Irish finance staff suffering more from mental health issues than global peers

Almost 60 per cent of Irish finance professionals say their employees' mental health and wellbeing is the most significant issue facing their business, a new report shows.

The response from Irish finance chiefs was higher than that of their global counterparts with 48 per reporting employee wellbeing as the most pressing issue.

A survey of over 3,000 finance leaders around the world, including nearly 150 business leaders in Ireland, by the Association of Chartered Certified Accounts (ACCA) and PwC, shows teams were feeling fatigued having worked harder in the last year than even before.

Adapting to remote working has proved difficult and draining for many, the PwC and ACCA report, Finance Functions: Seizing the Opportunity, published on Monday, says.

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Nearly a third of the report’s Irish survey respondents (32 per cent) said the most significant issue facing their finance function is productivity but that new ways of working are beginning to emerge that increase productivity, collaboration and employee engagement.

ESG

Meanwhile, less than one fifth (19 per cent) of Irish finance leaders said that environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) considerations were the top priority for their finance function, compared to the global response of 22 per cent. This raises a concern that issues such as the climate crisis have taken a back seat while organisations fire-fight the Covid-19 crisis, the report says. However, “stakeholder interest in this area is growing rapidly and finance teams have an important part to play in explaining the organisation’s journey”.

PwC Ireland’s director of advisory consulting Jens Gladikowski said that while “participants often commented that while they appreciated the (ESG) issue, there was a lack of confidence in the data available and uncertainty about where to start, especially in relation to non-financial data. It is important that finance functions grasp the sustainability agenda and play their full role to achieve global targets”.

Almost three-quarters (73 per cent) of Irish respondents said the pandemic has had a lasting impact on the technologies used in the finance function, compared to 66 per cent globally. The report says that going forward there will be even greater focus on cyber risk, cloud based solutions, cloud based computing, scenario modelling and predictive analytics.