Five CFOs reveal what’s working and what could be improved in the popular hybrid work arrangements that have taken over the finance function.
By Russ Banham
Chief Executive
Finance chief Michele Cusack leads an accounting and finance staff the size of a U.S. Army regiment at Northwell Health, an $18 billion-revenue healthcare system with 21 hospitals in New York, Long Island and Westchester County. “The size, scale and scope of what I manage as CFO is significant,” Cusack says.
Before the pandemic, the 3,000-person finance function worked at the Long Island headquarters or a Northwell hospital. Now, despite Northwell’s considerable dimensions, most of the finance work is accomplished remotely.
“Two days before the St. Patrick’s Parade was supposed to happen in 2020 and didn’t, we ripped the Band-Aid off and sent everybody home,” Cusack recalls. “When Covid eased, about 15 percent of the staff returned on a hybrid basis.”
The benefits of the sweeping change are many, Cusack says, citing the elimination of long commutes, the ability to recruit high-quality professionals beyond the New York region and the savings accruing from office space reductions. “We’re operating in 50 percent to two-thirds less real estate space, consolidating many of our Long Island-based locations,” she says.
The same transformation is writ large across the accounting and finance organizations of the smallest to the largest U.S. companies. During the second quarter of 2024, accounting and finance had the second highest rate of new hybrid and remote jobs, according to a survey by staffing firm Robert Half. Forty percent of the executives responding to the survey planned to continue to offer hybrid roles to attract and hire skilled candidates through 2025.
The accounting and finance function is also second only to IT/computers in the number of remote workers, says George Pentaris, market vice president at Roth Staffing Companies.
Pentaris attributes the high number of remote finance workers to recruitment difficulties. “Accountants and financial analysts are two of the most common job postings by employers due to high demand and a very tight market,” says Pentaris. “An accountant choosing between a one-hour, twice-daily commute in Los Angeles or New York, or the opportunity to work from home is likely to be more attracted to remote work.”
Not every company, of course, thinks it needs to offer remote or hybrid options. Amazon announced in September that hybrid workers, including finance staff, must return to the office five days a week beginning in January. “Amazon’s decision not to give workers the ability to work remotely on a hybrid schedule has become a big selling point [for other employers] to provide that option,” Pentaris says.
Companies requiring five days in the office amount to a small percentage, says Brandi Britton, global executive director of contract finance & accounting at Robert Half. Not that most finance professionals work exclusively from home. The momentum has swung to hybrid schedules, with some days of the workweek spent in the office and some at home.
“There’s still a need to have employees collaborate occasionally in a physical space, but there’s no ambiguity in the direction now; CFO have a clear vision, creating processes and procedures for hybrid work,” says Britton.
Finance chiefs have made significant progress managing entirely remote or hybrid teams. However, because highly flexible work models are still relatively new, CFOs are still fine-tuning in areas like setting clear expectations for remote workers, keeping remote employees engaged, providing remote and hybrid colleagues opportunities to interact in person and tracking remote workers for compliance purposes.
Thriving On Interaction
At publicly held Red Hat Software, most 1,050 finance employees choose when to come into the office or work from home, says CFO Robert Leibrock.
“We set expectations with associates in the CFO organization and encourage them to find the day-to-day working arrangements that best suit their role and lifestyle,” he says. “We listen to what they want to experience during their in-office time and their needs for flexibility. As leaders, it’s our responsibility to set the context and explain the why’ behind our approach to flexible work and what we’re hoping to achieve.”
During busier times, such as the beginning and end of the quarter, finance associates spend more time in the office, given the opportunity for face-to-face conversations that accelerate the work. Says Leibrock: “We get a lot of value in being together in the office [but we] also encourage associates to take the time to recharge away from the office when those periods end.”
The work is typically performed in person when finance needs to lend expertise to sales, marketing, product or engineering personnel. “We’re a company that thrives on interacting and engaging with other people; it’s how open-source projects are built,” says Leibrock. “When Red Hatters are in the office, it should be with a purpose—to engage with their peers, brainstorm ideas around a table and get to know each other. There’s a reason why people often reminisce about hallway and water-cooler conversations.”
Intentional Touchpoints
Remote work has been a magnet for CSAA to attract talent, and Hecht sees it as a competitive advantage, given the company’s location. She aims to recruit accounting and finance staff who have deep knowledge of insurance and finance/accounting. That’s a tricky proposition in the tech-dominant Bay area. “People halfway through their careers with a working spouse and school-age kids are not eager to pick up their lives and move across the country,” Hecht says.
For example, one of Hecht’s FP&A executives works from home in Columbus, Ohio, yet leads a remote team dispersed across California. “Since they’re all working remotely, it’s easier to have a higher level of engagement than when one or two people are in the office and everyone else is fully remote,” Hecht explains.
