How companies can keep adding tech like AI without suffering ‘change fatigue’

Good morning. Using tech to streamline the finance function is taking place across all industries—even gleaning data from slot machines.

I had a chat with Vanesa Bui, VP of transformation at Mohegan Gaming & Entertainment, during the Gartner CFO & Finance Executive Conference on Tuesday. Mohegan’s portfolio also includes food and beverage, lodging, and even a basketball team. The company, with the help of PwC, recently transformed its legacy finance and HR systems into a unified solution with Workday (a CFO Daily sponsor).

Bui offered an example. “For our gaming operators,” she explained, going deeper with analytics is all about “understanding how their business is doing. How’s the slot performance on a daily basis? What’s the usage of seats at the table or the slot machines? You need the financial data to enable that type of analysis to help operators make better business decisions.”

As employees embrace such changes and transformations take place, Bui said it’s vital to keep them all engaged in the journey—and it’s not always easy. “Change fatigue is real,” she told me. “When you are constantly introducing change to people that have normal, 40-hour work weeks, it’s hard to digest.”

Team members who feel overloaded are often slower to adopt new systems, and others may begin looking to switch teams—or even switch companies, she said. Being inclusive and communicating effectively can help combat such feelings. When it comes to new tech, Bui added, you should be as transparent as possible—“This process is going to be painful, and it’s going to be hard”—and remind them how it’s going to help them achieve their goals.

This is where good managers can help, noted Gartner’s Marco D’Ascoli, a director of advisory in the finance practice, who spoke during another conference session. “I’ve talked to many CFOs complaining about the lack of capacity to address resistance,” he said. They simply don’t have the time to communicate with everyone at a company. Finance chiefs tell him: “We need help from the managers within the organization.”

Mid-level managers can help close those communication gaps, working with CFOs to create a one-page document to share with direct reports. Such a one-pager should address things like what’s changing and what’s not, what the costs and benefits are, and which key milestones to shoot for. And managers then can personalize the documents to make them even more relevant to their teams, D’Ascoli said.

“This tactic,” he added, “will allow employees to see the transformation value.”

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

Leaderboard

Krishna Rao was named the first CFO of Anthropic, an AI startup. Rao joins the company from Fanatics Commerce, a digital sports platform, where he served as CFO. As finance chief at Cedar, a health care payments and patient engagement platform, he led both the finance function and operational initiatives. Before that, Rao was an executive at Airbnb, serving as global head of corporate and business development and leading corporate and operations FP&A. Earlier in his career, he spent time as a private equity investor at Blackstone and as a strategy consultant at Bain & Company.

Deborah Knobelman was named COO and CFO at Kronos Bio, Inc. (Nasdaq: KRON), effective June 3. Knobelman was previously CFO and head of corporate development for Senti Bio. Knobelman took the company public in 2022. Prior to Senti, she served in interim C-suite roles for several life sciences companies, including Jogo Health, Thinklabs, and Aktiv Pharma Group, and served as CFO at GeneriCo, LLC and chief business officer at Ampio Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Big Deal

The 2024 Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) Compensation and Benefits Survey Report finds that, on average, treasury and finance professionals realized a 4.4% gain in their base salaries in 2023, down from a 5% increase in 2022.

Executive-tier professionals and staff-tier professionals earned an average increase of 4.2%, while management-tier professionals again saw an increase of 4.6%.

The survey also found that 68% of organizations awarded bonuses to their employees in 2023. And 89% of organizations awarded cash bonuses, meanwhile 41% awarded their employees stock options.

The results of the survey “demonstrate the importance of offering employees a competitive compensation and benefits package as well as focusing on upskilling talent,” Jim Kaitz, president and CEO of AFP, said in a statement. The survey findings are based on responses from more than 1,200 financial professionals located in the U.S.

Going deeper

“Investors clash over Elon Musk’s $46 billion pay package: ‘The board has yet to ensure that Tesla has a full-time CEO,’” is a new Fortune report by Amanda Gerut. She writes: “A group including the New York City pension funds filed a notice on Monday urging others to vote against Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s $46 billion stock-option package at the company’s shareholder meeting on June 13. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who serves as investment advisor to the city’s funds with $260 billion in assets, is marshaling the charge.” You can read the complete report here.