Fighting CFO burnout

The pres­sure is on the CFO to nav­i­gate glob­al eco­nom­ic uncer­tain­ty,as signs of burnout and stress are sur­fac­ing with­in this ever-dynam­ic role.

The lat­est Deloitte CFO sur­vey found Brex­it remains the top con­cern for UK finance chiefs, fol­lowed by the push to cut costs and staff. Mean­while, a report by recruit­ment agency Robert Half revealed three in four CFOs glob­al­ly antic­i­pate stress lev­els will esca­late in the face of tighter busi­ness expec­ta­tions.

Paul Ven­ables, UK group finance direc­tor of recruit­ment com­pa­ny Hays, agrees the CFO role is a relent­less job, where the day-to-day demands are increas­ing against rapid eco­nom­ic, busi­ness and tech­no­log­i­cal flux.

“The need to reor­gan­ise and restruc­ture finance func­tions on a glob­al scale to dri­ve effi­cien­cies is just one of many chal­lenges fac­ing today’s CFO,” he explains. “In the UK, we have the added uncer­tain­ty of Brex­it. It’s no won­der CFOs are feel­ing increased pres­sure.”

Warning signs of executive director burnout

Mr Ven­ables, who has been a CFO of numer­ous enter­pris­es over the last 25 years, says he’s per­son­al­ly faced some very dif­fi­cult times, such as the Lehman’s crash in 2008, com­ing under pro­longed stress on sev­er­al occa­sions and had been close to burnout.

It’s crit­i­cal that CFOs under­stand the dif­fer­ence between “pres­sure”, “some stress” and “con­tin­ued stress”, as the lat­ter often leads to burnout, he says. For CFOs feel­ing the symp­toms and signs of burnout, Mr Ven­ables rec­om­mends they are open and hon­est with them­selves, as well as their friends, fam­i­ly and sup­port net­works.

“They will often see changes in you, if you are strug­gling to sleep, can­not switch off or los­ing your tem­per,” he explains. “When you see these signs, have a week­end off or speak to your boss about tak­ing some time off work. See this, both in your­self and your team, as a strength and not a weak­ness.”

Michael Kreeft, CFO at BMW, UK, agrees CFOs are short of being “mir­a­cle work­ers”, and signs of burnout are def­i­nite­ly some­thing to watch out for. He sug­gests reg­u­lar­ly tak­ing time to reflect on the busi­ness, how tar­gets are being achieved and find­ing process improve­ments to ensure resources are being used in more effi­cient ways.

It’s crit­i­cal CFOs under­stand the dif­fer­ence between ‘pres­sure’, ‘some stress’ and ‘con­tin­ued stress’, as the lat­ter often leads to burnout

“On a per­son­al lev­el, you need to also ensure you have a healthy work-life bal­ance, and this includes pay­ing atten­tion to healthy eat­ing, reg­u­lar exer­cise and spend­ing qual­i­ty time with friends and fam­i­ly,” says Mr Kreeft. “As a CFO, you have to ‘walk the talk’, so it’s impor­tant to address these issues with the rest of your team. After all, our role is about moti­vat­ing and inspir­ing.”

Big data, technology and the CFO role

The always-on glob­al envi­ron­ment is also becom­ing a greater work­load bur­den for CFOs, as grow­ing vol­umes of data and its imme­di­ate avail­abil­i­ty actu­al­ly slow down deci­sion-mak­ing process­es, accord­ing to Markus Kobler, glob­al CFO at Allianz Glob­al Investors.

“A CFO needs to be able to han­dle the con­stant ebb and flow of infor­ma­tion and ensure the best finan­cial steer­ing, while chal­leng­ing the organ­i­sa­tion to move ahead,” he adds. “This has become an around-the-clock job that may be tax­ing and requires indi­vid­ual ways of cop­ing with it.”

Adri­an Tal­bot, group CFO at com­mu­ni­ca­tions firm Hotwire and win­ner of the 2019 Inter­na­tion­al CFO of the Year Award, con­curs. He warns that in the age of big data and tech­no­log­i­cal change, fail­ing to cre­ate the right sup­port team is one of the biggest con­tribut­ing fac­tors to exec­u­tive direc­tor burnout.

“In finance it is often very easy just to get on with the job and hard to judge when you need to upscale or upskill your team,” says Mr Tal­bot. “And one of the biggest mis­con­cep­tions in the indus­try is that if you’re senior in an organ­i­sa­tion, you have risen to the top because you’re ‘bul­let proof’. The real­i­ty is that a CFO is human, just like every­one else.”

He recalls that pri­or to start­ing his cur­rent role, he had to take a week out of the office at a very stress­ful time, when he felt the signs of burnout.

“It made me feel like an utter fail­ure,” he says. “I became with­drawn and even con­sid­ered oth­er careers. But I only need­ed that one week to regain my per­spec­tive. Now I would def­i­nite­ly recog­nise the signs of burnout and know it’s bet­ter to act soon­er than become extreme­ly stressed.

“I’ve also learnt the most impor­tant rela­tion­ship for a CFO is with the CEO. To be able to express your­self freely and be heard and sup­port­ed by your CEO is vital for you and for the busi­ness too.”

Supporting and balancing the finance function

With­in the fast-chang­ing media agency land­scape, the pres­sure is on CFOs to keep a healthy per­spec­tive and “ride the client curve”. Stu­art Dia­mond, glob­al CFO at GroupM, which has more than 35,000 employ­ees world­wide, curbs stress and burnout by plan­ning and prepar­ing for peak client times, and then takes advan­tage of the company’s flex­i­ble work­ing pro­gramme dur­ing off-peak times.

“Agency envi­ron­ments are demand­ing across the board and can involve long hours when help­ing our brand clients do things, like launch new prod­ucts or exe­cute big cam­paigns,” he says.

“But phys­i­cal and men­tal well­be­ing needs to remain top of the agen­da. That’s why we have a ben­e­fits pro­gramme that includes things like flex­i­ble work sched­ules, well­ness cen­tres in our offices and pro­grammes for work­ing par­ents. I per­son­al­ly enjoy and take advan­tage of these ben­e­fits.”

Mean­while, for fast-grow­ing tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies that are scal­ing glob­al­ly, man­ag­ing CFO burnout is all about align­ment with stake­hold­ers and get­ting the bal­ance right, says Mark Finn, CFO and co-founder of all-in-one soft­ware plat­form ROLLER.

“You can’t please every­one all of the time, but if you under­stand their pri­or­i­ties, you are bet­ter placed to max­imise their col­lec­tive inter­ests over the long term,” he explains. “Being a tru­ly effec­tive CFO is about allo­cat­ing resources effi­cient­ly over the long term and you have to be good at pri­ori­tis­ing. It’s also wise not to try to do it all in the first place. It’s a jour­ney, not a race.”