upskill, hire or automate? a data-driven framework to overcome the finance talent shortage.

Finance leaders are being asked to do more with less. It’s a classic business challenge, but today it feels different. The pressure is coming from every direction: workloads are increasing, global regulations are getting more complex, and the business expects you to be a strategic partner, not just a record-keeper. At the same time, the talent pool that finance has always relied on is shrinking at an alarming rate.

Expectations are driving this shift. Finance roles have evolved from transactional to transformational, but resources haven’t kept pace. That gap between rising expectations and limited capacity demands a new approach.

The numbers are stark. Experienced accountants and auditors are leaving the profession faster than they can be replaced, with over 300,000 exiting in recent years and fewer students pursuing finance degrees. The finance talent shortage is affecting every level. Senior accountants are harder to find. Entry-level finance jobs are tougher to fill. Backlogs build, which crowds out time for analysis and business partnering.

Finance leaders follow a modern framework to stay competitive. Automate the repeatable work, upskill your people to use new tools, then hire for specialized needs that drive unique value. In the face of a growing finance talent shortage, this sequence turns a constrained labor market into a catalyst for a stronger finance function.

why the default approach falls short

Hiring has long been the default response to rising workload. It is becoming a losing strategy when talent is scarce. Time-to-fill stretches. Offer acceptance rates soften. Salaries and fees increase. Replacing a single salaried employee costs a company 6-9 months of that person’s salary, including recruitment, onboarding and lost productivity. New hires often take several months to reach full, independent productivity, during which time the existing team must carry the burden. In high-demand markets, organizations are forced to resort to expensive, temporary measures such as importing finance talent—a trend seen in countries like the Netherlands. Even when you land the right person, it can take months for them to reach full productivity.

These reactive, expensive quick fixes rarely address the structural issue. Low-value, manual tasks dominate the workload, which should not necessitate human intervention in the first place.  Trying to hire your way out of this problem is like trying to fill a leaky bucket with a thimble. You are adding capacity linearly, while the manual work problem is growing exponentially. Burnout is rising, and more than 40% of reporting tasks are delayed.

investing in your people is always the right move

Upskilling and internal professional development are essential to a healthy, forward-looking finance function. This strategy is a powerful tool for talent retention and motivation. Providing clear paths for growth, such as offering training in data analytics, advanced financial modelling or business partnership, builds loyalty. It significantly enhances job satisfaction and ensures your workforce remains relevant and future-ready. Employees who receive consistent learning opportunities are considerably more likely to stay with their current employer. This investment is non-negotiable for retention.

Workmonitor consistently shows that employees who feel their company is investing in their development are far more engaged and productive, and they are more likely to stay long-term. In a competitive talent market shaped by persistent finance talent shortage, a robust upskilling program is a critical tool for both retention and transformation.

But here’s the challenge every finance leader needs to confront. Upskilling alone isn't enough.

There is a deep paradox in training your team on high-value skills while they are still drowning in low-value work. Having the best data visualization training in the world won’t have an impact if your senior analyst is spending thirty hours a week preparing repetitive reports or entering journal entries for month-end adjustments. The initial enthusiasm to use these new skills quickly fades when the daily reality remains unchanged.

Even worse, you may be training your best people to leave. If you train an employee in in-demand skills but don't let them use them, they'll find a job that does. For upskilling to deliver an actual return on investment, you first have to create the capacity for people to apply what they’ve learnt.

creating the space for your team to shine

This brings us to the most effective solution to the finance talent shortage: automation. 

Automation is not an isolated alternative to hiring or upskilling. It is the force multiplier that makes both of the other strategies effective and financially viable.

By intelligently taking over highly repetitive, rules-based tasks, automation immediately frees people. It liberates them to focus on higher-value work that truly requires human judgment, such as forecasting, variance analysis, stakeholder communication and risk management.

Modern AI-powered tools can now reliably handle the high-volume work that creates your "silent tax," such as three-way invoice matching, bank reconciliations, expense validation, and dunning communications. Automating these essential processes gives your team that time back. But the impact is much bigger than just "time saved". You are fundamentally changing the nature of the work itself.

With newfound capacity, your team’s focus can shift from reactive to proactive. Instead of just closing the 

books on the last quarter, they can analyze real-time trends to improve the forecast for the next one. They can spend less time correcting data entry errors and more time partnering with sales and operations to model the financial impact of key business decisions.

This is what it means to have a modern framework that finance leaders can follow. You are creating the space for your team to do the strategic, deeply human work that no machine can.

automate, upskill, then hire

The most resilient and effective finance leaders we work with are no longer choosing between these three options. They are following a modern framework that sequences them into a powerful hybrid strategy tailored to today’s talent market realities.

Tip: Don't automate a mess. Begin transformation by analyzing and optimizing existing workflows. This includes mapping processes, standardizing them, and ensuring data readiness. This will make automating less complex and more successful.

• Automate first. Address the capacity issue at its source. Free your team from the repetitive, low-value work that drains their potential. This creates a stable and highly efficient operational foundation for everything that follows.
• Upskill next. With these new "time dividends," you immediately reinvest in your team. We now train the employees who previously performed manual data entry to become data analysts, vendor managers, or fraud investigators. They learn to use AI and other modern tools to summarize reports, spot trends, and optimize strategies. This shows a clear, tangible commitment to their career growth and proves that automation is a tool for their advancement, not their replacement.
• Hire last. After automating low-level work and upskilling your current team, you can reassess your actual hiring needs. You will find you no longer need five AP clerks. Instead, you can hire one specialized "Finance Systems Manager." You are seeking candidates with strong analytical and strategic thinking skills, not just manual labour.

Automation doesn’t replace great finance professionals. It reveals them. This strategy of investing in people and technology is the key to retention, a trend we see accelerating in the latest data on global finance talent.