Succession planning as a retention tool: in current tough times, succession planning is emerging as a key tool for attracting and retaining talent; it's also working for smaller companies offering leaner benefits packages.

AuthorMcDonald, Paul
PositionWORKFORCE

Even in today's cautious economic climate, demand for top financial professionals has remained steady, as businesses place an even greater premium on those with expertise in squeezing out additional cost savings, identifying performance improvement opportunities and controlling expenses.

As such, recruiting and retaining highly skilled accounting and finance professionals has become a perennial challenge for financial executives. While the job market has recently become more competitive in many fields, hiring managers on the front lines know that the most acutely needed accounting and finance practitioners are also the hardest to find.

A complicating factor for U.S. employers seeking to hire skilled workers is an unemployment rate that hovers around 2 percent for those with college degrees. But the struggle to locate top-flight financial talent is a global issue. Fifty-four percent of finance and human resource managers surveyed across 20 countries for Robert Half International's 2008 Global Financial Employment Monitor reported challenges filling accounting and finance roles. Asian markets--Hong Kong and Japan in particular--are experiencing especially severe recruiting difficulties.

Talent shortfalls are spread across different financial specialties, but the toughest positions to fill appear to be those of executives such as CFOs and directors of accounting. In addition, there are candidate shortages for operational support, financial analysis, general accounting and controller positions.

Taking a Broader View

This picture isn't being helped by demographic trends. As millions of baby boomers approach their mid-60s, their inevitable, but perhaps gradual, exit from the global workforce creeps ever closer. And upcoming generational groups simply aren't sufficiently large or skilled enough to adequately replace those departing the workforce.

Against this backdrop, financial executives must redouble their efforts to develop and retain the talent they have and attract more top performers to their organizations. Small and mid-size organizations, in particular, may have to work especially hard to keep their best people and ensure them a pipeline of capable talent. Not only do they have a smaller pool of employees to retain and develop, but larger companies may be perceived as having more to offer candidates and may, in fact, be able to entice them with more attractive pay and benefits.

Companies can best address staffing issues by taking a bigger-picture view of their needs. Succession planning initiatives can help organizations address in a holistic manner the seemingly separate issues of recruitment, retention and planning for an organization's future. But succession planning may seem like a luxury in economic cycles where everyone in the finance department has an overflowing plate of projects and, in many companies, people are concerned about the direction of the business.

The number of finance professionals planning to work longer than the traditional retirement age could also be forcing succession planning efforts to take a back seat to other priorities. In fact, many finance chiefs may be deliberately ignoring the subject of leadership transition because they don't envision themselves going anywhere.

A majority (83 percent) of 1,400 CFOs polled by Robert Half Management Resources said they have not identified a successor for their position. They primary...

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