While CSAA uses fully remote and hybrid models, Hecht acknowledges a downside—the difficulty of collaborating virtually with someone you don’t know. “A barrier to success is not having that initial relationship you develop with someone you see daily in the cafeteria line or at other times in an office and build a relationship with by sharing experiences and learning about each other’s lives,” she says.
The solution, Hecht says, is to be intentional about the need for touchpoints—virtual one-on-one meetings, town halls and video broadcasts that compensate for not seeing people in person. “It helps ensure that everyone on the team understands our strategic initiatives, business issues and projects,” Hecht says.
Setting Clear Expectations
The threat of remote work diminishing employee engagement is often on the mind of CFO Lu Hur at Meet the People, a family of 10 unified but independent marketing and advertising agencies with 800 employees. Hur’s team of 35 accounting and finance professionals is spread across the firm’s 10 offices. Each office has accountants reporting to a controller, and an FP&A team that reports to the VP of finance.
At CSAA Insurance Group, a provider of automobile and homeowner insurance, CFO Andrea Hecht estimates that 90 percent of the firm’s 120 full-time finance employees work remotely on a hybrid basis in California’s Bay Area, where CSAA is headquartered. “Fewer than a dozen are in the office daily,” says Hecht. Half of them are usually members of her investment team who “find it better to work together in person.”
“While we’re moving toward centralizing certain functions, we leave it to each agency leader to decide where and how people work, although, for the most part, they use a hybrid model,” says Hur. “There’s no perfect formula where people come in X number of days and work remotely Y number of days. We’re trying to determine the ideal balance.”
In the meantime, Hur has established a weekly cadence of virtual meetings to get to know each office’s accounting and finance personnel and their challenges and preferred ways of working.
“Communication is more important than where a person works,” Hur says. “But for the function to work on a hybrid basis, I need clear expectations.” For example, a remote worker “needs to let me know if something comes up” and they can’t work on a given day, says Hur.
In Denmark, Stibo Systems CFO Kathrine Ravn Stougaard grapples with the vicissitudes of hybrid work schedules. Stibo Systems is a global technology provider whose large customers include McDonald’s, Toyota and Siemens.
“I can’t say that some people on my team work exclusively from home or at the office,” she says. “There are times when we want everyone here, such as the month-end and year-end closings, and other times when we’re flexible, something the new generation values.”
When Stibo Systems’ 45 finance staffers are scheduled to be in the office, the company provides dedicated areas for collaborative work. If one needs a private desk, they must reserve it in advance. Although issues like commuting and traffic that bedevil employees in the U.S. are nonfactors in Denmark (most of Stougaard’s staff live near the Aarhus headquarters and can walk or bike to work), there are other challenges.
“In the European Union, regulations require businesses to track and record the number of hours worked by employees, which is difficult to assess with remote work,” Stougaard says. The regulation came into effect on July 1, 2024. Stibo Systems collects data from the time-tracking software used by its 750 employees. “We’re also analyzing ways to improve the situation, ensuring that time is tracked regardless of a physical location, to preserve the flexible work the new generation seeks,” Stougaard says.
Attempts at Connectedness
To keep remote finance teams functioning requires the technology tools that helped businesses survive the pandemic: video conferencing platforms, file-sharing services, instant messaging platforms, project management tools, digital whiteboards and productivity monitoring tools. “You want your team members to have the same feelings of connectedness they feel when coming into the office; otherwise, you could be facing a serious employee retention issue,” says Northwell Health’s Cusack.
Cusack says virtual meetings allow her people to discuss a single idea in more depth than when gathered in person. Nevertheless, she worries such meetings do little to further feelings of engagement. To address that concern, Cusack schedules events designed to bring employees together in a social setting.
“My retention rates in the function are better than most, but I need to continually consider ways that promote feelings of connection,” she says. Northwell Health held a `Christmas in July’ celebration this summer at the Salt Shack near Long Island’s Gilgo Beach. About 700 people came to enjoy a barbecue and ‘60s music in the open air. “We’ve also worked to create a more collaborative space for project-based hybrid work so people can get out of the house and have human interactions,” says Cusack.
Does Cusack imagine that someday in the future, her staff will be mandated to return five days a week to the office, the situation now confronting Amazon’s employee base? “That won’t happen; we’ll always be a hybrid workforce,” she says. “We’re sensitive to the inflationary environment’s effect on team members, on top of the rigors of commuting.”
Change is hard, but it’s also inevitable, Cusack adds. “We used to have somewhat of a formal dress code here. That’s out the window now, too,” Cusack says, with a laugh. “We can’t require employees to have two types of clothing, one for when they’re home and another when they’re in the office. But I do feel sorry for all those dry cleaners losing business.”