Staffing flexibility is critical to your organization’s success
There are rumblings about whether we’re heading for a recession. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates in mid-June, its biggest increase since 1994, to help tame skyrocketing inflation. Now, there are concerns about stagflation — the dreaded combination of inflation and economic contraction. And the stock market has been volatile lately, to say the least.
This uncertainty may lead some companies to wonder if it might be time to slow down hiring. As a CFO, that could well turn out to be the opposite of what’s most prudent at this point in time. If you hold back on making critical hires, you could undermine your firm’s ability to be resilient and thrive at exactly the time you need all hands on deck.
The labor market remains red hot. The unemployment rate has been sitting at 3.6% since March 2022. That’s a 54-year low. The number of job openings in the U.S. also remains high, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. On the last business day of May, 11.3 million jobs were waiting to be staffed. That same month, 4.3 million workers voluntarily quit their jobs, as the Great Resignation carries on.
Market uncertainty could well be part of the new normal. To navigate this environment, your business must be able to pivot. Flexibility, including in how you staff your organization, will become essential to your organization’s success.
With that in mind, here are three strategies chief financial officers (CFOs) may want to consider putting in motion now to make sure their organization, and the broader business, have a “pivotable” staffing approach:
Prioritize Hiring to Meet Today’s Needs — and Tomorrow’s
If you’re looking to streamline your workforce, don’t let the fact that you’re feeling skittish about economic conditions force you to let go of in-demand, hard-to-find talent. Likewise, you don’t want to pass on recruiting top candidates. If you’re already struggling to hire skilled professionals now, imagine how tough it will be later when you need to staff up quickly to meet new business demands.
Other data from the BLS underscores just how challenging it is for employers to hire for professional-level roles and staff their critical functions — including finance and accounting. The agency’s reporting on Q2 2022 unemployment rates by occupation shows that the unemployment rate for accountants and auditors is just 1.1%. For financial managers, it’s 1.2%. Look at the data for other specializations and occupations, like technology and human resources, and you’ll see similarly low rates for many roles.
Identify the positions in your organization that should remain staffed no matter what, and then amplify hiring and retention efforts where needed. Keep an eye toward the future, as well, by prioritizing hires for jobs and departments that are critical for the business.
Expand the Use of Flexible Staffing Arrangements
One silver lining of the pandemic is that companies now have a much clearer idea of the mission-critical roles and business functions that benefit most from the use of interim resources when workloads and customer demands fluctuate. Many CFOs have been channeling more resources into flexible staffing arrangements over the past two years to help their organizations stay agile and resilient.
Also, many of these leaders now recognize that hiring remote workers can provide the business with access to a larger pool of critical talent since a firm can employ people working from anywhere. Employees working at home also enable a company to reduce real estate costs.
As you help your business prepare for whatever may come next, make sure the company knows where to turn to tap stellar talent on short notice and for special initiatives. Confirm that your company can move swiftly to expand its remote workforce, if needed. And again, if there are roles in the organization that should be staffed now with full-time talent, prioritize those hires.
Ready Your Teams Now
Now is a good time to review your management playbook for the new normal, the one you’ve likely been turning to throughout the ups and downs of the pandemic. Empathy and communication will be more critical than ever as employees face new challenges.
Seize the opportunity to accelerate the development of your company’s future workforce by upskilling or reskilling workers. The business can benefit from this investment in the long term and emerge stronger and nimbler from a downturn, or whatever the next great challenge may be.
