FAR Masterclass about “What do we already know about…? The Loss of Talent – a Threat to Audit Quality” on Wednesday 16 May 2018 at Nyenrode Business Universiteit in Breukelen, the Netherlands. In this masterclass one of the FAR Research Teams, Frank Moers and Judith Künneke, shared their scientific insights on the drivers of potential talent loss and its consequences in terms of audit quality. Besides the detrimental effects on audit quality, talent loss is incredibly costly for organizations that rely on knowledge workers. In audit firms, highly trained employees usually leak out after the organization has incurred the major part of the training cost, thereby generating high replacement costs. To counterbalance these consequences, it is important for team leaders, managers, and human resources to understand how to manage and positively influence talent. Based on their insights and interactive (table group) discussions, we aimed for a mutually informative exchange between auditing practice and research on this topic.

The FAR Masterclass, chaired by Olof Bik, was of interest to audit practitioners and firm management, auditing standards setters, audit supervisors, auditing students, auditing teachers and audit scientists. The masterclass was open to everyone working in the field of accountancy.