Elevating finance talent for the future

A blog post by Beth Kaplan, Kristalyn Yancy, and Elizebeth Varghese

Organizations face new challenges as they evolve their approach to attracting and empowering a future workforce amid a transformation and an evolving finance and talent landscape. Organizations can create new finance leaders who align with the business and workforce demands of the future through a strategic approach to attracting and upskilling talent.

Here are some insights into how companies are transforming their finance and controllership workforce, new strategies for upskilling finance talent to be technologically fluent creative collaborators, and considerations for developing a future workforce with employee-centric experiences on a refreshed career trajectory.

Prioritizing talent amid a constantly evolving market for the finance workforce of the future

Market dynamics continue to affect and shape the finance organization. These key dynamics include inflationary pressures, increased industry consolidation and convergence, technological acceleration, and new regulatory requirements. These external pressures have accelerated the pace toward the future of finance by activating key drivers that have had an impact on workforce priorities in the current environment and will likely continue to do so long into the future.

Given all these change agents, what can finance leaders do to work through the workforce disruption and unlock the value in this transformation? First and foremost, the time to start that alignment is here. The time is now for finance to lead a talent transformation as these dynamics continue to shape controllership.

Finance needs to work strategically with business leaders to assess and anticipate the impact of continued disruption and tackle the most pressing needs—growth, cost reduction, and implementation—to unlock value in the short and long term. In addition, it is necessary to understand where organizations are with their workforce and the workplace ecosystem in order to prioritize talent outcomes that can drive business outcomes. With a clear understanding of the current workforce, some leading practices can guide organizational leaders to further strategically align a future workforce and business value.

A watershed moment for the finance workforce

It is a watershed moment for the finance workforce. In today’s human-powered economy, nothing should be more important to a business or organization than its people. In this paradigm-shifting landscape, work is no longer defined by jobs but by skills required to meet business outcomes. The workforce is no longer defined by traditional workers but by a diverse set of players with diverse experiences. The workplace is no longer operating as a fixed place where people have shared experiences, and the acceleration of technology and the emergence of Generative AI are also shaping workplace cultures and markets.

Adapting controllership to new ways of working

Finance leaders should focus less on the broad scope of a finance role and more on individual skills to create a more dynamic finance organization. Skills are discrete, tangible knowledge or abilities at the individual talent level. Along with technology, they enable true transformation. In a recent survey, 90% of executives said they are actively experimenting with skills-based approaches to attracting and attaining workers, and 70% of workers say this shift would improve their experience at work.¹

It is time for organizations across the financial landscape to realize the benefits of a skills-focused workforce. For workers, this strengthens internal mobility and retention with more flexible movement and value-add for talent. Creating and promoting a more attractive candidate experience for an organization also helps improve the brand and work culture. For executives, skills prioritization drives hiring efficiency by placing talent more effectively. Furthermore, organizations can more effectively anticipate and adapt to change. Placing talent where they offer the most value as an individual enables organizations to fully optimize value creation.

But what skills should they focus on, and what may be necessary for the future? Before shifting to a more skills-based approach to talent, it is crucial to understand the abilities to look out for now and the skills that are likely required for a thriving workforce of the future.

Developing a talent strategy for the future finance workforce

Work outcomes and a cohesive strategy set the foundation for value creation across the finance organization. Find the skills that inform a talent strategy, tie it to the work and desired work outcomes, and navigate from there.

Some questions to ask to help identify talent skills

• What is the work? What work is most valuable to our business?
• Where and how do we execute the work? What is our service delivery model (SDM)?
• Who does the work, and what skills do we need to execute? How do we identify who needs which skills and enable our people to perform the work?
• How do we equip talent with these skills? Where are our skills gaps and how can we close them?
• How do we scale for the future? How do we build the right infrastructure to foster talent growth?

