Friday 27 April is my final day as a Pracademic, ending 12 weeks of working as a file accountant at Worrells on the Gold Coast . During that time I have documented my thoughts and reflections in my weekly blogs. I have gained much from my pracademic experience in terms of industry/ professional knowledge which in turn has informed my teaching practices. Currently I am developing a number of case files to be used by Griffith commerce students ( undergraduate and postgraduate ) studying corporate and personal insolvency.
More importantly however are the relationships I have made witht the staff at Worrells GC Office. At a time when the Banking Royal Commission has everyone focussed on "corporate culture" my experience working at Worrells has been very interesting, informative, positive and enjoyable. Thank you to all the staff members at Worrells for their patience, kindness, good humour and inclusiveness. It was a pleasure working with you all.
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This week I was reminded by an insolvency colleague that the role of a Pracademic is dual focussed.
Pracademics are one of the means by which industy/ professions can contribute to tertiary curriculums so as to maintain their currency and relevance. Bur pracademics offer much more. Pracademics provide employers with low-cost or no-cost short term professional help. For example, my placement at Worrells has meant that more time can be spent investigating potential offences by corporate directors and preparing reports to submit to ASIC. Pracademics also increase the opportunities for consulting, research and technology transfer between universities and industry, as one of a pracademic's key functions is to actively question current practice. In my pracademic placement at Worrells one of my agreed objectives is to actively question and reflect upon insolvency practice and procedure within the Worrells office and provide commentary and recommendations thereon. During this, Week 10 of my 12 week sojourn at Worrells, I provided Jason Bettles ( Gold Coast Partner) with a number of recommendations regarding administrative procedures, staff engagement, and opportunities to further digitise insolvency compliance procedures at the Gold Coast office. I hope that some of my recommendations will be implemented and that my experience at Worrells will inspire my academic colleagues and potential employers to seek out their own mututally beneficial pracademic experiences . In my role as a pracademic at Worrells I continually make comparisons between my two working environments:
File accountant at a medium sized insolvency practice on the Gold Coast and Senior Lecturer, teaching and researching in company, business and Insolvency law at Griffith University. A common goal in both environments is Engagement. The Higher Education sector generally experiences issues such as poor student retention rates, a preference for surface learning by students as opposed to deep learning and an ongoing need for students to be autonomous independent learners. In an effort to address such issues raising and maintaining student engagement levels is regularly identified as a teaching and learning goal at Griffith University. At Worrells, happy, focused and appreciated professional and administrative staff are essential for meeting productivity targets and retention of staff. At Griffith University, a colleague and I have experienced some measure of success in raising and maintaining student engagement levels by using technology tools as part of our teaching practices. Business students generally find the study of law challenging as they may perceive their law courses to be boring, difficult and only relevant to lawyers. To transform such student perceptions, we have created an engaging learning environment where students understand and appreciate the law’s relevance to business. At Worrells staff are engaged at work by participating in social activities both within and outside of working hours, such as competing in a Trivia team competition, casual clothes Friday, early finish with drinks and snacks 4.30 pm each Friday, and staff birthday morning teas. However, more importantly there are regular, inclusive and consultative staff meetings and a rewards-based team productivity incentive scheme. All of which make for a happy and successful workforce. This week three events occurred which emphasised to me the risks and opportunities of data mining and analysis. The first event was the reporting of allegations that Cambridge Analytica acquired and used data mined from Facebook users to target political advertisements in the United Kingdom and United States with what would seem to be apparent success. There is no disputing the value and usefulness of collecting and analysing data: researchers have been doing so for thousands of years. The risk is where data is collected and subsequently used without the informed consent of its source.
