When American workers leave their jobs, lack of opportunities for growth and poor leadership are often the reasons. These situations can also lead to higher levels of employee release and ultimately higher employee turnover. Perhaps it's no surprise that many CFOs believe they need to be better talent developers, regardless of the direction of the labour market.
Greg Sigrist, CFO of the company's Pathward as a bank, considers talent development to be essential to the success of the finance team. It is also part of the reason why CFOs with transparent, supportive working styles can deliver better results.
In the following interview, Siglist, who has been a banking firm for 25 years as an accountant and CFO, shares why the CFO was as successful as the team, how his personal life was equipped in the CFO office, and why it allows him to resist the tendency to return to the employee's office that demands employees.
As CFO, what have you found?
Human resource development. There is only one CFO. We are as successful as our organization. A highly functional team working closely together is a must-have item to help us achieve our goals.
We are taking the time to develop a highly functional team by allowing our members to take the new areas of interest and skill building experience to the next level. Having a strong bench not only prepares me for the future, but also allows me to export my talent to other areas of the organization. These other areas have resources that understand the financial aspects of your business.
What experience did you prepare you to become a CFO?
I have a family. When you have a family, you need to plan daily events, such as taking your child to school, doing extracurricular activities, preparing meals, and determining how everything fits into your spouse's plan for the day. However, you need to plan long-term strategic items, such as vacations, homes, college purchases for your children, retirements, and more.
Additionally, unexpected events can force short-term and long-term plans to get them on track and quickly adapt. Focusing on the day to day and adapting to constant change with long-term planning helped me most in my CFO position.
What characteristics and working styles do effective CFOs come about?
For me, there are three main things: inclusivity, transparency and collaboration.
Being inclusive brings everyone on your journey. Whether the journey is a separate project that includes budgets, expenses reviews, Treasury decisions, or other projects will help them understand how we got there and why. The more members of our team understand how and why we do something, the easier it will be to work as a team.
Transparency returns to building trust. If you are open and transparent, it leaves no doubt. Others understand that you are presenting them all the facts and they know they can trust you. If you have trust within your organization, it will drive the growth of your entire team.
Finally, collaboration will help us work together towards the same goal. If the team is concentrated and fires on all cylinders, it will give better results.
Focusing on these factors also helps me become a trusted partner of my fellow people. The executive team must move to Rockstep. In other words, it has to be delivered to my side of the plan. I can help my peers understand where we are financially, what gaps exist to achieve our goals, and the steps we can take financially to get there. These ways of working also help you understand the challenges of your fellow executives and how to best support them.
While many companies issue missions to the office, Pathward maintains remote first. What lessons did the company learn about remote work?
The biggest lesson we took from the early days of remote work (during the pandemic) was to ensure that everything we did aims for deliberate interaction. This includes gathering teams and holding in-person meetings to boost morale and invite collaboration.
We focus on a culture driven by the organization's mission, vision and values. Despite not being together every day, it brings us a sense of unity and bond. Employee resource groups and robust community impact programs provide time to get to know each other and important causes for the company.
Another major lesson is availability. In a remote world, it's easy to ignore the problems and make them festers. To avoid that, we are very intentional about sending live and emails. A focus on face-to-face interactions allows for operational norms to be implemented, such as making eye contact when solving problems, and making eye contact, avoiding misunderstandings that could cause further problems.
