Building Resilient Finance Teams: A Guide for Today’s CFOs

Today’s business landscape isn’t short of its challenges. From global pandemics, political instability and climate change issues to supply chain disruptions, cybersecurity threats and shifting workforce demographics, organisations have had their work cut out in recent years.

To help weather the impact of these challenges, resilience has evolved into a key priority for CFOs. To protect and maintain an organisation’s financial health, finance teams have had to learn how to overcome challenges in an environment of constant change.

Below we discuss why resilience has become a critical skill in finance and how CFOs can build strong teams who can adapt to change quickly and willingly.

Why resilience is a critical skill for modern finance teams

With constant market changes and regulatory shifts, the finance industry has always been known for its volatile nature. Add the pandemic, cost of living crisis and rapidly advancing technology to the equation and it has never been clearer – CFOs and their teams must be prepared for unexpected challenges.

With the ability to adapt to changes and recover from setbacks, a resilient finance team can continue to move forward and even come out on top.

How CFOs can build a resilient team

Promote the right culture

If you want to attract resilient employees, you need to ensure you’re promoting a culture of resilience. Your team should feel empowered to take risks and learn from failures. This requires open communication, continuous learning and innovation. Employees who embrace taking risks and have a willingness to learn should be recognised and rewarded.

Establish a robust risk management framework

To manage risk effectively, finance teams need to know how to identify and mitigate potential obstacles.

By establishing a robust risk management framework, employees have the tools and resources needed to identify and assess risks, develop mitigation strategies and monitor and measure these risks on an ongoing basis.

Identify employees with the right skills

Resilience is a skill and with the right support and mindset, it can be improved. This is only the case if employees are willing to learn and adapt however. If someone is very set in their ways, it’s unlikely they’ll ever see beyond their own beliefs.

Whether you’re making a new hire or are looking to strengthen your existing finance team, The Acuity Method can help you identify those with the skills you need to build resilience.

Designed to recognise strengths and highlight areas for improvement, employers can adopt appropriate learning solutions thanks to The Acuity Method. Once candidates have completed their assessment, you will be presented with accurate data highlighting how they scored based on the five dimensions that make an effective senior finance professional. You can find out more about this in our whitepaper ‘5D FD: Benchmarking the Five-Dimensional Finance Director.’

Leverage technology

Technology has transformed the finance industry. Mundane tasks have become automated, cash has been replaced by online transactions and data quality has improved, to name just a few.

This technology can help build resilience among finance professionals by enabling them to improve efficiency, reduce errors and use real-time data to make smart decisions.

To learn more about how The Acuity Method can help build strong finance teams, get in touch today.