A key consolidator leaves in the midst of IFRS 18 implementation, a management control team is cut in half in two years, a promising junior is discouraged by a lack of support...

Many finance departments have already experienced these situations. On the face of it, they have nothing to do with a training plan. And yet, they all tell the same story: the fragility of the finance function's skills capital.

In many companies, the finance department's training plan still resembles a wish list.

And yet, for CFOs who take the subject head-on, skills management becomes a real lever for performance and resilience.

Regulations are being superimposed (ESRS, IFRS 18, etc.), management expectations are being refined, and business lines are being reshaped. Against this backdrop, a finance team's ability to adapt depends first and foremost on what it knows how to do, learn and pass on.

To ask the question of skills today is to ask the question of :

• organizational resilience,
• retention of rare profiles,
• and collective performance over the long term.

And it's not - or not only - the HR department's business.

1. Tensions, fatigue, obsolescence: weak signals are now visible

The tension in finance departments is not new, but it's changing.

Yes, experienced accountants, consolidators and controllers have been in short supply for years.

What evolves is the combination of three dynamics:

1.1 The explosion of regulatory and extra-financial requirements

Pillar 2, ESRS, new IFRS standards, extra-financial reporting: each year adds a new layer of technical complexity and responsibility for finance teams. Our study of consolidation services in France last year clearly demonstrated this trend.

1.2 Background fatigue in senior profiles

Many experienced managers find themselves caught between day-to-day production, the transformation of tools and the growing importance of data... With, often, too little time to train and support younger staff.

1.3. Promising juniors, but little prepared for operations

Young graduates arrive with potential, but are confronted with unstable contexts, demanding processes and sometimes limited on-the-job support.

In some groups, this equation can be seen in very concrete terms: saturated senior staff who become "bottlenecks" on complex subjects, junior staff who remain confined to execution tasks, and a finance department that struggles to take a step back for lack of available bandwidth.

The consequences are very concrete:

• Turnover on the rise in several finance professions
• Difficulty empowering new recruits
• Potential misunderstandings with operational staff about expectations, deadlines and resources.

Several studies confirm this tension. In a recent PwC US survey, over half the CFOs questioned cited skills shortages and talent retention as the main obstacles to executing their finance strategy.

On a global scale, a report by the World Economic Forum and PwC Academy Luxemboug estimates that by 2030, some 85 million jobs could remain unfilled for lack of adequate skills, with a potential loss of $8,500 billion in value per year.

In other words: financial human capital is slowly being eroded... unless it is managed as a strategic asset.

For the finance department, not looking at these weak signals means accepting a silent risk: that of discovering, at the worst possible moment, that a critical skill is held by just one person... who has just announced his departure.

2. Finance departments become HR strategists - whether they like it or not

In this context, the CFO can no longer simply be the guarantor of figures.

He becomes a key HR player for his teams.

In concrete terms, the finance department :

• structures the career paths of its employees (accountant → consolidator → reporting manager, etc.);
• anticipates critical skills for the next 12-24 months: data, IFRS standards, performance management, financial communication, etc. ;
• arbitrate between recruitment, internal mobility and skills development;
• dialogue with the HR department on GPEC (Gestion Prévisionnelle des Emplois et des Compétences), succession planning and employer branding on the finance side.

The latest CFO surveys show that skills management and the ability to attract and retain talent are now among the top 3 priorities for many CFOs.

At the same time, Deloitte's work on Human Capital Trends highlights a fundamental trend:

• The most agile organizations are those that move from a "jobs" approach to a skills portfolio approach, which can be mobilized across business silos.

This change of perspective is decisive for the finance function: it's no longer just a question of "replacing a management controller", but of knowing which skills (modeling, gap analysis, teaching operational staff, mastery of data visualization tools) need to be present, combined and renewed in the team.

👉 So, the HR strategist finance department isn't just a trendy concept.

This is the prerequisite for absorbing regulatory, technological and business shocks over the long term.

Clearly, the CFO who fails to take on this role runs three risks: he or she is dependent on a few "heroes" who are difficult to replace, he or she has to endure the job market rather than steer it, and his or her function is perceived as a cost center under pressure rather than a reliable partner in transformation.

3. What the most advanced finance departments do

Finance departments that have taken the issue of skills as a key asset seriously generally act along three main lines.

3.1 Identify their areas of vulnerability

Rather than settling for a generic "training plan", they are asking themselves some very operational questions:

• On what subjects are we dependent on 1 or 2 people?
• What skills would be critical in the event of departure or prolonged sick leave?
• What regulatory and non-financial skills are needed to remain compliant (non-financial reporting, IFRS, consolidation, taxation, etc.)?
• Where do we lack soft skills (communication, business partner posture, teaching non-financial staff)?

They map skills by profession, level and business challenge, and cross-reference this vision with transformation plans (new ERP, deployment of data visualization tools, evolution of the business model, etc.).

For example, this mapping exercise revealed a major vulnerability in a large industrial company: control of IFRS consolidation was in the hands of just two people, who were close to retirement, at a time when the company was preparing a major acquisition. The finance department was able to anticipate the situation, organize a skills transfer and secure the publication schedule. Without this diagnosis, this fragility would have remained invisible.

3.2. they build real journeys, not "one shots

The most mature finance departments are moving away from the "one course = one problem" logic.