The second event was my attendance at a Worrells Breakfast seminar where a colleague spoke of the specific reasons for the failure of businesses in the Construction, Transport, Manufacturing and Retail industries in Australia ( ASIC identifes these industries as experiencing the highest levels of corporate insolvencies in Australia). The presenter then outlined preventative measures which businesses in these varying industries could adopt to avoid failure but also to achieve sustainable success. A common measure in all four industries was the need for "strategic planning" or "knowing when to enter and exit a business". Regular collection and analysis of a business's financial and operating data, comparing such data against readily available industry profiles and statistics, would assist in this strategic planning process. The third ocassion occurred while I was analysing responses collected from a survey of Insolvency Practitioners carried out earlier this year and late last year. Those surveyed were asked the Question: Does your insolvency practice collect and analyse its operations' costs and revenues to determine how to deliver insolvency services cheaper, faster and more efficiently in future? Of those who responded, 70.4% answered "Yes" and provided examples of their analysis including: financial accounts, the source of insolvency appointments, final fees and staff productivity levels. This would appear to confirm that Insolvency Practitioners " do practise what they preach". However, there is still room for improvement as 29.6% responded "No" citing a lack of time as one reason for not doing so. The increased availability of data analysis tools within accounting /business software programs and industry/profession profiles (at a reasonable cost) may assist in reducing this percentage in the future. One distinguishing feature between my academic position at University and working as a File Accountant at Worrells is completing my electronic time sheet every working day.
At University full-time staff with a balanced work profile of 40:40:20 (40% teaching focussed; 40% reserch focussed; and 20% service focussed ) are expected to work 1725 hours: 690 hours teaching; 690 hours researching and 345 hours service within a trimester. Over a twelve week trimester staff teach a number of weekly classes that are at most 3 hours in duration : either a 3 hour workshop or a more traditional 2 hour lecture and 1 hour tutorial/seminar. Workload models estimate staff preparation times for these classes as well as allocated hours for marking of assessment items. So while there is an accounting of workload on a holistic basis, there is not the same individual itemised accounting which arises when completing a time sheet, preparing the fee invoice ( with or without write-offs of WIP) and the scrutiny of having succeeded or failed in meeting your time production targets. Lately reliance on the time-costing method (being time reasonably spent @ standard hourly rates) has been questioned as not necessarily providing the proper measure of reasonable remuneration for Insolvency Practitioners , although it would appear to still be the most popular method in practice. Instead value-added pricing has been recommedned as a more appropriate altervative. But how, for example, can a Registered Trustee provide value to a bankrupt debtor? I was given a timely reminder by a fellow File Accountant this week when he made a much needed phone call on behalf of a Part X (personal insolvency agreement) debtor to assist her in removing an unpaid phone account debt which was wrongly recorded against her credit file. In making this less than 6 minute ( 1 unit of chargeable time) phone call the File Accountant provided much needed VALUE for the debtor as she gained relief from a particular liabiity which was preventing her from commencing a "fresh start" - a specific AIM of Insolvency Law. The next question is - what dollar value would you place on this telephone call? As Thursday 8th March was International Women's Day I thought it would be interesting to consider the representation of women within the Insolvency Profession.
As Insolvency Practitioners (IPs) are drawn largely from the ranks of accountants or lawyers, I commenced my investigations looking at how many women as opposed to men are CPA ( Certified Practising Accountant) members in comparison to how many women as opposed to men are admitted to the legal profession. Looking first at CPA Membership. In 1978, the year I commenced my accounting degree, women comprised 5% of the ASA (Australian Society of Accountants , precursor to CPA Australia) membership. Thankfully, this figure has grown, such that today about 47% of CPA Australia members are women. Similarly in the legal profession the proportion of women to men are evenly spread with the Law Society of NSW releasing its National Profile of Solicitors Report 2016 showing female solicitors comprising 50.1% of the population of solicitors, slightly outumbering the male solicitors at 49.9% of the population. While pleasing these figures do not translate to the same percentages of women in leadership positions in either Accounting or Law professions. In 2016 the Women's Lawyers Associaiton of NSW found that women accounted for just 18% of equity partners in law firms. Similarly in Accounting only one in five (20%) partners of Big 4 accounting professional firms are women. So how does the Insolvency profession rank in terms of women representation. ? A recent national survey of Registered Trustees in Banktuptcy and Registered Liquidators showed 83% surveyed were men, with only 17% of those surveyed were women. While disappointing. given the experience levels of the women surveyed as shown in the following table, these numbers are considered consistent with the percentage of women in leadership positions within accounting and legal professions. Years of experience < 5 years 10-15 years 15-20 years 20-25 years 30-35 years %of women IPs surveyed 8.2% 27.2% 27.2% 9.1% 18.3% Like the Accounting and Legal professions it would appear that there are sufficient numbers of women entering the iInsolvency profession, but these women are not being retained long term. This is a significant loss for for not only the accounting and legal professions but also it would seem the Insolvency Profession as well. It occurred to me this week that academics and insolvency practitioners (IPs) to some extent share a common problem. Academics - How to incentivise studetns to attend classes on campus?
