Are finance leaders finally loosening the reins on remote work?

Finance and flex­i­bil­i­ty may not seem like nat­ur­al bed­fel­lows yet, in com­mon with all C‑suite lead­ers, the chief finan­cial offi­cer (CFO) has had no option but to keep pace with the hav­oc wreaked by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. 

For a func­tion whose rhythms are dic­tat­ed by for­mal set-piece events, such as year-end results, the abrupt switch from office to home work­ing would seem, at first glance, to have dealt a calami­tous blow. But it could be that the very warp and weft of the CFO’s year plan­ner has been a sav­ing grace.

“When you know you have month-end man­age­ment report­ing due soon or the annu­al audit on the hori­zon, you sim­ply have to get on and deal with it, rather than sit on your hands and won­der how to man­age,” says Ali­son Dolan, CFO at Right­move.

“While the biggest chal­lenge for heads of sales has, I’m told, been the need to keep sales­peo­ple from feel­ing antsy about their tar­gets and com­mis­sions, the finance leader’s con­stant cycle of deliv­er­ables has been some­thing to fall back on.” 

In terms of the office being the sole place of work for most peo­ple, that con­cept will increas­ing­ly look like some­thing from the 18^th cen­tu­ry

Many finance heads report that their teams’ nat­ur­al affin­i­ty with metic­u­lous plan­ning has come into its own in the work-from-home (WFH) envi­ron­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly the need to finalise Zoom call agen­das well in advance.

Yet if the need for greater pre-prep and struc­ture when col­leagues are remote was iden­ti­fied ear­ly on, an over­all improve­ment in data secu­ri­ty was cer­tain­ly not.

“I would argue that data secu­ri­ty risks were greater pre-COVID when staff were spend­ing lots of time trav­el­ling and often mak­ing calls on pub­lic trans­port and in air­ports,” says James Watts, CFO at online mar­ket­place OnBuy.

“A home-work­ing envi­ron­ment may still have its chal­lenges, but on bal­ance it pro­vides a much more secure work­space. I believe ecom­merce should be lead­ing the way in max­imis­ing its ben­e­fits for employ­ees.”

If VPNs, or vir­tu­al pri­vate net­works, have proved far less of a headache than many CFOs feared, test­ing the emo­tion­al tem­per­a­ture of both exist­ing and new staff rais­es impor­tant issues around work-life bal­ance, stress and burnout.

CFOs’ remote onboarding challenge

“I joined this busi­ness last Sep­tem­ber, in the mid­dle of COVID, and I know from per­son­al expe­ri­ence that being onboard­ed with­out face-to-face intro­duc­tions or even an organ­i­sa­tion chart to help you deci­pher who’s who can be quite a bewil­der­ing expe­ri­ence, even at my lev­el,” says Dolan.

“Nowa­days, I am at pains to make sure that my man­agers plan for new join­ers in great detail because when you are new and work­ing from home, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you’re fair­ly junior, you need a lot of extra input to make you feel engaged.”

Post-COVID, the notion that staff can only be pro­duc­tive inside a build­ing looks archa­ic. While hybrid work­ing will for many mean part office and part home, it’s the estab­lish­ment of near-home work loca­tions that is gain­ing favour.

One organ­i­sa­tion look­ing to reduce com­mute times in this way is Stan­dard Char­tered, whose CFO Andy Hal­ford believes that while many busi­ness­es will retain the con­cept of the office, its fun­da­men­tal pur­pose will change.

“I do see a con­tin­u­ing role for the phys­i­cal office, but it will do oth­er things like allow­ing col­leagues to meet up and col­lab­o­rate or even sim­ply socialise with each oth­er,” he says.

“In terms of the office being the sole place of work for most peo­ple, that con­cept will increas­ing­ly look like some­thing from the 18^th cen­tu­ry.”

With a cur­rent 12-month tri­al of near-home work­ing like­ly to result in 98 per cent of the bank’s staff being offered flex­i­ble work­ing by 2023, costs have already been dri­ven down. While Hal­ford says the full impact on the bal­ance sheet won’t be clear for three to five years, it’s the new cul­ture, “unrecog­nis­able from pre-COVID days”, which promis­es the great­est returns, he says.

