CFO Survey Rates Healthcare Costs Top Challenge

21.06.2011
Corporate finance chiefs rated healthcare costs, controlling spending and improving profitability, and staff morale and motivation as their three top challenges in .

Half surveyed 1,400 CFOs from a random sample of U.S. companies having 20 or more employees, asking them to rank the most pressing concerns their companies face.

The specialized consulting and staffing services concern, with a network of more than 400 locations globally, noted that perennial concerns from past surveys -- controlling spending, improving profitability, increasing the demand for products and services, and monitoring risk -- were much in evidence again this year. But Half said these were intensified in recent months by "a backdrop of persistent uncertainty."

It noted one CFO's comment that the threat of a more-prolonged recovery is what was most troubling, compared to past recoveries for which signs of growth ahead were clearer.

"Moreover, certain issues facing CFOs -- in particular, the rising cost of healthcare insurance -- remain as problematic as ever, even if the nature of the concern has changed somewhat," Half's report said. "Other of-the-moment challenges mentioned by CFOs in interviews include the need to drive topline growth, the potential for increased regulation, higher fixed costs, competition from outside the United States, the macroeconomic outlook, pricing pressures, high unemployment and risks related to doing business in emerging markets."