employees
About us
Success for our clients, our people, our communities and our firm
Shared ambition
We start with the needs and ambitions of our clients and work as one to make success happen for them, our people, our communities and our firm.
Our values
Why work for us?
Our people are the main reason why our colleagues enjoy working here. We nurture a strong sense of belonging with an open, caring team culture, so that everyone feels valued.
We’re a growing, 980+ strong team. This means we have the breadth of expertise to help our clients achieve their goals, with all the opportunities for career progression that come with this. If you join us, we’ll help you shape your career path and nurture the professional and personal skills you’ll need to succeed.
We’ll always do our best by our people, so they can always do the best for our clients. Sounds good? It is, that’s why we’ve been named one of the UK’s Best Workplaces by Great Place to Work and ranked on the Top 100 Apprenticeships list from the Department of Education.
To see more from our people check out our careers pages on Facebook or Instagram.
PKF Francis Clark in numbers
clients
offices
annual turnover
The largest independent chartered accountancy firm in South West England. Established in 1919.
Global reach as part of PKF International – ranked as the 12th largest provider of accountancy services in the UK by Accountancy Age.
Our vision and values explained…
Our values underpin everything we do, guiding the way we interact with each other, how we behave and work together to achieve our ambitions.
Lucinda: Here at PKF Francis Clark we believe that the success of our clients is the success of us, and actually if our clients are successful, we’ll be successful, we want to share in their ambition. Our values really underpin how the leadership team approach, how we manage our firm. We as partners really want our people to feel that they are the most important parts of our business.
Caption: Commitment to put the client first
Paul: We want you to build that relationship with the clients, over and above delivering their expectations. Go beyond that, spend time with their clients and understanding their requirements, and actually living and breathing those clients so that the clients view you as part of their business.
Amy: We have such a strong sense of purpose. So, it’s about embracing new ways of working, embracing new technology, and then thinking inventively about how we can apply that to clients to help them to achieve their business aims and ambitions.
Caption: Courage to be ambitious
Amy: The courage to be ambitious as being about ambitious about your own career and your career goals. So thinking about your own career development, what do you want to achieve, and how can we support you to achieve that? We can have training programmes, we have lots of apprenticeships programmes, we have great professional qualifications, technical learning and fantastic leadership programmes.
Paul: Because we’ve done something a particular way for a long time doesn’t mean to say that can’t change, so be ambitious towards the processes, technology, thinking additionally about how we can provide that service in perhaps a different way, a more efficient way.
Caption: Expertise to deliver excellence
Lucinda: We actively encourage our leaders to take trainees out to client meetings with them, so that they get the opportunity to really understand our client’s ambition. We’re really lucky here at Francis Clark that we’ve got a fantastic internal continuous development programme as well. So whether or not you’re a manager, a director or partner, there’s always something to help you achieve all of the goals that you want to achieve.
Amy: Our managers have regular one to ones, but once a year, we have an in-depth career conversation, where you really get to know people, what’s important to them, and what they want to achieve. We use that to make sure that we are delivering on their learning and development, giving them experience, and the things that are important to them to help them to achieve their goals. We are also very keen to listen, we listen very carefully to our employees, to their needs. We have a quarterly employee survey, where we take feedback and change our actions.
Caption: Compassion to respect everyone
Paul: Compassion and respect, is really looking at your colleagues. This is in addition to diversity and inclusion, and well-being; this is respecting the views of other people, open your mind, be more curious and really trust your staff and look after each other.
Caption: Responsibility to care for each other, our environment and communities
Amy: It’s about being open, approachable, friendly, which is so important for our culture, but it’s also about your health and well-being, being responsible for your own health and well-being. Taking active steps to stay fit and healthy and mentally well. But also looking out for others, looking out for our colleagues and helping them when they might need that little bit of support.
Lucinda: To me, I think being successful really means looking after our people and looking after our planet as well.
Paul: Now, our environmental responsibility we take very seriously and that is not just reducing our carbon footprint in terms of our travel policy, it’s increasing our use of technology, team and zoom calls. We’re also on a journey, looking at accreditation in terms of B Corp and actually assessing the areas that we can improve to ensure that that is something that we achieve in a sensible time frame.
Lucinda: We have green teams in each of the offices and they are looking at the impact the office and our people are having on the environment, and always looking for ways that we can improve and help all of those things.
Paul: We’re a passionate firm, we enjoy what we do. Come and have some fun. Come and join us and be part of that journey and actually enjoy your work.
Lucinda: I would encourage anybody who’s looking at Francis Clark as a potential firm to work for to come in, meet our people, see what we’re all about and see if you feel like you want to be part of the Francis Clark journey.
Hybrid working
Our commitment to hybrid work means that our people have the option to work in any of our offices at any time, and to spend some time working at home (or wherever they want to work!).
The exact details of what hybrid working looks like vary from person to person, depending on the role they do.
History. Our story so far.
We’ve come a long way since our humble beginnings over a century ago when Francis S Clark, or Frank to his colleagues and friends, founded an accountancy practice in Newton Abbot, Devon.
We’ve grown into a dynamic and progressive firm, with more than 980 employees. Our people are based at nine offices across the South of England, and sometimes at home as we’ve embraced hybrid working.
Here are a few milestones along the way…
Our success is founded on a culture of mutual respect and support, empowering our people to do their best work. We work well together, we support each other and we celebrate individual and team successes, giving us the confidence we need to achieve goals, whether that’s for our clients, our people, communities or the firm.
We’ve been around for over a century because we’re continuously developing what we do and how we do it. The world is changing and we’re ready for the opportunities that brings. We have a strategic plan to take us forward, one that prioritises outstanding client service, great employee experience and re-engineering our processes in line with technological change.
Over the years we’ve evolved and adapted in the face of many challenges and opportunities, always putting client service and developing our people at the heart of everything we do.
We’re ambitious for our clients and for our people – that’s who we are, that’s who we’ve always been.
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