CFO Leadership

Let’s be honest, we can sometimes stumble here and there and make mistakes when it comes to working with our colleagues and executive leadership. I know I have. We’re not always going to be perfect—we’re humans and we make mistakes. But as professionals, we always strive to be collaborative and problem solvers. When you are working with multiple departments and teams, you’ll often collaborate on projects with chief level executives. So, in this blog, I’m going to share with you three things you need to know about working with your CFO whether you’re in finance or not. Let’s get into it. What do CFOs really care about? 1. They Need Collaboration and Trust When it comes to working with a CFO, it’s all about collaboration and trust. Working with a CFO takes a great deal of transparency and accountability since you are more often than not basing your conversation around team metrics and ROI. These metrics and data points need to be delivered with honesty in order to cultivate a strong relationship with your CFO. According to Vena’s CFO Darrell Cox, when you are collaborating with finance, “knowing your numbers helps bridge the gap and sharing the numbers helps you build the relationship.” Cultivating a good relationship means aligning collaboration between finance and other teams. This ensures that all teams work together to reach their business goals. When relationships are strong and built on a foundation of trust, your organization is also aligned. When team relationships aren’t built on trust, you can confidently assume that the business goals will not be met since there is misalignment among teams. Plan To Grow 7 Principles of The Agile CFO Is finance exciting? Absolutely, according to Vena’s Chief Financial Officer, Darrell Cox, in his new talk on Plan To Grow, 7 Principles of The Agile CFO.  2. They Care About the Metrics You’ll often hear CFOs asking, “What’s the ROI?” The top three things CFOs always have on their radar are expenses, revenue and net income. They also look into lead funnel, conversion rates, new account opportunities, accurate reporting and cost of customer acquisition. These are the kinds of metrics that CFOs care about and have top of mind. It’s important to keep these metrics close by when you are speaking to your CFO. It’s also equally as important, if not more, for different departmental teams to communicate with one another and to share pertinent metrics like these. It’s not necessarily one team's job to chase the other for these metrics. In fact, Darrell suggests, “Everyone needs to be doing their roles and working together as one team. You can’t look at any responsibility on one individual to reach out to the other.” Darrell also points out that it’s important for teams to align and that things often boil down to the numbers and trust. “There have been situations where teams have been struggling to achieve their objectives with their budget. My role is to get in there and understand all the numbers and if we need to reallocate budget,” he says. Since numbers and metrics are pertinent to teams, aligning tools that can speed up the process and accuracy of reporting make all the difference. Vena utilizes a dashboard of leading indicators of business performance and if you see that there is an issue with any project, a change can be made relatively quickly. Our dashboards also help teams talk through the numbers and understand the risks. Ready to start your own growth journey? For a CFO, it’s not just about the numbers, but rather what those numbers represent. A common mistake made in working with CFOs is not having accurate metrics, or worse , manipulated and biased metrics. According to Darrell, financial metrics are a great way to make your case a point to your CFO on a particular project or team goal. Having an honest conversation about metrics helps CFOs feel comfortable and also builds trust. Not all metrics will be positive month over month. But don’t throw away trust by manipulating metrics to look better than they really are. It’s the CFO’s job to help you get your metrics to where they need to be. 3. They Need You To Speak the Same Language Outside of accurate metrics, trust and team collaboration, it’s really important to speak the same language with your CFO. What we mean by this is ensuring that different teams are all sharing the same view of data. For example, CFOs are focused on growth and cash or growth and profit whereas marketing teams are focused on growth, but they’re not always able to relate it to profit or spend. Once the marketing team is able to tie marketing results to early indicators and late stage results, then marketing and finance are speaking the same language. As Darrell claims, “Communicating in a way that illustrates the results over the activity” is the most important thing to remember when speaking with your CFO. One last piece of advice from our CFO is that “the only thing for sure about a plan is that it will go wrong.” So plan ahead when you can and learn to be nimble and agile in response to unpredicted changes. Curious about what the world’s top CFOs have in common? Read our blog. Watch Darrell's Talk on Plan To Grow Missed Darrell's talk during Vena Nation week? Watch his keynote The Evolution of the Strategic CFO on Plan To Grow.

Just this week we made an exciting announcement about our $300M series C funding round with Vista Equity Partners. Vista has a long history of helping companies scale while staying focused on customer value and company culture. This aligns really well to how we think about the trust we build with customers and partners and the depth and quality of the culture we’ve built. I’m thrilled to see Vista join JMI Equity and Centana Growth Partners as investors and board members for this next leg of our journey. In many ways, I feel as if our journey has just begun because there is so much ahead of us, but I also recognize that we’ve come a long way. When I joined as CEO just under two years ago, I was impressed by the humility and capability of the people on the team, by the potential we had to build a special company delivering quantifiable value and by the shared commitment to our purpose of helping finance and operations teams plan and run their businesses. Much of what I was excited about had evolved over time, but the core of the company was a reflection of the passion and drive of our three co-founders, George Papayiannis (Chief Technology Officer), Rishi Grover (Chief Solutions Architect) and Don Mal (former CEO). Just under 10 years ago, Vena was born and we are now 450 Venanites strong and growing fast to serve customers all over the globe across myriad industries. Each customer relationship we’ve developed along the way helped to shape our culture and will define our future. Those same relationships gave us strength through the pandemic and drove us to continue creating new levers of value within our product and company. We continue to be humbled by the trust our customers and partners put in us and strive to earn it every day. As we transitioned into 2020, it became even more clear to us that all organizations need both proven methodology and flexible technology to build agility and resilience into their financial and operational planning. It also became clear that we still had a lot of work ahead of us to grow into the company we aspire to be, helping tens of thousands of customers find their own success leveraging Vena as their planning platform of choice. Through these lenses of customer need and company growth, we’ve opened our doors to welcome Vista as a valued investor and operating partner in serving our mission. We are all excited by the work ahead of us and thrilled that we will be able to help so many more organizations and so many more finance and operations professionals Plan to GrowTM with Vena.  Learn more about Vena's business growth engine.

