getting value for that spend – something that any accountant would loath!

Her skills haven’t changed. Her abilities certainly haven’t. But if a company is looking to employ a CA(SA), she can’t be considered.

This raises two questions. Firstly, how many more people are in the same situation? There are allegedly 30 000 (or thereabouts) chartered accountants in South Africa, but how many more are there who are chartered accountants in all but name?

Secondly, why the resistance to keeping their membership up to date? It’s understandable that someone who has pursued the entrepreneurial route stops bothering to continue their membership, but surely for someone in the corporate world it would be regarded as R4200 well spent every year. I know accountants who happily spend that amount on single malt in a month after all!

So what other reasons could there be? One of SAICA’s stated objectives is to “uphold professional standards and integrity”, or words to that effect. Could it be that in the wake of numerous high profile corporate collapses, and the associated audit failure which played an integral part in allowing these towers to be built on dodgy foundations, that an element of cynicism has crept in? Is it just that there is a feeling out there that SAICA doesn’t have much value to add?

What is the feeling out there regarding this issue, all you learned accountant types?

According to Contract Accountants consultant Stuart Welch, it is often assumed that a temp is someone who will be on assignment for a very short period of time, which can be anything from a day to a week, and a contractor is someone brought in for a longer period of time. “This is not actually the case,” he says. “In fact, there is no difference between a temporary employee and a contractor. According to government employee classifications, there is no such thing as a contractor. The categories are defined as: casual employee, employed to do a one off job; temporary employee, who is employed for a fixed period of time; and a permanent employee.”

The difference really arises when it comes to an independent contractor. There is a perception in the market that candidates placed on a temporary basis by recruitment agencies are operating as independent contractors. According to the Basic Conditions of Employment Act and Labour Relations Act, this cannot be the case.

The reason for this is that when an agency places a temp or one is employed directly by a company, the candidate’s job description and day-to-day activities fall directly within the BCEA’s description of what constitutes an employee, albeit a temporary one. As the agency or company they are employed by is deducting the person’s statutory costs, they are considered to be a temporary employee.

The difference is that an independent contractor is not and cannot be an employee. They operate their own business and invoice a client for services rendered. In the same way, an employee cannot be an independent contractor.

Johannesburg has traditionally had more opportunities in Financial Services than Cape Town due to most of the banking sector headquarters being based there. It used to be that if you wanted to get a foothold in a Financial Services career, a move to Johannesburg was on the cards with the likes ABSA, FNB and Standard Bank. Also the JSE is based in Johannesburg, so it seems the logical choice.

But is moving to Johannesburg really the best thing for your career?

If we split Financial Services into Banking, Investments and Insurance we have a different picture. Your well known specialist investment companies (Investec, Coronation, Allan Gray) and insurance companies (Alexander Forbes, Old Mutual, Sanlam) are either well represented or have the head offices in Cape Town. There are even a few Banks based in Cape Town such as Capitec. Whilst retail and business banking is definitely dominant in Johannesburg (ABSA, FNB, Standard).

So consider carefully if relocation is really going to be necessary for your career to flourish in the direction you want it to.