They organize intelligent itineraries, for example:

• Essentials in 3 hours" modules to meet specific needs (in-depth analysis of an accounting aspect, definition of technical topics for non-financial professionals, IFRS fundamentals, etc.).
• Tutored e-learning courses for geographically dispersed teams, with support from a business expert.
• Structured 6-month to 1-year courses on consolidation, financial modeling, performance analysis, extra-financial reporting, etc.
• Modules dedicated to the financial soft skills These include: public speaking, managing meetings with operational staff, and acting as a business partner in relation to senior management.

In concrete terms, a typical career path for a junior management controller might, for example, combine :

• a first block on the fundamentals of management control and financial statements,
• a second on budget modeling and variance analysis,
• a third on presenting results to operational staff and conducting performance meetings.

It's no longer just a collection of sessions, but a clear professionalization path for both employee and manager.

Human capital studies converge: organizations that adopt a skills-first approach gain agility and the ability to rapidly allocate resources to strategic priorities.

3.3 Measuring impact in ways other than completion rate

It's no longer just a question of employee participation. Finance departments need to turn to new indicators to measure impact.

They observe, for example:

• Quality of reporting (fewer errors, clearer, more informative);
• Quick turnaround on closings and deliverables;
• The ability of teams to challenge assumptions and propose prospective analyses;
• The evolution of dialogue with the professions (less tension, more co-construction).

In one organization, the implementation of a closing and data reliability course resulted in a one-day reduction in the quarterly closing schedule and a significant reduction in last-minute restatements. These are the indicators that speak to COMEX, far more than a 95% completion rate.

They cross-reference these data with feedback from managers, job interviews and, in some cases, HR indicators (mobility, retention, commitment).

In this model, training is not a cost.

It's a productivity multiplier over 12 to 24 months.

For the finance department, adopting this logic means being able to defend its skills development budgets not in the name of a "training need", but on the basis of concrete commitments: securing compliance, reducing closing times, improving the quality of decisions.

4. How FinHarmony supports this rise in skills

Moving from intuition ("we've got a skills problem") to a real strategy requires time, tools and a detailed knowledge of the finance professions. Many finance departments have neither the appetite nor the internal resources to structure this approach on their own, especially in contexts that are already highly charged. This is where a specialized partner can play a catalytic role.

At FinHarmony, we work alongside finance departments and HR departments who want to turn skills into a genuine management lever.

Our approach is based on three pillars:

4.1. A diagnosis rooted in reality

Before offering training courses, we work on :

• skills mapping by profession (accountant, consolidator, management controller, reporting manager, etc.);
• identification of critical areas (regulatory issues, dependencies on one person, succession issues);
• taking into account organizational challenges and realities (hybrid, multi-site, international, etc.).

We carry out this diagnosis by combining several viewpoints: that of the employees themselves, that of finance managers and, where relevant, that of HR and senior management. The aim is not to produce yet another "inventory", but to identify the real tipping points for the performance of the finance function.

4.2. Pathways built around your challenges

Our 2026 catalog allows you to assemble devices adapted to your priorities, with themes such as :

• IFRS & consolidation
• Performance management
• Financial modeling
• Data and AI for finance
• Financial soft skills & business partner posture
• Non-financial reporting
• Finance for non-financiers

This content can be deployed :

• inter or intra,
• face-to-face, distance learning or blended learning
• blended (multi-resource)
• in the form of digital learning integrated into the day-to-day work of our teams.

The challenge is not to "stack" training courses, but to build a clear progression path for each profile and for the team as a whole.

We always work on the basis of a career path: diagnosis, target trajectory, sequence of systems (face-to-face, distance learning, role-playing), then consolidation over time. This approach makes it possible for both financial management and employees to see how far we've come, and how much progress remains to be made.

4.3. Impact-oriented support

We help finance departments to :

• link training initiatives to operational objectives (secure processes, make consolidation more reliable, speed up closing, improve dialogue with business lines, etc.);
• set up simple but meaningful impact indicators;
• provide local managers with the tools they need to promote skills development.

In concrete terms, this may involve the joint development of a number of indicators with finance and management teams, to be monitored over time: changes in closing times, reduction in restatements, level of comfort among teams with regard to a regulatory issue, perceived quality of exchanges with operational staff, etc.

Conclusion: skills as a balance sheet asset

The finance department is no longer simply the custodian of the past and the present.

It :

• anticipates human risks;
• builds the conditions for future performance;
• and makes skills a strategic asset that secures transformations (extra-financial reporting, new business models, advanced digitalization...).

So the question is no longer: do we have a training plan?

The real question is:

Is our finance team really ready for the challenges of 2026?

To begin answering them, a few simple questions can serve as a guideline:

• Do we know precisely on which subjects we depend on 1 or 2 key people?
• Have we defined a growth path for our main finance professions (accountant, consolidator, management controller, etc.) over 2 to 3 years?
• Do we have any concrete indicators to measure the impact of our skills development initiatives on operational performance?

If the answer to any of these questions is "no", it's probably the right time to treat the subject no longer as a training plan, but as a strategic financial management issue.

Would you like to take stock of your financial skills?

FinHarmony helps finance and HR departments move from a catalog of training courses to a genuine skills strategy.

📩 Contact us to arrange an exploratory discussion about your financial skills plan and your priorities for the next 12-24 months.