As we celebrate Earth Day this month, it's important to remember how to keep our planet sustainable and healthy every day. As finance and operations professionals, you may be wondering how you can bring your colleagues, teams and entire organization together to keep sustainability top of mind for everyone—inside and outside of the office. The good news is that within your professional roles you’re situated to help drive action in your organization when it comes to sustainability. According to this article, finance teams are uniquely positioned to evaluate new sources of value, and in effect integrate these new sources into the organizations sustainability plan. Sustainability is something that’s important to investors, customers and employees and it can also become the key to your organization's strategic plan. Learn more about why CFOs should be firmly focused on sustainability by reading our blog. In this blog, we’ll share three tips to make sure your CFO is on board with sustainability, but before we dig in, let’s look at a few of the reasons why some CFOs might not be on board just yet. Why Aren’t Some CFOs On Board With Sustainability? Many organizations are focusing on improving their environmental impacts and building what’s considered a sustainable brand. According to this Forbes article a sustainable brand is one that has successfully integrated environmental, economic and social issues into its business operations. A few examples of building a sustainable brand at your organization could include developing sustainability reports and publishing them, as well as creating new roles like a Chief Sustainability Officer. But even with the movement to become more sustainable and an environmentally friendly organization most CFOs still aren’t on board. According to this Harvard Business Review some CFOs still feel that sustainability is an unnecessary and costly expense for their organization rather than a source of value. Reasons being that CFOs generally need to see the long term financial benefits of sustainability integration within their organizations and sometimes that can be hard to illustrate. Most organizations aren’t really taking the time to accurately track their returns on sustainability investment— and there lies the problem. The article goes on to highlight that CFOs often find themselves puzzled by the language and metrics used by their environmentally focused colleagues. CFOs talk finance and their lingo is focused on ROI while their sustainability focused colleagues might use language like waste reduction and energy efficiency. In fact, separate reporting processes for finance and sustainability may cause a lot of confusion and a lack of communication. Financial reporting generally views things like ROI, revenue, net income, and CapEx while sustainability reporting may view process changes, material and product replacements and cost. Since most organizations aren’t tracking returns on sustainability investment, there is also a lack of planning and dependable accounting structure to clearly report sustainability initiatives. All the more reason why ad hoc financial reporting tools make all the difference in organizing reports to track returns on these kinds of investments. With ad hoc reporting you can bring finance led planning to every corner of your organization. Ready to start your own growth journey? Since most business decisions are influenced by every aspect of your organization, with collaboration between departments and insights from all of your data— Vena’s financial reporting software allows you to store real-time data from your finance, sales, and marketing and other systems in a central database so that you can make ad hoc decisions quickly. Ad hoc reporting can help you plan your sustainability initiatives with a clearly defined ROI for your organization. Get Your CFO On Board With Sustainability 1. Outline Your Current Sustainability Strategies It’s important to outline your current sustainability strategies for your organization. Not only will this help you see areas of opportunity, it will also help you make a case to your CFO on where things are in terms of sustainability and where they ultimately could be. Your outline should take the form of a materiality matrix, an in-depth analysis to identify issues most pertinent to your organization and its stakeholders. According to this article, a materiality matrix helps an organization evaluate two focused needs. It measures the value of needs between the impact on the business and the importance to stakeholders. For finance and operations professionals in a commercial bank space for example, a materiality need may be to have regulated and safe data and security protocols put in place. This could be higher on the materiality matrix as a priority for organizations in commercial banking than for organizations focused on distribution as an example. Materiality matrices can also be used for sustainability practices if you want to reduce plastic waste and manage energy efficiency for your organization. You first need to evaluate the sustainable solution and how it will impact the organization’s growth, costs or trust. Secondly you need to outline how important the solution is for stakeholders. Generally speaking, these matrices will build a visual representation of opportunities to prioritize according to their importance to the organization's goals.  These matrices also help make your case to your CFO on why ESGs are important to your organization and how your team can report on ESG data. Terminology ESGs The Financial Times Lexicon defines ESG (environmental, social and governance) investing as a term used in finance within capital markets and by investors to determine the future financial performance of an organization. EGSs review non-financial performance indicators including sustainable and ethical issues such as an organization's carbon footprint and the measurement systems in place to ensure organizational compliance and accountability. ESGs are important to review for investment considerations and are also leveraged in risk assessment strategies for investment decisions. Moral of the story here is that outlining your materiality matrix to show opportunity—and making the point to your CFO that it can benefit your organization from an investment perspective—is very important. 