In this age of skills shortages, it's interesting to read how the Big Four are going about managing, keeping and attracting their talent. The big accounting firms could also teach other companies a thing or two about people management, according to an interesting piece in The Economist.

The piece Accounting for good people details how they go about it with targets for staff turnover, careful policies to persuade people to stay longer (particularly in their policies for women who account for half theri recruits but only one quarter of their partners) and even getting former employees in alumni programs to act as recruitment agents and drum up new business.

Still, it will be interesting to watch how this plays out. Will their good management practices continue if the skills shortage turns out to be cyclical? And would it continue if there was an economic downturn?