Dive Brief:

• CFOs rank the challenge of attracting and retaining employees far above other internal risks for 2022, citing labor shortages and the difficulty of crafting a balance between remote and in-office work, Deloitte found in a quarterly survey.  
• “The number of times CFOs cited talent/labor and related issues heavily outweighed other priorities for 2022,” Deloitte said Thursday in a report on the survey of Fortune 500 CFOs. “‘Retention, retention, retention’ was a resounding refrain, including through wages and incentives.”
• Eighty-eight percent of the 130 respondents said they will use a hybrid work model next year, 92% will increase automation and 41% expect to shrink their companies’ real estate footprint, Deloitte said.

Dive Insight:

The slow return of workers from coronavirus lockdowns has led to labor shortages, competition for hires and an increase in wages.

Employees are switching jobs for higher pay at a near-record pace. The quits rate, or the number of workers who left their jobs as a percent of total employment, rose from 2.3% in January to 2.8% in October, the second-highest level in data going back to 2000, the U.S. Labor Department said. The quits rate hit a high of 3% in September.

Attracting and retaining employees vaulted to the No. 2 ranking of business risks for 2022 and the next decade, from No. 8 a year ago, according to a global survey of 1,453 C-suite executives and board members by Protiviti and NC State University. (Leading the list of risks for 2022 is the impact on business from pandemic-related government policy).

Companies are trying to hold on to workers, and attract hires, by raising pay. Private sector hourly wages rose 4.8% in November compared with 12 months before, according to the Labor Department.

Tight labor markets and the highest inflation in three decades have prompted companies to budget 3.9% wage increases for 2022 — the biggest jump since 2008, according to a survey by The Conference Board.

The proportion of small businesses that raised pay in October hit a 48-year high, with a net 44% increasing compensation and a net 32% planning to do so in the next three months, the National Federation of Independent Business said last month.

CFO respondents to the Deloitte survey said they plan to push up wages/salaries by 5.2%, nearly a full percentage point increase from their 4.3% forecast during the prior quarter.

“Talent/labor — and several related issues, including attrition, burnout and wage inflation — has become an even greater concern of CFOs this quarter, and the challenges to attract and retain talent could impinge on their organizations’ ability to execute their strategy on schedule,” Deloitte said.

The proportion of CFOs who feel optimistic about their companies’ financial prospects dropped to just under half from 66% over the same time frame.

“CFOs over the last several quarters have become a little more bearish,” Steve Gallucci, managing partner for Deloitte’s CFO program, said in an interview, citing the coronavirus, competition for talent, inflation and disruptions in supply chains.

CFOs have concluded that the pandemic will persist for some time and that they need to “build that organizational muscle to be more nimble, more agile,” he said.

At the same time, CFOs expect their companies’ year-over-year growth will outpace the increase in wages and salaries, estimating revenue and earnings next year will rise 7.8% and 9.6%, respectively, Deloitte said.

“We are seeing in many cases record earnings, record revenue numbers,” Gallucci said.

Describing their plans for capital in 2022, half of CFOs said that they will repurchase shares, 37% say they will take on new debt and 22% plan to “reduce or pay down a significant proportion of their bonds/debt,” Deloitte said.

CFOs view inflation as the most worrisome external risk, followed by supply chain bottlenecks and changes in government regulation, Deloitte said. The Nov. 8-22 survey was concluded before news of the outbreak of the omicron variant of COVID-19.