Employee Satisfaction and Work-Life Balance in Accounting Firms and Audit Quality

Abstract

SUMMARYThe PCAOB's audit-quality framework posits that superior inputs are essential for achieving high audit quality, and these inputs depend on the accounting firm's ability to recruit and retain quality personnel. However, the link between these inputs and audit quality has gone largely unexplored. We use employees' reviews of accounting firm employers from Glassdoor.com to examine perceptions of these inputs, and test whether accounting firms' internal characteristics explain employee satisfaction and audit quality. Our descriptive evidence suggests that “career opportunities,” “senior management,” and “culture and values” play a more important role in employees' satisfaction than do “compensation and benefits” or “work-life balance.” Although work-life balance is not among the most important factors that are associated with audit employees' job satisfaction, better work-life balance is nonetheless associated with higher audit quality. However, we do not find a significant association between audit-employees' job satisfaction and audit quality.