Anticipating skills with the Future of Finance view of the accounting role and a changed environment

Looking toward the near- and long-term future, here is a potential view of how a director of accounting and reporting role in controllership might evolve. Anticipating these possibilities for finance transformation can enable finance leaders to better prepare for and proactively facilitate a future-ready workforce.

• The role leads Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and external financial reporting, collaborates cross-functionally, is supported by AI capabilities, and focuses on strategic activities and risk sensing.
• Key interactions could range from finance intelligence business partners to future-state FinanceAI product owners and chatbots.
• Performance management has shifted. Today it is measured on report delivery, and tomorrow it may measure performance through risk identification, resolution, and prevention.
• Time will be spent less on generating and publishing reports, research and analysis, and regulatory compliance and more on risk identification and resolution, business partnership, and professional development.

The changing role will also exist against the backdrop of a new finance landscape. New technologies, new expectations, and the rapid pace of change call for both new ways of working and new skills to do the work. To adapt to the new role, new work, and new landscape, leveraging new skills is an inevitability.

According to CFOs in a recent survey, 93% say bringing talent with Generative AI skills into finance in the next two years will be important.²

Elevating finance talent to adapt the workforce to the future

Creating and evolving an elevated workforce starts with assessing the talent you have now; the skills required for roles in the future of finance; the likely skills gaps; and considerations for the various paths to close those gaps through upskilling, reskilling, and alternative talent models. Let’s start by looking at the skills and activities for the director, corporate accounting, and reporting roles in the Future of Finance—the core skills, technical and tactical knowledge, and enduring human capabilities.

• The core skills are primary finance, financial reporting, account reconciliations, financial close proficiency, fluency in close acceleration tools, product costing, and variance analysis.
• Technical and tactical finance skills are the knowledge and expertise in technical accounting, intercompany accounting, and budgeting required within a specific area.
• Enduring capabilities are people’s attributes or traits—independent of their context. These human skills can be innate or developed with experience and are applicable across all of finance.

Companies should look to hire or upskill professionals with well-rounded competence across these primary skills and prior experience in controllership or public reporting. With the advancement in technology, the primary shift for these roles will also likely be augmented by emerging technology, AI tools, and copilots, so technological acumen is a crucial skill set as well. Corporate finance leaders should focus on recruits who display both the functional expertise and some foundational technology and AI fluency.

Adapt through upskilling or reskilling controllership talent

Begin by thinking about your talent today and consider strategic paths to upskilling or reskilling valuable talent to facilitate growth within an existing workforce. Some upskilling pathways to consider include:

• Core skills learning paths such as the fundamentals of finance close.
• Storytelling by communicating with impact to energize and influence workers.
• Continuous learning in the “flow of work” through structured, point-in-time, experience-based learning.

Closing the gap through growth and new talent models

Through upskilling talent, finding new talent, or leveraging the future landscape and bypassing historical talent models to bridge specific skill gaps—these strategies for talent can offer benefits to different skill sets, and utilizing one over another depends on the type of skill a business is looking for. Consider which one can provide the most value.

• Build on the growing skills, which are the high-cost skills that are cost-prohibitive to acquire and require upskilling or reskilling current talent.
• Buy stable skills or easily available skills and capabilities on the open market.
• Borrow nascent skills—the rapidly evolving skills that do not yet affect a majority of your work or workers.
• Automate advanced skills by leveraging technology (e.g., artificial intelligence, automation) to perform mundane, repetitive tasks.

Key takeaways and leading practices to consider

• Understand your skill gaps and determine your skills access strategy.
• Focus upskilling efforts on new technology, new expectations, and navigating the unexpected.
• Experience, exposure, and environment are often just as important as education when upskilling talent.
• Upskilling efforts should be integrated into broader talent practices and talent management.
• Consider new talent models and future technology to bridge the skills gap and optimize talent strategy and workforce value. 

Listen to our Dbriefs webcast to further explore the expectations and trends driving the workforce of the future and strategies for building new talent ecosystems: Elevating talent: Building the finance workforce of the future: Dbriefs webcast | Deloitte US