2. Suggest New Sustainability Strategies for Implementation Once you have the opportunity to review your current strategies and find some of the areas for opportunity through your materiality matrix, it’s time to put together a list of new sustainability strategies that can be implemented at your organization. As you suggest new strategies for your CFO, you can also take the time to highlight their monetary and non-monetary benefits. Consolidating all of this data into a single source of truth can really help you organize your point across to your CFO. You can learn more about how to leverage FP&A software to consolidate your data by reading our blog. Vena’s extended planning solution can also allow you to get at-a-glance visuals of key company metrics, operational and financial at any time to improve key decisions around sustainability initiatives. Non-monetary benefits for example can look at more sustainable practices like better energy, waste and water management. You should plan out and even make suggestions on products or solutions that can be implemented with each of these sustainable changes. Part of your suggestions should also show the cost of each implementation, which leads us to our last tip. 3. Outline The Monetary Long-Term Benefits for Your CFO This Harvard Business Review article highlights the importance of calculating the monetary benefits of sustainability implementation. It also goes into detail on how you can quantify benefits for new sustainable strategies with examples. According to this research, you need to total the financial value created by each of the new sustainable strategies. From there, you can identify which sustainability strategies generate the most value for your organization. The idea is to plan out new sustainability strategies that make the most sense for your organization and that are feasible to do from an operational and financial perspective.  Long-term sustainability investments are shown to have a great ROI. In fact one example referenced in the article highlights an auto company’s goals to reduce VOC emissions and implement a new sustainable solution that allowed them to reuse a solvent. The result of reusing this solvent revealed a savings of $8 million. And when the organization compared the unit cost of the reusable solvents to the traditional new solvents, they realized that this translated to a total annual savings of $90 million. Showing these long-term benefits for your CFO will speak volumes. Not only will it show the ROI, it will also allow you to make your case and point that sustainability strategies can only benefit your organization now and in the long term. Sustainability and Your Business Getting your CFO on board with sustainability will help everyone think differently about the ways sustainable strategies can be implemented throughout your organization, making social and environmental issues a regular part of your business.

As a professional woman in finance and operations, are you still struggling to find work-life balance a year after COVID-19 turned our worlds upside down? You’re not alone. According to a recent Women in the Workplace study, more than one in four women are contemplating downshifting their careers or leaving the workforce completely across industries. But with an understanding of what women need and want in the workplace along with the right approach to workforce planning, there are ways for organizations to support women and keep them employed. In its sixth year, the study, which tracks women in the workplace statistics in corporate America, was conducted between June and September of 2020. It’s based on contributions from 317 participating companies. More than 40,000 people were surveyed on their workplace experiences and 45 in-depth interviews were also conducted to dive deeper into issues. Overall, the study found that women in particular were negatively impacted by the pandemic and that it was women, especially women of color, who were also more likely to have been laid off or furloughed during the crisis. For many, this meant facing financial insecurity, stalling their careers and intensifying some of the challenges women already faced at home, such as working double shifts, caring for children and also dealing with remote learning when schools and daycares were shut down. The study’s findings sound alarm bells for corporate America. As more women leave the workforce and as companies risk losing women leaders, the progress made toward gender and diversity in the workplace may be facing a major setback. But with challenges also comes opportunities. If companies are interested in building a thriving workforce for the future, then they should consider creating a more flexible, empathetic and diverse culture, especially one that helps retain the women and employees most affected by today’s conditions. So how can businesses go about creating a diverse, adaptable and future-proof workforce? It starts with strategic workforce planning. Read on to discover three ways workforce planning can help you build a diverse, flexible and future-ready workforce. 1 Analyze Your Current Workforce Capabilities and Needs 2 Use Scenario Planning To Plot Future Outcomes 3 Foster a Workforce Centered Around Diversity, Equity and Inclusion 1. Analyze Your Current Workforce Capabilities and Needs Building a workforce that will always be ready to handle the current and future needs of your business entails having the right people in the right jobs at the right time. A workforce planning solution can help you strategically plan, report and analyze beyond the surface to determine your workforce capabilities and needs. With labor planning software that integrates with your HRIS system, you can plan salaries, benefits and taxes by department, employee and position—giving you a clear picture of one of your business's biggest expenditures so you can integrate detailed workforce plans into your operating budget. With this data, you can then begin to fill gaps in your workforce. For example, do you need to reallocate existing talent or can you identify segments of your workforce that are leaving or have high turnover rates? You can then look to recruit the kind of talent that fits with your company’s plan to grow and accelerate smarter workforce planning that helps you balance talent demand and supply against business priorities. 2. Use Scenario Planning To Plot Future Outcomes The pandemic taught us that although the future is impossible to predict, businesses should always be prepared for change. Scenario planning can help you challenge your business plans, get clarity on your best path forward and stay ahead of change. For instance, in today’s climate, do you need to change your strategies around flexible work arrangements in order to retain and attract talent? Creating scenarios for any possible future outcomes with instant what-if analysis based on real-time actuals and business drivers, means you can analyze the impact of potential changes to revenue, headcount, cash flow and more. You can then share those insights with leaders across the organization to align goals, allocate resources, train employees and encourage cross-functional teamwork in an ever-changing workforce. Learn 4 best practices for preparing for the future. 