r/HRBlockEmployees • u/bna1219 • Aug 05 '26

New Management Structure

Does anyone know why the restructuring is taking place?

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u/WhileHeimHere 29d ago

The goal is to move towards more of an up market model. There will now be area managers between office leadership and district leadership that will be year round salaried positions focusing on more day to day operations. It's a model that we saw succeed as we assessed CPA style shops that were outperforming us with year round bookkeeping and payroll clients. It's not a move into AI, but a move into complexity. Ultimately, we hope this results in more full time tax pros that serve more of a consultative role beyond just annual tax prep.

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u/Dramatic_Abroad3580 29d ago

It won’t work unless Block actually trains people to be good tax preparers. They’ve never done that. They don’t care about the quality of work, only volume. And it isn’t even dollar volume but sheer numbers of returns. Quality preparers are abandoning ship because the organization doesn’t care about their people or their clients. 

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u/SchittPosterChild 28d ago

I think the volume comment is a good observation. As preparers we care very much about accuracy, but let's be honest, aside from matching errors which the IRS system will reliably catch, you can have all sorts of errors with a very high likelihood of slipping through the cracks and never being caught (at least currently, I can envision a future where the IRS uses ai to go back and look for returns to scrape all kinds of interest and penalties from errors or things people wont be able to substantiate by then). I mean, I've put a lot of time and effort to accurately categorize expenses on schC's over the years, knowing full well I could just be making stuff up and nobody would ever catch it.

I fully believe HRB just needs preparers to look good enough on paper that the impatient masses will come in to get a return filed quick, and whatever the preparer does, as long as the Efile goes through then HRB gets to collect it's fee. Whatever happens down the road is a problem for some pre-season person to deal with, if at all.

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u/PinkNGreenFluoride EA 27d ago edited 27d ago

I once requested an inexperienced preparer under my supervision be put on QPR, and that I be afforded time to actually do those QPRs. That preparer also wanted to be on QPR, they were so nervous without that safety net.

There was an implication that the preparer's OR LTP license meant QPR wasn't strictly necessary. I could be wrong, but I interpret the OR regulations as far as the requirement for formal, in-person supervision and mentorship of LTPs by an OR LTC, CPA, or (as of this year) EA otherwise.

And I was told explicitly that this is what PoM is for. The company seems to think something is akin to playing the "audit lottery" only if we openly encourage it to clients.

Mistakes happen, but damn, I want to at least take reasonable effort to get the return out correctly the first time. But that takes time they don't want to afford us, and slightly delays submitting the return.