The Emergence of a Global and Elite Talent Pool
By now, companies worldwide are well aware that the Pandemic accelerated remote work culture. It began for safety reasons and expanded due to work-life balance priorities. In what we can now refer to as a previous era, most desk employees were required to show up at the office Monday through Friday. With remote work, they began saving time on the logistics associated with commuting. This also meant they could move a little further from the home office. They could now explore that bigger home for their family in a city or neighborhood that would have been unthinkable before when factoring in their commute time.
The concept of remote work has continued to ripple rapidly across the job market. First, companies like Airbnb began announcing work-from-anywhere policies within a national border like their home in the US. Some companies now will consider candidates across national borders. This will eventually lead to a global elite talent pool.
A decade ago, you only needed to compete for that new position with local candidates. Sure, if you lived in large metropolitan cities, there could still be many candidates, but you didn’t have to interview against a financial whiz or someone with multiple master's degrees from around the world. You only competed with candidates within a reasonable commute to the office or candidates willing to relocate for the role.
This goes both ways. Candidates are no longer restricted to only applying to jobs they can commute to. They, too, have many more options they can consider as remote work is being cemented as the new normal.
Sales leaders are experiencing a new trend in recruiting top talent. The most talented candidates demand to know the company’s technology stack to support the role they’re interviewing for. What tools will they be using? Are these tools modern or from fifteen years ago? Soon, most average candidates will ask this question and prioritize accepting positions with employers that provide them with modern tools. This makes sense as those tools will be a key factor in their ability to succeed.
CFOs, be ready!
If this trend has not reached you yet, it's coming. Be ready for the first interviewee who begins drilling you on the technology stack you have deployed to support the role they are interviewing for. If the answer is that while you have plans to modernize things at some point, today they will have access to as many spreadsheet files as their heart desires, don’t be surprised if they decline your offer to join your team. Likewise, if you boast of a system installed ten to fifteen years ago, don’t be surprised to receive a similar response.
Study after study demonstrates the incredible loss of time to support manual FP&A activities based on spreadsheets and older and rigid point solutions. Some credible studies, including this one conducted by the Association for Financial Professionals, peg this number at 75%. Manual activities contributing to this massive leak of labor productivity include copying & pasting, consolidating files manually, managing a gazillion versions of the same template, sending files back and forth on email, correcting constant human errors, and much more.
Again, don’t be surprised if soon, the job candidates you're super excited to onboard aren’t amazingly passionate about joining a team that wastes up to 75% of their time on manual processes.
FP&A software designed to help finance and accounting teams run a more automated and efficient back office now has a new purpose - to attract top talent!
While there are several great FP&A software options to consider, do take a look at Finlogic.io, as it provides excellent ease of use, lower total cost of ownership, and addresses the most complex planning challenges.