Finance embraces WFH

With 75 per cent of Stan­dard Chartered’s over­all head­count and at least that pro­por­tion of finance staff now work­ing remote­ly, Hal­ford believes “the first-in-last-out atti­tude that some in finance may have held has all but dis­ap­peared”.

Despite the dis­rup­tion, he describes the shift to home work­ing as “a rev­e­la­tion and an eye open­er”, and believes that in embrac­ing change so read­i­ly, the finance depart­ment itself has proved to be “a cul­tur­al trail­blaz­er”.

“No wheels have fall­en off the bus, there’s been no change to our key events sched­ule and we’re report­ing our first quar­ter results, but this time remote­ly rather than face to face,” he says.

Despite the many advan­tages of WFH, Hal­ford shares Dolan’s con­cerns over the impact on col­leagues’ men­tal health, how­ev­er.

“When you’re not face to face with peo­ple, it’s far more dif­fi­cult to get a sense of their lives and as a leader you have to be aware that even if col­leagues say they are OK, they may not be,” he says.

“Younger staff may miss the cama­raderie of the office, while peo­ple with school-age chil­dren may find home school­ing a strain, par­tic­u­lar­ly if there isn’t a lot of space. We also have to con­sid­er old­er col­leagues who may find them­selves alone all day in a large emp­ty house.”

Hor­ror sto­ries of man­agers who remote­ly track key­board use as an ad hoc pro­duc­tiv­i­ty guide may abound, but lead­ers insist­ing on bouts of video-con­fer­enc­ing ban­ter or even week­ly team quizzes are equal­ly prob­lem­at­ic.  

“Forced fun on Zoom didn’t work for us because we found it cringey and false, so we junked it ear­ly on in favour of longer meet­ings which start with infor­mal chit chat about the kids or the cat before we start talk­ing about the sub­ject in hand,” says Rightmove’s Dolan.

“The impor­tant thing is to allow enough time to iden­ti­fy peo­ple who may be strug­gling and fol­low up any issues with them pri­vate­ly.”

Developing the employer proposition

For every employ­ee who is rar­ing to get back to HQ, there are oth­ers with “re-entry syn­drome” and accord­ing to Chris Big­gs, finance part­ner at Theta Glob­al Advi­sors, any CFO tempt­ed to be pre­scrip­tive over return dates should think again.

“There’s a lot of sen­si­tiv­i­ty around going back to the office and it’s incum­bent on lead­ers to be sen­si­tive to peo­ples’ fears,” he says.

“If a CFO feels that col­leagues who wish to stay at home can­not be trust­ed to remain pro­duc­tive, they have the wrong team.”

While remote com­mu­ni­ca­tion is always a chal­lenge, Big­gs believes that over-use of video con­fer­enc­ing is as much a gaffe as non-stop cc’d emails.

“It’s impor­tant to clar­i­fy your expec­ta­tions and set pri­or­i­ties for the team, but there’s always a temp­ta­tion to over-com­mu­ni­cate when peo­ple are at home and a cap­tive audi­ence,” he says.

Rather than assum­ing every­one loves Zoom meet­ings as much as the CFO, he advis­es ask­ing each col­league pri­vate­ly whether video con­fer­enc­ing is a high­light or a bore.

Despite the chal­lenges, how­ev­er, finance lead­ers in many organ­i­sa­tions are cur­rent­ly enjoy­ing what Dolan calls “a new free­dom to unclench”.

“In my expe­ri­ence, an awful lot of CFOs have been amazed at what can be achieved remote­ly and rel­ish an end to con­stant face-to-face super­vi­sion and the birth of greater flex­i­bil­i­ty,” she says.

But it’s vital to accept that tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for your team’s men­tal health will impose an addi­tion­al and heavy bur­den. “Emo­tion­al intel­li­gence is a brand-new lan­guage for many of us in finance, but we need to learn it very fast,” Dolan con­cludes.

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