Finance executives looking to recruit top talent

A survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) of more than 90 finance executives across the North shows that many firms still hope to expand next year.

The respondents said they were focusing on “risk management” and recruiting talented executives.

The business leaders were cautiously optimistic about growth over the next three years.

Nearly 60 per cent were confident that they would grow in the next year. More than 20 per cent said they were “very confident” of growing their business over the next three years.

Randal Casson, partner in PwC’s Leeds office, said: “Growth will come from looking harder for opportunities, assessing and managing risk more effectively and having the right talent and capability to exploit these effectively.

“Growth will, in part, be driven by adopting a fact-based approach to talent strategy and workforce planning.

“There will be tough competition for the people with the right skills base and organisations will need to be intelligent and flexible in their approach to ensure opportunities are not missed for having a lack of talent or succession plans in place.”

Access to talent remains a key area of concern, with 21 per cent of respondents stating they were expecting this to be a challenging area.

However, nearly half were expecting to see growth in their “contingent workforce”, rather than their full-time staff.

Mr Casson added: “The Agency Workers Regulations 2010 that came into force earlier this year will have a significant financial impact for any organisation that uses agency staff on a regular basis.

“Careful consideration is required and employers will need to review their existing resourcing models, measure the financial impact on their business and make adjustments to their commercial contracts where necessary to factor in the additional financial cost to their businesses.”

Nearly two thirds of respondents to the survey said they were expecting some change to company strategy and the approach to managing risk.

More than half were also expecting to see some change to their organisational structure.