3. Foster a Workforce Centered Around Diversity, Equity and Inclusion How can you stop women dropping out of the workforce and create staying power instead? It goes beyond offering a competitive compensation package and creating opportunities for career growth. Putting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) at the core of your business will help give you a competitive advantage. According to a recent Glassdoor survey, more than 3 in 4 employees and job seekers (76%) reported that a diverse workforce is an important factor when evaluating companies and jobs. In that same survey, 1 in 3 employees and job seekers (32%) said that they wouldn’t apply to a job at a company where there’s a lack of workforce diversity. Building diversity, equity and inclusion into your workforce means understanding that DEI goes much deeper than a company’s headcount or policy. It’s more about identifying what makes your talent unique and realizing that you benefit from each other’s strengths and perspectives. It’s also about keeping your workforce engaged by creating the kind of inclusive environment that helps employees thrive at work and advance in their careers. In today’s evolving work environment, this means putting flexibility in the middle of workforce planning and optimizing your teams—on site and remotely. Blog Interested in diversity, equity and inclusion? To find out more on how to build a culture of DEI in your workplace, check out this blog. Recruiting and retaining professional women in the workplace, especially those who are considering leaving the workforce due to the challenges brought on by the pandemic, entails: Designing competitive compensation and benefits packages Offering flexible work options Helping them manage their work-life balance Focusing on their wellness Providing additional support networks and mentorship opportunities  Assisting them on their unique career journeys as they leave and re-enter the       workforce  Having both maternity and paternity policies in place Prioritizing career development Learn more on how you can challenge the she-cession with workforce planning.

Every year, Women’s History Month takes place in March in the U.S., U.K. and Australia. Across the globe, it’s a time to mark and celebrate women’s achievements. Over the years and since International Women’s Day (IWD) was first celebrated in 1908, women have fought tirelessly for the freedoms and rights we enjoy today. And recently, there has certainly been a lot more to celebrate. In 2021, one hundred years after women won the right to vote, America voted in Kamala Harris, the first woman vice president and highest-ranking elected woman official in U.S. history. There have been many notable women in science who have made a significant difference during the pandemic. From landing NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars to breaking records in landing CEO roles in America’s largest corporations, we have come a long way in advancing women’s rights and gender equality in many industries. The same can be said for the finance world too. A Bloomberg article revealed that in 2020, U.S. companies hired a record number of CFOs. As of August 2020, 90 women held the CFO role at S&P 500 and Fortune 500 companies. In honor of Women’s History Month and using this year’s IWD theme of #ChoosetoChallenge as inspiration, we’d like to highlight five inspirational women who have made significant impacts as financial leaders. These women are climbing the corporate ladder, breaking the glass ceiling, building diverse teams, creating new business models and showing us that stats and industries can and do change in time. To learn how to challenge the she-cession with workforce planning, read this blog. 1. Amy Hood, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Microsoft Amy Hood joined Microsoft in 2002 and in her role as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer she has been leading the company’s worldwide finance organization. This includes involvement in the company’s overall operations and strategy development.  For the past seven years, she has worked alongside Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella as a strategic partner, driving long-term financial growth, championing culture and leading corporate initiatives such as Microsoft’s commitments to climate change and affordable housing. 2. Kendra James-Anderson, Virtual CFO and Owner of The Finance Femme Kendra James-Anderson’s experience working in diverse industries as a financial planning analysis manager led her to create The Finance Femme because she recognized that there was a large gap in the financial management industry. Billion-dollar companies had CFOs working as strategic partners to CEOs assisting with everyday decision making based on facts, data and analysis, but the same wasn’t so for smaller businesses. They were often left working with CPA and accounting firms whose business approach was more reactive rather than forward-looking. So she created the Virtual CFO service to serve businesswomen as a financial partner, providing high-value services that give business owners the forward-looking support they need. Besides supporting the finance needs of businesswomen daily with Virtual CFO, Kendra also coaches and mentors women in the accounting, finance and tax industries, helping them build their businesses and brands.  3. Dhivya Suryadevara, Chief Financial Officer at Stripe Dhivya Suryadevara is the Chief Financial Officer at Stripe, a global technology company that builds economic infrastructure for the internet helping millions of companies of all sizes manage their businesses online. Prior to Stripe, she was the Chief Financial Officer of General Motors. Her appointment as GM’s CFO back in 2018 made GM one of two Fortune 500 companies that had both a female CEO (Mary Barra) and CFO (Hershey is the other company). Dhivya decided to join Stripe because she believes that the internet is still not the engine for global economic progress that it could be. Dhivya was named in the list of Forbes ‘40 Under 40’ in 2015 and 2018. She was also named one of Barron’s 100 Most Influential Women in US Finance in 2020. 4. Kathy Willard, Chief Financial Officer at Live Nation Entertainment As CFO of the world’s leading live entertainment, ticketing and e-commerce company since 2007, Kathy Willard has certainly built up the financial strength of the company enough to withstand the challenges brought on by the pandemic. In fact, in March of 2020, Live Nation announced that concerts would be put on hold indefnitely, setting a standard of safety and caution for the rest of the industry. Before taking on the CFO role at Live Nation, she worked for the company for nine years as its executive vice president and chief accounting officer. 