Data Watch

Finding Skilled Staff: Top Challenge for CIOs and CFOs

Many chief information officers (CIOs) and chief financial officers (CFOs) agree that a top challenge is to find skilled staff, nationwide surveys show. One in five (20%) CFOs, and nearly one in four (24%) CIOs, say so in separate surveys by Robert Half International.

For CFOs, the 20% number is up three points from a similar poll in 2003. Meeting customer needs is the second biggest concern, cited by 16% of those that participated in Robert Half's survey, which asked 1,400 CFOs at U.S. companies with 20 or more employees a wide range of questions pertaining to their companies' future. Furthermore, fewer CFOs in 2008 than in 2003 see government regulation as their biggest challenge, the survey also reveals.

"Now that the initial requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act have been met, corporate governance policies are more established, and the focus is on repeatable processes that ensure internal control over financial reporting," says Paul McDonald, executive director of Robert Half Management Resources.

The survey of CIOs, relegated to just recruitment concerns, found training and productivity among CIOs' other top challenges, and sometimes higher-ranked by them than the sourcing of skilled talent.

More than one-quarter of IT executives from big companies (1,000+ employees) believe that finding qualified talent is their top staffing challenge; skills development, however, is a greater area of concern at smaller-sized companies (100 to 249 employees), where more than one-quarter of CIOs rate the activity higher as a challenge than the task of finding qualified IT professionals.

"Smaller firms often rely on affordable external training providers or web-based resources that can help employees keep their skills current or earn valuable technical accreditations," notes Katherine Spencer Lee, executive director of Robert Half Technology.