Financial leaders share their pain points and progress in competing for talent

CFOs want to retain their accounting, financial planning, and analysis talent. But keeping those employees on board hasn’t been easy in the current environment since their skills are in high demand.

“It is very hard to retain staff, and there’s clearly a shortage of talent, especially in finance talent,” Barbara Salazar, CFO at E2 Consulting Engineers, a provider of environmentally focused services, said during the Controllers Council’s virtual panel discussion on Tuesday. Recruiting comes with its challenges, Salazar said.

“Some people who were just hired, resigned,” she explained. “Some people used our offer to negotiate with their present employer. So, we wasted a lot of time and did not receive new hires. It’s exceptionally hard to hire new people right now.”

The Great Resignation may be cooling somewhat. In October, 4 million people quit their job, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Wednesday. It was slightly less than in September and well below the record 4.5 million who quit in November 2021. But don’t exhale just yet. “Career cushioning,” when an employee begins to line up a new job while still working at their current one, is increasing due to a possible recession that is making holding a job more difficult, Fortune reports. 

“We’re looking at the salaries competitors are offering and trying to do the same pattern,” and reviewing compensation structure, Salazar said. As CFO, she’s also aiming to build a pipeline for promotions. That includes career advancement in financial planning and analysis, or FP&A, Salazar said. “You have to do this for your key employees,” she said. 

FP&A involves budgeting, forecasting, and analysis, and those workers are increasingly playing a big role in how the CFO’s office executes strategy. “FP&A shouldn’t just be the team of people who are accessing and analyzing the data,” Michele Tam, a senior expert at consulting firm McKinsey, recently told me. “They should be taking that a step further to really think about what does this mean for my organization?”

Christine Gu, chief accounting officer at Enjoy Technology, a retail tech company, started by Ron Johnson, a former Apple retail strategist and chief executive of J.C. Penney, shared her perspective.

“We have experienced staff shortages, starting from the second half of 2021,” Gu said. Along with staff leaving for new opportunities, one of the factors was “work-life…