5. Zita Cobb, CFO, Businesswoman and Social Entrepreneur Canadian businesswoman and social entrepreneur Zita Cobb worked in the high-tech industry for years as a CFO before retiring, leaving that world behind and heading back to her hometown of Fogo Island with a purpose: to do something in response to the economic and cultural challenges the small coastal community had experienced over the past decades. Along with her brothers, Zita founded the Shorefast Foundation, a registered Canadian charity whose mission is to revitalize Fogo Island as well as Newfoundland and Labrador. The Foundation puts all of its profits back into the community by operating businesses and employing people in the Fogo area. One example is the Fogo Island Inn, a community-owned business that opened in 2013. To find out how to build a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion in your workplace, read this blog. Choose To Challenge Every Day This year's IWD theme, #ChoosetoChallenge, is calling upon all of us to think critically about our own thoughts and actions towards gender equality so that we can collectively move from challenges to change—inside and outside of work. In the workplace, choosing to challenge every day involves: Choosing to lift each other up Calling out gender biases and inequalities Improving the hiring process to increase diversity Developing diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the workplace Providing diversity training Challenging workplace gender bias Identifying gender gaps in business leadership Taking proactive steps to closing the gender pay gap Investing in women’s economic empowerment Supporting women-owned businesses  Looking to challenge gender inequality in the workplace? Read this blog.

Before COVID-19, the World Economic Forum (WEF) predicted it would take 257 years to close the gender gap. But the pandemic has disproportionately affected women+, so this estimate is likely going to increase (talk about a Debbie Downer). Despite this, there is still a lot to celebrate as some nations celebrate Women’s History this month. As we look back, we can admire the women who persevered and paved new ways for current generations. So what’s another 257-ish years after many hundreds of years of progress? To celebrate this year’s theme for International Women’s Day, “Choose To Challenge,” we looked at four obstacles that women+ continue to face in the workplace. With each issue, there are suggestions for how you can help challenge them as well as how to be better allies to your marginalized colleagues. This is not an exhaustive list, but includes the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, age, disability, and more because gender inequality isn’t just a women’s issue—it’s a people issue. And all of us, not only women+, need to be a part of the conversation to attain the unicorn that is gender parity. Terminology Women+ All women, non-binary people and anyone else who identifies as underrepresented because of their gender identity. 1 Gender Pay Gap 2 Workplace Harassment 3 Microaggressions 4 Lack of Opportunities Gender Pay Gap The gender pay gap is the average difference between the wages women+ and men make. There is a common misconception in countries, where it’s illegal to pay women less than men for the same work, that the gender pay gap is a myth. This, of course, is not true as many women+ can attest to the fact and the data backs them up. Here are the facts in the U.S.: In the U.S., women working full time, year-round are typically paid 82 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts. Black women make 63 cents for every dollar paid to their white, non-Hispanic male counterparts; for Indigenous women, it’s 60 cents; for Latin women, it’s 55 cents and for women with disabilities it’s 80 cents. Mothers in the U.S. are usually paid 70 cents for every dollar a father earns; regardless of race, mothers make less than white, non-Hispanic fathers. Here are the facts in Canada: In Canada, the stats are similar: the hourly pay of full-time working women is 87 cents to a man’s dollar. Racialized women working full time, year-round make 67 cents to the dollar of racialized men; Indigenous women make 65 cents to the dollar of Indigenous men and women with disabilities make 54 cents to the dollar of men without disabilities. Mothers in Canada with at least one child under age 18 earn 85 cents for every dollar earned by fathers. Since most studies and surveys about the pay gap typically don’t include different gender identities, it’s difficult to say how much they earn to the dollar of cisgender men and women. But the evidence we do have shows they aren’t exempt from the gender pay gap either. For example, one study found that transgender males reported a slight increase in earnings, while transgender females reported a decrease of about 32% in their salaries. The National Transgender Discrimination Survey showed that 15% of trans and gender-nonconforming people reported living well below the poverty line, earning less than $10,000 per year. For people of color, the percentage was worse: 28% of Latinx and 34% of Black trans and gender-nonconforming people. Related to the gender pay gap, but often less discussed, is the gender wealth gap. Ellevest describes it as “how much money women have and keep in comparison to men. It’s only 32 cents on average, and just a single penny for Black and brown women.” Although over the years we’ve been progressing with the gender pay gap, we’ve been regressing with the gender wealth gap. How can you challenge the gender pay gap in the workplace? Ensure there are no gaps in your workplace by doing a wage audit and support pay transparency. Evaluate recruitment, promotion and talent management systems for gender bias. Offer paid parental leave so parents, especially mothers, don’t have to choose between their career and family. Write to your government officials if you want to see companies of certain sizes report their gender pay gap figures annually as they do in the U.K., France and Spain. What are we doing at Vena? We try to achieve equity in our compensation planning and offerings by using pay bands for each role. We conduct job evaluation compensation planning exercises to ensure our compensation packages are competitive with the market and equitable internally. Workplace Harassment Workplace harassment is any vexatious and unwelcome action, words or behavior towards another employee, including sexual, physical, verbal and non-verbal harassment. Demeaning jokes and innuendos and circulating offensive pictures are just as much harassment as physical or sexual violence. In a 2016 report, Statistics Canada found that one in five women had experienced workplace harassment. In that same year, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) reported a startling three in four women had experienced sexual harassment at work. Notably, these numbers are based on women who actually report harassment. Many women don’t report it for fear of being fired or punished—the EEOC reported 75% of women who