“Our experience of talking to employers across these sectors indicates that while managing redundancies and downsizing is seen as the top challenge in the coming year, the need for robust accounting and financial reporting has never been more important,” comments Lee Dempster, Advantage Professional’s Operations Director. “This translates into a critical requirement to attract and retain key skills. Having worked hard in recent years to attract talent from the private sector for the necessary commercial approach, it would be unfortunate to lose it again.”
Against this backdrop, retention and recruitment of financial staff is a big challenge, with the report finding that a third of public sector and not for profit employers are addressing this issue by looking at changing the scope of roles to increase job satisfaction.
Dempster continues: “The picture for charities, housing associations and other not for profit organisations remains uncertain, particularly if they’re reliant on government funding, but there’s a continuing need to attract the best commercial talent to the sector if it is to meet all of its challenges.”
The report identified that the slow road to economic recovery will be matched by an increase in demand for financial, strategic management, project management and systems skills sets.
Commenting on this issue, Lee Dempster added: “If not for profit organisations don’t act now to bolster their skills bank, they may find themselves competing for the best talent, not only with similar organisations, but with the private sector too.”