Hiring & retaining staff is the most difficult task faced by CFOs, says survey

According to a survey by Gartner, hiring and retaining staff is the most difficult task facing CFOs over the next 12 months.

Gartner polled 234 CFOs in July 2022 and asked them to indicate their top three most difficult tasks over the next 12 months.

The majority of the respondents (54 percent) chose to hire and retain staff as the most difficult task, followed by forecasting (36 percent) and cutting the right costs (35 percent). These three made up the top three challenges faced.

While raising compensation for top performers is inevitable, higher compensation alone will not solve the talent challenge and will ultimately pressure margins if deployed broadly.

Organizations must also refine their employee value proposition (EVP) to acknowledge a new reality of expectations for increased flexibility, per the report.

In addition to reinventing the EVP, CFOs should reassess their organisation’s recruitment efforts in collaboration with HR partners to ensure critical roles are being prioritized and more avenues of detecting talent are activated across the organisation, the report pointed out.

Marko Horvat, Vice President – Research, Gartner Finance practice, said, “The data from CFOs align with what we are hearing from HR leaders, namely that competition for talent is expected to become fiercer over the medium term, and retaining that talent will become more challenging. CFOs will need to deploy a variety of strategies to ensure critical roles remain filled while also protecting margins.”

“The top three challenges reflect CFOs’ struggles to manage against a backdrop of persistent inflation and unusually high macroeconomic uncertainty. CFOs need to identify the few critical areas where investments should be accelerated, such as human capital and digital investments, while optimising costs against a backdrop of stubbornly high inflation; this is no easy task,” Horvat added.

Source: GWFM NEWS