Restructuring and cost cutting seem to be the order of the day: CFOs are assuming key responsibilities at Hasbro, Vera Bradley, and Dollar General to help those companies navigate strategic shifts in the face of macroeconomic challenges. (Our strategic goal here at CFO Brew is to expense a field reporting trip to KFC HQ to research if a new CFO has any impact on the flavor of chicken nuggets.)

Hog wild? Toymaker Hasbro hired Harley Davidson CFO Gina Goetter to help the company slash costs as it works through a strategic shift. Goetter is replacing Hasbro CFO Deborah Thomas, who announced her retirement in November and had been with Harley Davidson since 2020. Prior to Harley Davidson, Goetter worked for Tyson and General Mills.

Salary: $1 million base with a $350,000 signing bonus and a stock award with a value of $4 million

The Colonel is calling. Kentucky Fried Chicken hired Jonathan Ojany as US CFO. He’s been tasked with “building and executing a winning strategy” for the fast food chain’s domestic operations, as well managing finance activities. Ojany joins KFC from the Coca-Cola Company, where he spent eight years working across the US and Africa. His last position with Coca-Cola was VP and head of center strategy and operations.

Salary: TBA (but one would hope it includes access to the Colonel’s secret recipe)

Keep reading.—DA

The economic landscape can change at the drop of a hat. And business leaders can’t just wait around for the next fedora to fall—you have to lead. Oracle NetSuite’s new guide about preparing for economic fluctuations can help you bring stability to uncertain times.

It all comes down to effective, flexible planning. Whether that’s through building customer and supplier health into your cash flow calculations or by developing tiered forecasts, you can be prepared and mitigate risk.

Oracle NetSuite’s guide provides a working plan to make your business more resilient, including how to:

• extend payment terms with vendors
• delay hiring for non-critical roles
• harness the right tech for scenario and cash flow planning

Get the full guide.

There’s a new role coming to finance departments to help navigate climate disclosure risk. ESG controllers are a relatively new phenomenon, but having one can do a lot for a company’s confidence in and accuracy of its ESG reporting.

That’s according to a recent poll conducted by Deloitte during a Deloitte Center for Controllership webinar. Among respondents who worked for companies with ESG controllers, 75.5% told Deloitte they were confident in their organizations’ ESG reporting capabilities.

In contrast, only 45.7% of all respondents said they felt confident in their organizations’ ability to report on ESG metrics for compliance purposes. That poses a challenge for organizations, especially given the anticipated finalization of the new SEC climate disclosure rule this year.

Having confidence in a firm’s reporting is very important, Dina Trainor, a Deloitte Risk & Financial Advisory managing director, told CFO Brew, “because increased confidence levels decrease risk.” ESG controllers and finance teams often take a “risk and controls” approach to ESG data, she said, which can “potentially decrease disclosure risk to an organization.”

Historically, finance hasn’t played a large role in ESG, Trainor said. That’s changing.

Keep reading.—CV

When it comes to assessing candidate skills, different companies are starting to look beyond mastery of spreadsheets and toward generative AI. According to a new Resume Builder survey, nine in ten hiring companies want workers with “ChatGPT experience.”

Stacie Haller, Resume Builder’s chief career advisor, told HR Brew that the survey reflects an evolution of modern skills. Given the generative AI tool’s virality and some companies’ open embrace of it, Haller surmised that mastery of ChatGPT will soon be a skill that's subject to credentials. “There’ll be some sort of certification that everybody accepts, just like if you take a job where you need to have Excel, people could give you an Excel test,” she said.

Currently, however, ChatGPT experience means different things for different hiring companies, Haller explained. Among the companies surveyed, there was a motivation to have “people in their organization who know how to use the system, across the board, in all these different departments to create more productivity,” she said.

The breakdown. The survey queried 1,000 people who identified as C-suite executives (president/CEO/chairperson), owners, or partners of various organizations. Among the respondents, 91% said they’re seeking candidates with ChatGPT experience. Demand for ChatGPT skills was spread throughout several business areas, encompassing 58% of respondents in software engineering, 33% in customer service, 32% in HR, 31% in marketing, 28% in data entry, and 23% in sales and finance respectively.

Generative AI tools can be used for a multitude of tasks: Candidates consult it to refine their résumés; it can also spit out code on demand.

Keep reading on HR Brew.—SB

Today’s top finance reads.

Stat: 5.1%. That’s the percentage of year over year wage growth in the US from March 2022. The Fed is still trying to balance wage growth with cooling inflation, but we say bring on the pay raises. Have you seen the price of cauliflower lately? (the New York Times)

Quote: “We still have more work to do as we reestablish process, product, and cost leadership, but we continue to provide proof points each quarter.”—Intel CEO Patrick Gelsinger, on an investor call, during which the company posted its largest quarterly loss ever (CNBC)

Read: Tech philosopher Jaron Lanier warns that the real risk of AI is that it might drive us all insane. (the Guardian)

PEO power: Labor can account for nearly 70% of an SMB’s costs—ready to reign in the costs? Partner with ADP’s PEO, TotalSource®, to optimize your biz’s growth. Take the quiz and see if a PEO is whatcha need.*

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