Federal CFOs are weathering today’s financial storms by nurturing and protecting their workforce. Their offices have a strong culture that is instrumental in meeting the established goals.
With staff cutbacks driving up workload for the remaining staff, continuing pay freezes driving down morale, and elections making the entire federal workforce fair game for political attacks, CFOs are in need of a strong culture to keep everyone focused on achieving results. These are just some of the findings from the 2012 survey of federal CFOs conducted by the Association of Government Accountants and Grant Thornton LLP.
The 17th annual survey is based on responses from over 300 federal CFOs and their workforces. Among other insights, we have found that:
- The federal Campaign to Cut Waste does not strategically advance the mission of agencies, which sometimes results in diverting resources that could be better used elsewhere.
- CFOs organize and align their offices with their agency mission such that every CFO’s success is an agency success.
- The agency workforce is not as optimistic as the CFOs about how well they will weather the financial storms.
