Despite reports of layoffs across various industries, including healthcare, staffing — or more specifically, retention, talent availability and hiring — continues to dominate CFOs' list of internal worries, according to Deloitte's "1Q 2023 North American CFO Signals" survey.
Six takeaways:
1. CFOs are also concerned about execution and prioritization — from strategic and transformation initiatives to cost-cutting measures.
2. Innovation and growth and cost management also ranked among CFOs' most worrisome internal risks, according to the survey.
3. Some CFOs view change management and the hybrid work environment as top-of-mind concerns — most likely related to their worries over talent, according to the survey.
4. Interestingly, enterprise risk appears more often in CFOs' comments in this quarter's survey than in some recent ones.
5. Inflation and geopolitics/instability was cited as CFOs' top external risks in the survey, similar to the previous quarter.
6. Policies and regulations and concerns over a recession, in addition to the effect of interest rates, also ranked high among CFOs' most worrisome external risks.