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Thank you very much for taking the time to provide your review and feedback on Cotton & Company. Many of the “pros” you listed are feedback points that we are proud to hear from the majority of our people. Culture, appreciation, and collaboration are some of the cornerstones of our firm. Without them, we could never have achieved the success and industry-leading recognition that we enjoy today.
For the sake of transparency, I would like to address a few of the “cons” you listed. Certainly, at times, some may find particular tasks or projects to be boring or repetitive. However, we strive to offer a wide variety of opportunities, both with respect to the day-to-day work and non-project activities at the firm. For example, we offer multiple employee-driven committees in which individuals can work as part of a team to champion and drive activities, awareness, and collaboration on topics that are important to them. Regarding the hours worked by our professionals, we are one of the only firms to publicly post the annual average working hours for our employees. At times, we certainly may be understaffed on a particular project/engagement and ask that individuals put in some extra time to help complete the work. However, we are proud to say that this is relatively rare and, when it does occur, tends to be short-lived, as our talent acquisition team is tremendously effective in identifying and hiring top talent when we have open recruiting needs. I’d also like to address your comments regarding compensation. I simply have to respectfully disagree with your assessment, as we work hard to maintain up-to-date objective data regarding market compensation within our industry. Are we the highest paying firm out there? Often not. Frankly, we can’t necessarily pay the highest salary for a given role, as that often requires the person to work exorbitantly high hours to generate the revenue that would allow for such a salary. Hence, not only are we aware that some positions may pay more at other companies, we intentionally do not compete with such offerings, as it would require an unwanted and significant alteration in our culture of respecting a generous work-life balance. That said, very often, we provide immediate performance bonuses and salary increases to employees who are excelling in their roles. These practices have led directly to us receiving individual accolades and various industry top workplace awards.
Again, I appreciate your thoughtful feedback and would welcome a direct conversation, if you are interested. Please feel free to contact me at any time.
Thank you,
Dave Cotton
dcotton@cottoncpa.com