did report harassment experienced retaliation. Women+ who fall into further minority groups typically experience more harassment than their white, female counterparts and especially more than men. This includes women+ who are also people of color, people with a disability, aged 50+ and members of the LGBTQIA+ community. How can you challenge workplace harassment? If you’re a man, hold other men accountable and confront them about their sexist behavior. If you’re a people leader, ensure everyone knows how to report harassment and that managers have the appropriate training to handle reports of harassment. Thoroughly investigate all complaints of harassment, have an escalation process and take corrective action. Respect the language someone uses to define themselves, such as using someone's preferred pronouns. If you’re not sure how people identify, it’s better to ask than assume. The gender binary impacts everyone—here are more ways you can be an ally and help challenge this at work and beyond. Encourage your workplace to have mandatory harassment training if you don’t already. What are we doing at Vena? We have mandatory foundational courses on workplace harassment and workplace violence for the three regions Vena operates in (Canada, U.S. and U.K.). We also have another course on the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act for Canadian employees. Microaggressions Microagressions are everyday instances of thinly veiled discrimination against any marginalized or minority group. These microaggressions can be about race, gender, sexuality, age, mental health, marital status and more. Microaggressions differ from overt discrimination because they’re subtle, usually don’t have malicious intent and the person saying them may not realize their words are discriminatory. It’s important to remember that impact matters more than intent here. Microaggressions can adversely impact people’s mental health, causing anxiety and stress and making people feel undervalued. Microaggressions can also perpetuate stereotypes and reinforce bias so when they’re committed against women+, compounded with other challenges women+ face in the workplace, they contribute to a toxic work environment. Notably, women who are the only woman in the office experience more microaggressions than women in groups with other women and more than men who are the only man in the office. Examples of microaggressions: “Where are you from? No, where are you really from?” “Your name is hard to pronounce. Do you have a nickname?” “What do your people think about this?” “The way you’re overcoming disability is inspiring.” “Oh wow, you’re having another kid?” “You’re transgender? You don’t look it at all.” “You speak English pretty well for a [insert racialized group here] person.” How can you challenge microaggressions? Talk about issues facing marginalized groups with people outside of those groups and in your own circles too. Confront your own racist, sexist and other discriminatory actions or attitudes and don’t fall back on your guilt. Be an ally to your marginalized colleagues and don’t be afraid to call out others who use microaggressions against them. Encourage your workplace to have mandatory training about microaggressions if you don’t already. What are we doing at Vena? We don’t have a specific course on microaggressions yet, but we do have internal and external courses about diversity and inclusion, unconscious bias and respectfully communicating about culture. Lack of Opportunities Drake sings, “Started from the bottom, now we're here,” but for a lot of women+, it’s more like “Started from the bottom and we’re still there.” A study by McKinsey showed that about one in five C-suite executives is a woman and only one in 25 is a woman of color. They also found that “for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 85 women were promoted—and this gap was even larger for some women: only 58 Black women and 71 Latinas were promoted.” Part of this could be because of unconscious bias that hiring managers have toward women and certain women of color. One experiment by two assistant professors at Harvard Business School revealed that “employers favor men not because they are prejudiced against women, but because they have the perception that men perform better on average at certain tasks.” Terminology Unconscious bias A set of social stereotypes you form outside your own conscious awareness about certain groups of people. Since these stereotypes or biases are unconscious, they influence your attitudes toward people from those groups without you realizing it. To overcome unconscious bias, unsurprisingly, you must become more conscious of your biases. Another cause could be women not supporting one another because they are set up to compete against each other by poor hiring practices. For example, one study showed that after a company hired a woman for a senior leadership role, the chance that a second woman would join that rank dropped by 50%. In another study, corporate boards would hire two women and no more to meet a “satisfactory” level of diversity, which researchers called “twokenism.” How can you challenge the lack of opportunities? Amplify the voices of women+ in the room. For example, if you hear them voice an idea, echo their idea and give them due credit. Give women+ more speaking opportunities. Both men and women tend to interrupt women more than they interrupt men. Have a “no interruptions” policy during meetings to avoid this situation. Have a “brag buddy” who can speak to your achievements and you can speak to theirs in turn. Women tend to have a hard time talking about their own achievements. Be open to mentoring junior-level women+ if you’re in a senior position. What are we doing at Vena? We’re piloting a mentorship program to pair mentors with mentees within their functional teams. We have an employee resource group where women+ can elevate each other: the Network for Women+. They support, empower and recognize women+ at the intersections of race, ethnicity, class, age, sexual orientation and disability status in the tech community. What Will You Choose To Challenge? The gender pay gap, workplace harassment, microaggressions and lack of opportunities are just a day in the life of women+. Sometimes, it’s hard to believe that this is where we are after hundreds of years of progress. But the sobering truth is there used to be a time when women couldn’t own property or vote. Less than a hundred years ago, women weren’t even considered persons in Canada. And it was only in June of 2019 that people could identify as neither male nor female on Canadian ID. We have indeed come a long way, but have so much further to go. Use this as a simple guide or a starting place for how you can choose to challenge yourself, the people around you and gender inequality and inequity as we move forward together.

