The Great Resignation Rages On and Impacts the CFO’s ability to Deliver Results

An article published in the beginning of the year by Amanda Lacone with Bloomberg touched on the talent shortage of corporate accountants. As the year nears its close, this issue has not gone away for CFOs. The trend often referred to as the Great Resignation has left a toll on the corporate accounting and finance practices. The pandemic and other factors gave rise to millions of workers to press the reset button on their lives and careers. Many workers had been on autopilot year after year and the change of habit forced by the pandemic may have caused many to rethink their value system related to work-life balance, and as a result their career paths and goals.

Amanda describes the resignation impact as:

Roughly 4.3 million Americans quit their jobs in December, when 10.9 million jobs were open, according to data the federal government released this month. How many of those resigning were accountants and auditors isn’t clear, but the unemployment rate for these professionals averaged just over 3% in 2021, lower than the national unemployment rate, Labor Department estimates show.

While this refers to 2021 going into 2022, we now know this shrinkage of the talent pool is not going away. As 2022 progressed,  the Great Resignation has given rise to its close cousin, Quiet Quitting. Quiet Quitting refers to workers who choose to stay employed but have given up on performance and advancement. They lower their effort to the minimal amount to remain in their current position. A more recent article on the GreekReporter covers this topic.

The combination of the Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting can insert unprecedented risk into the CFOs office's ability to deliver timely and accurate information and assets to the business and stakeholders.

While there could be many human capital and cultural strategies to offset this risk, one technology strategy involves finally giving up the longstanding hold-out of finance teams to modernize their systems. Far too many corporate finance and accounting teams continue to rely on disconnected and dated systems or simply depend entirely on spreadsheets.

The issue with this reluctance to install modern FP&A platforms that drive more automation is the inefficiency in producing results within these departments. Studies peg the time wasted by finance and accounting teams who lack access to modern technology at an astounding  75%. This means these operations rely far more on manual labor than should be required if they had adopted systems that produce more automation, workflow and data control. One method for CFOs to de-risk the negative impacts of Quiet Quitting and Resignations is to make their existing teams more efficient with a modern FP&A platform. A modern technology platform can unify all data and processes and drive an incredible amount of efficiency. These gains can allow a smaller team to withstand the impact of resignations and quiet quitting within their ranks to get their jobs done.

‍FinLogic.io offers CFOs a great option to deploy a modern platform to manage their accounting and finance functions at a reasonable cost of ownership.

‍Read the Full Bloomberg Article

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