November 2021 – Croixstone

International Fraud Awareness Week

International Fraud Awareness Week is November 14-20, 2021, and Croixstone Consulting is once again joining the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), businesses, government entities, and agencies from across the world as a supporting organization to promote anti-fraud awareness and eduction.

Companies lose an estimated 5% of their revenue annually due to fraud, according to the 2020 ACFE Report to the Nations. Fraud takes many shapes and forms, among them corporate fraud, consumer fraud, tax fraud, identity theft and many others.

Read the 2020 ACFE Report to the Nations to learn more.

What’s Top of Mind for CEOs

Fortune Magazine and Deloitte have partnered to track the perspectives and actions of CEOs from the world’s largest and most influential companies. Every 4 months, the duo gathers key insights into CEOs’ priorities, challenges, and expectations across 15 industries, including finance, health care, and technology.

At the end of last month, Fortune/Deloitte shared the results of their latest survey that revealed that a growing number of chief executives expect pandemic disruptions to continue. Additionally, they remain bullish about growth while they are focused on talent, and taking action on climate change.

Our key takeaway from the latest survey?

Talent remains a top priority for CEOs.

Nearly three-quarters of CEOs say they expect labor and skills shortages to in influence or disrupt their strategy over the next 12 months. When asked about the biggest challenge they face, nearly 50% of CEOs name challenges related to talent – up from a 25% in the Fortune/Deloitte summer survey.

Asked separately about the top three challenges to their organization’s talent and workforce goals, the major of CEOs named attracting and recruiting talent (57%), designing a post-pandemic workplace (53%), and retaining talent (51%). Building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workforce is also high on the list of challenges for 43% of CEOs.

Click here to read the full report.

McKinsey & Company: Women in the Workplace 2021 Survey

Women in the Workplace is the largest comprehensive study on the state of women in corporate America, with data from 423 companies employing 12M people. Following are a few key take-aways from the study by McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.org.

Women are now significantly more burned out than they were last year, and increasingly more so than men. Women are, however, rising to the challenge as stronger leaders and taking on the extra work to support the wellbeing of all employees while also advancing DE&I efforts. That being said, companies are not recognizing and rewarding their efforts, and they are at risk of losing the very leaders they need right now.

While companies are embracing flexibility and not anticipating going back to pre-pandemic norms, the one thing most are missing is clear boundaries so that employees don’t have to feel like they need to be “always on” 24/7. Only 1 in 5 employees stated that they received guidelines for responding to non-urgent requests after traditional work hours. Establishing or reinforcing boundaries will go a long way in addressing burnout.

Representation by women at all levels of leadership has increased modestly, but women of color remain underrepresented, face more challenges and get less support. Allyship is critical in the workplace, and when employees have strong allies, they are more likely to have positive work experiences and less likely to be burned out and consider leaving their company.

To learn more, read the full study: Women in the Workplace 2021