We’re not great at predictions, but we’re willing to bet that 2024 will be a pivotal year for finance and accounting professionals. To wit: Organizations are figuring out use cases for GenAI, the talent shortage is becoming more acute, and in some ways, the finance and accounting role is changing in challenging ways this year.
While we might not have a crystal ball to tell us what the future holds, we do have data analytics to tell us what our audience is concerned about. So, as part of our midyear roundup, we went back and looked at the most popular stories that we’ve published on CFO Brew since January.
We found two major concerns: How finance departments can get—and keep—butts in seats and what the business model of the future could look like for accounting firms. But rather than offer too many spoilers, we’ll let you read CFO Brew’s five most popular stories of the year (so far):
- Private equity gets its biggest accounting firm yet. This March story about private equity firm New Market Capital buying a $2.8 billion stake in accounting firm Grant Thorton is our most-read story of the year. And it’s no wonder: Private equity is gobbling up accounting firms, signaling a potential sea change in how accounting firms will operate in the future, with “more than half” of the top 20 accounting firms in talks with private equity.
- Why accountants leave their jobs. Our early January story on the role that culture plays in retaining accounting and finance talent explores the root causes of turnover. It turns out that, although finding accounting talent is difficult now, keeping talent might be even harder. Fortunately, there may be things that firms can do to keep the talent they have (spoiler alert, it isn’t throwing pizza parties).
- The weird anomaly of remote accounting jobs right now. January was a good month for us—this story on the rise in remote accounting job listings showcased just how much the profession is changing. Firms are expanding remote accounting opportunities to help address the talent shortage, and the future of accounting jobs may involve a lot more sweatpants than it does now.
- CFOs, get ready for ‘substantially reduced profitability.’ Not only is the nature of finance and accounting work changing, but how organizations generate profit may be changing as well. This February story about how weak demand and higher costs could reduce EBITDA by as much as 30% over the next three years showed the challenges CFOs are likely to confront. Finance professionals will need to take new approaches to creating value while also investing heavily in talent and technology.
- To attract Gen Z finance talent, promote stability and flexibility. It all comes back to talent. Experts told CFO Brew in this January story that organizations would need to rethink traditional approaches to talent management, as the Gen Z talent pool is looking for different things out of work than prior generations were. But—and we can’t stress this enough—we will not be using Gen Z slang like cap, brainrot, or bruh in the office ever, ever.