It all starts with culture. Whether you’re a woman trying to get ahead in a traditionally male-dominated workforce or a financial planning and analysis (FP&A) professional hoping to build a more strategic partnership with the rest of the business, your ultimate success is going to depend at least in part on the culture around you. So says Larysa Melnychuk, Founder and CEO of the FP&A Trends Group and Managing Director of the International FP&A Board—a global think tank with 27 chapters in 16 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia and North America. With such a global perspective, Larysa has a unique view into company cultures around the world and what it takes to thrive—whether you’re a woman facing gender bias or an FP&A professional trying to help drive corporate strategy. Vena recently sat down with Larysa to ask her thoughts on what it might take to reach gender parity in the corporate finance field (download our ebook here to hear from more women in the industry), and to discuss the evolving role of FP&A itself. The Gender Gap “It's never been easy for women in finance to manage between responsibilities for family and the responsibilities of the job,” Larysa says. She would know too—after all, juggling those responsibilities has been a reality in her own life. Larysa moved to the United Kingdom from the Ukraine 22 years ago when her first child was still young and had her second while studying for her UK qualifications. “It's always a sacrifice between your job and your family,” she explains. Having support from her husband and extended family helped her when her kids were young, but she’s also quick to say that women need to be “very strong” to get ahead and reach the upper echelons of the industry, which can sometimes resemble a “boys’ playground” (research shows that that old boys’ club mentality can contribute to the gender pay gap too). That’s where the right culture comes to play—both corporate culture, but beyond that to community culture as well.  These days Larysa spends her time traveling the world, meeting with senior practitioners in the finance function—and she says the number of women in those meetings varies greatly depending on the country she’s in. In places such as Nordic Region—where childcare and parental leave policies are considered ahead of the pack—it’s not surprising to see more women reaching leadership roles. Other countries fall behind. “It's still traditionally considered that a woman should be more flexible in terms of the time that we're spending with children. It's still there,” Larysa says.  Which is why the right support matters. A 2019 study by Unicef showed that giving options to share childcare helped make a difference in the workforce and out. “Paid paternity leave helps fathers bond with their babies, contributes to healthy infant and child development, lowers maternal depression and increases gender equality,” the report stated. The same report listed affordability as the biggest barrier to childcare. In Denmark, meanwhile, childcare charges are capped at 30% of the actual cost, while Norwegian parents are entitled to a child benefit allowance—explaining, at least in part, why Larysa sees more women in her Nordic boardrooms. The Finance Partner But Larysa has learned more than just that in those boardrooms around the world, and she’s seen the corporate finance function, especially FP&A, change greatly in the 22 years since she first qualified in the UK—at least in some places.  “Something that was considered to be management accounting 20 years ago is at the moment FP&A, and it’s a completely new world,” Larysa says. “But it’s evolved unevenly in different industries and different countries and different companies as well. So this is a journey, and some companies are more strategic, more forward looking—they're more analytical. But some companies are stuck in time, with traditional views of budgeting and planning, with very traditional target negotiations and all of that.” Today’s corporate FP&A functions, especially, are multidisciplinary and ever-evolving, she explains. And as such, modern FP&A professionals need to constantly educate themselves in areas such as data science and management, FP&A architecture and IT, providing a bridge between roles and functions. The most forward-thinking companies will draw on that, treating their finance departments as business partners and making them part of strategic discussions from the early stages.  For that to happen, though, top management has to accept their finance professionals in that role. “If the General Manager is not involving [the] CFO in the early stage of strategic discussions or does not show respect to the input provided by FP&A, it is hard to expect other functions to do things differently,” writes Commercial Finance and Performance Management Professional and International FP&A Board ambassador Tijana Balotic Truong for the FP&A Trends blog. But with the right support, Larysa adds, FP&A professionals can strengthen corporate strategy by introducing change management, business partnering, analytics and insights. They can introduce the capacity for Financial Planning and Analysis  transformation, with driver-based models, flexible FP&A systems, the ability to connect FP&A to BI and predictive analytics processes. They can also show how an understanding of  artificial intelligence and machine learning can digitize FP&A processes. With a solid list of capabilities like those—combined with strong leadership—companies can thrive. Especially in times of crisis, where those in-depth insights can help organizations turn on a dime. “If you don't have the capability to reforecast and replan very quickly, very practically in real time, then you’re in big trouble,” Larysa says. “It’s about collaboration with other disciplines—with risk management, with data scientists, with IT people.”  And that starts with the right culture. One that invites all sorts of voices to the table.