IPs - How to incentivise creditors, if not to attend creditors meetings, to send in their proxy votes so that resolutions may be passed? For academics a possible solution has been the replacement of the "traditional lecture" with "flipped classes" and "active learning" where students complete activities and exercises which apply the theory they have independently learnt outside of class. Students are incentivised to attend the flipped class as it adds VALUE to their learning, providing opportunities to ask questions and seek explanations from teaching staff. How then can creditors GAIN VALUE and be similarly incentivised to provide their proxy when a common complaint of creditors is that only the IP gains value ( in terms of further remuneration) from the creditors providing their proxy. Is it time for a new model where IPs no longer enjoy priority for their remuneration payment or is there a better alternative? Your thoughts... Having listened to a fellow file accountant's phone conversation with a "difficult" creditor this week I pondered upon what were the essential skills of a successful file accountant. Aside from a knowledge of bankruptcy, corporate insolvency laws and accounting it is essential that a file accountant possess what might be considered by some as soft skills. These skills include excellent communication skills ( both oral and written) which are deployed answering client inquiries over the phone or by email, drafting reports for creditors' meetings or drafting reports to ASIC. Time management skills are also essential so that file accountants are able to prioritise work, and meet deadlines. File accountants must also possess initiative, so they are able to think laterally, see the bigger picture and thereby provide greater value to their client.
These latter skills are also grouped together under the banner of employability skills. Graduates who demonstrate such employability skills are highly valued and sought after by employers. How can university students acquire such skills? Experiential learning activities such as work integrated learning (WIL) or internships provide opportunities to acquire such skills. However WIL placements or internships, may involve a significant cost, be of poor quality, or not exist as students and employers may not be motivated to engage in such experiential learning opportunities. An alternative means for students to acquire such skills is for Universities and academics to replicate the working environment for students on campus with authentic learning materials and assessment items such as case studies and practice workpapers which reflect current practice. Pracademics, meaning persons who span the boundaries between practitioners and academics, can fill the gap between theory and practice and at the same time create closer ties between the Tertiary sector and Industry / Professions to advance research as well. This week over lunch the office conversation turned to the future of the Insolvency Profession- what is the role of an Insolvency Practitioner (IP) and how that role is changing given the encroachment of artificial intelligence into the IP's work space. Artificial intelligence provides an opportunity for IPs to expand their focus ( which in the past has centred on dealing with the aftermath of insolvency and more recently, the possible restructure or rescue of near insolvent businesses) to encompass providing proactive measures and advice which alert businesses so that insolvency may be avoided.
Making comparative industry specific financial data publicly available ( eg. in the form of benchmarks) may increase the chances of earlier detection of poor financial management and increase the opportunity for corrective action before insolvency. Incorporating such comparative analysis in a phone "app" may increase the likelihood of its regular use , especially by small business, as an ALERT tool. What do we need for such an "APP" to be created? Certainly collaboration between the Insolvency Regulators (AFSA and ASIC) who have access to vital statistical data, Insolvency Practitioners and Academics for their expertise regarding insolvency indicators, software developers to write the code to create the "app", and a Project Manager to ensure the "app" is created and distributed to business. How can we make this happen? -Is such a project a possible candidate for an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant? After three years of planning my pracademic experience: making connections, building a relationship, pitching my proposal to my pracademic employer, and successfully applying for leave from my university , MY FIRST DAY IS SOON TO COMMENCE.
There is a mixture of anxiety and excitement which comes with a new job, regardless of the age or experience of the new employee. My anxiety arises from my fear that my technology skills will fall short of what is desired. After all I will be working at Worrells ( which has been a paperless office for a significant number of years). I am excited, however, as already I can see my pracademic experience informing my teaching. Having read and signed where requested, all of the online pre-commencement induction documents ( comprising 19 documents of varying lengths) I am prompted to include examples and activities of ethical work practices and fair work obligations of employers and employees into the curriculum of the Business Law course at Griffith. Bring on the challenges and opportunities of my pracademic experience - I can't wait! |
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February 2018
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