Leaders face shifting talent challenges

Indeed, employees are less positive than finance leaders about work across the board. The survey of 10,000 ACCA members worldwide shows that younger professionals are increasingly looking to side hustles (43% of Gen Z have a secondary job or business project) to boost income and satisfy their entrepreneurial ambitions (57% of Gen Z want to run their own business). And 62% of employees believe they need more mental health support from their organisation, compared with 51% of finance leaders.

‘These findings raise the question of the extent to which leaders truly understand some of the challenges that the rest of the workforce is currently facing and how aware they are of the concerns being identified,’ concludes ACCA. Ways for leaders to keep more in tune with their staff include conducting regular engagement surveys, focus group discussions and 360-degree feedback, and running reward and recognition programmes.

Development

Training is also a hotspot for finance staff. Their concerns about AI preparedness should be ringing alarm bells for employers: 44% of all respondents say they have insufficient opportunities to learn about AI, while 55% of junior and entry-level workers and 47% of middle management are concerned they are not developing the skills needed for the future, compared with 37% of board members.

With the integration of AI into business models and processes accelerating worldwide, the training question comes with real urgency.

‘There are many interventions that organisations can use to help diagnose upskilling gaps,’ the five key areas focus says, citing continuous skills audits, skills-mapping across the organisation, the creation of a learning culture, the introduction of mentoring programmes and the use of performance management processes to target key skills development areas.

‘Diversity’ evolves

Inclusivity has also emerged as an issue for leadership, though perhaps not in the way many might expect. The survey found that 45% of all respondents believe their workplaces focus on ‘certain’ markers of diversity, with younger employees particularly concerned about social mobility.

Unavoidably, the results beg a question about the extent to which equality, diversity and inclusion policies are working to embrace all groups in the workplace. It is a question worth considering, as many jurisdictions can expect more regulation on this topic in the future.

‘Some diversity markers, such as neurodiversity in the workplace, are more emergent,’ says ACCA’s report, ‘but there’s an increasingly strong moral compunction and business case for organisations to reappraise and understand which diversity initiatives could be further endorsed.’

Where to work

Since the pandemic, organisations have also faced a question about where their employees work. The pandemic forced many to work from home, but the past year has seen a definite drive to bring employees back into offices.

The survey reveals there may be a considerable gap between the policies implemented by employers and the desires of staff, 76% of whom declare hybrid (ie splitting work location between home and the office) to be their preferred mode of working.

Worse, there are signs that senior employees are working from home while younger colleagues are expected to toil in the office. There are risks in this, and a warning for managers concerned about knowledge sharing inside their organisations.

‘Our analysis suggests that where return-to-office mandates are being enforced, younger and more junior employees see less flexibility in the application of these policies,’ says the report. ‘This creates potential mistrust across the workforce and may also impact the effectiveness of learning and training more junior staff if more senior and experienced employees are less office-present.’

Retention

All these concerns, plus workforce pay expectations (41% expect an annual salary rise of 11% or more) naturally lead to questions about retaining staff.

As the report concludes: ‘Establishing a better understanding of the different levers and interventions that aid retention is critical for organisations in workplace environments where talent shortages are particularly significant.’

It is no surprise that attitudes and ambitions among finance professionals are changing around the world. Significant pressures have hit the global economy in recent years while it is difficult to keep pace with the rate of technology development. Finance leaders must play a role in facing these challenges. And one place to start is the needs of employees.