As Black History Month comes to a close, we should be reminded that everything remembered, honored and celebrated during February doesn’t stop or come to an end as we flip the calendar to a new month. To echo the sentiment Oprah Winfrey shared in her tribute message on Instagram to kick off the start of Black History Month this year, "I have a wonderful phrase that Maya Angelou wrote in one of her poems. It said 'I come as one, but I stand as 10,000.' I'm doing that right now ... I don't reserve it for one month. I believe that Black history is a part of every day, every life, every year, all the time." It’s time to reflect on the ways celebrating Black history and culture should carry over beyond the 28 or 29 days of February, to make Black history and culture a part of our everyday, regular life. And that extends into our work lives as well. Read on to discover four ways businesses can celebrate black history and culture at work year round. 1. Foster Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Workplace There is no one-size-fits-all model when it comes to building a diverse workplace and it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes progressive work and there will be many learnings as well as challenges along the way. It starts by truly understanding the value diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) contributes to the overall success of your business and how it factors into every level of your organization. From attracting, hiring, retaining, training and developing your talent to working DEI into your core values and in the everyday work-life processes, the work of creating a diverse and inclusive workplace is ongoing and a company-wide effort. As an ongoing process, there will be a lot to consider and finding ways to incorporate DEI initiatives into the macro and micro levels of your organization. Some of these DEI initiatives can include: Promoting the use of unbiased language Creating safe places Facilitating difficult conversations Addressing workplace inequality Talking openly about conscious and unconscious bias Building effective allyship skills on teams Launching a DEI employee resource group or committee  To learn how to build a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion in your workplace, check out this blog. 2. Support Black-Owned and Black-Run Businesses and Nonprofit Organizations There are a lot of black-owned and black-run businesses out there, but unfortunately many of them lack the financial and public support to thrive. Look at all the ways you can support these businesses at every level of your organization. From vendors, partners and suppliers to local restaurants, catering companies and other small businesses, supporting black-owned businesses means building up communities and setting them up to succeed. Your support will also lead to creating more jobs and opportunities and to closing the racial economic gap. What about organizations in your industry, all the nonprofit groups and charities that are working tirelessly to elevate Black professionals? Donating to these groups, inviting them to give workshops and talks in your workplace or supporting them in other ways, such as volunteering, will go a long way in empowering black professionals and communities in your area of business. Lending a hand to these nonprofit organizations can also lead to partnerships and create opportunities for internship and apprenticeship programs.   3. Promote the Power of Storytelling Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways to inspire, reach and influence others. It’s also an effective way to bring people together. That’s why sharing Black stories and experiences—both internally and externally—should be a regular part of your content creation, social conversations and diversity initiatives. There are many ways to foster a sense of belonging in the workplace through storytelling. Continue to celebrate the achievements of people in your industry and shine a spotlight on the work of pioneers and current black leaders who have opened doors and continue to leave them open for others. Invite guest speakers to your workplace, host fireside chats and keep a constant rotation of resources, recommendations and activities available to your people, including books, podcasts, playlists, films and art.    Do you know about these 10 business and tech Black pioneers?  4. Create Pathways Toward Black Futures It’s important to honor Black achievements, but it’s not enough. There is still so much more that needs to be done in terms of creating a future others still can’t see—freedom from institutionalized racism that keeps others from achieving equal access and opportunities, especially in the workplace.  Creating pathways toward black futures and work environments where everyone is seen, valued and appreciated involves empowering growth and professional development for everyone. This can include having support channels in place, developing employee recognition programs and partnering with other organizations furthering the advancement of Black professionals to create more pathways for their careers.  Click here to see what Black women leaders are reading. Every Month Is Black History Month Black History Month is never over. Celebrating Black history and culture is a year-round event. Being committed to diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace means ensuring that these stories, voices and experiences live in our everyday structures, policies and organizational cultures. 

What is Plan To Grow? Plan To Grow is a free digital learning and event platform for the office of finance, operations professionals and business leaders. Jumpstart your growth journey with CPE-accredited talks and tutorials, live and interactive events, best practices, professional development, peer insights and more—live and on demand. Learn, connect and grow your own way at Plan To Grow. Finance Boring? Never. Is finance exciting? Absolutely, according to Vena’s Chief Financial Officer, Darrell Cox, in his new talk on Plan To Grow, 7 Principles of The Agile CFO. The finance team plays a pivotal role in building out an organization’s growth journey, leading it through change and determining its future success. Sprinkle in some disruption and a dash of uncertainty and it’s pretty obvious that finance leaders are never bored. But what turns a finance professional into an Agile finance leader? Info 7 Principles of The Agile CFO Series: Transformational Leadership Growth Path: Personal, Professional Duration: 30 Minutes Category: CPE Track The difference between a traditional finance professional and an agile one depends largely on how they view their role and measure their impact. Agile CFOs are trusted business advisors—storytellers who use their finance superpower to bring numbers to life with meaning. They don’t just mitigate risk, they optimize performance. They look forward, not backward. And they harness change to build better businesses. In this on-demand talk, as part of the Transformational Leadership series on Plan To Grow, Darrell outlines the seven principles that guide Agile CFOs: 1. Be Human 2. Be a Storyteller 3. Think Big 4. Think Forward 5. Embrace and Own Change 6. Have a Bias to Action 7. Embrace Technology  Watch now