Why Manners Matter

You turned in a superstar resume, aced all the interviews, and left behind a throng of bedazzled headhunters, HR managers, and board members — all hoping you can start on Monday as their new finance chief. Now you have a dinner date with your prospective employer’s chief executive.Think the job o...

By Lisa Yoon • Nov. 11, 2002

Now Departing: CFOs

According to the latest monthly survey tracking CEO and CFO turnover by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., CFO departures in October doubled from the turnover in September. CEO churn, on the other hand, increased only 14 percent over the previous month.What’s more, it appear...

By Lisa Yoon • Nov. 6, 2002

Good Intentions Can Be Hell

You tried. You gave them the profit-sharing plan, the generous pay packages, the bagels on Fridays. You hired people from as many different backgrounds as possible, and you made sure people weren’t overworked and got enough quality time away from the grind. You told everyone this was a company th...

By Lisa Yoon • Nov. 5, 2002

It’s Not What You Know

How do you move up the corporate ladder these days? If you ask employees, you’ll get a bevy of different answers. However, one thing is sure—most workers will tell you if they get promoted, it won’t be based on merit.According to a survey by J. Howard & Associates, a Boston-based workplace di...

By Lisa Yoon • Nov. 4, 2002

Filing Late: Excuses, Excuses

Between heightened certification requirements and shorter Securities and Exchange Commission filing deadlines, more CFOs may be hunting up excuses for filing late statements. Recent extension-request forms offer options from the mundane to the dire. Netsalon Corp., for instance, claimed the compa...

By Alix Stuart • Nov. 1, 2002

Disease Management: Prevent Defense

Typically, 20 percent of employees account for about 80 percent of a company’s health-care costs. Not surprisingly, that statistic has many employers rolling out disease-management programs for chronically ill employees.In fact, a study by Hewitt Associates released in July found that a whopping ...

By Jennifer Caplan • Nov. 1, 2002

Pension Plans

Pension plan sponsors are living in the past. Some critics say that many companies have not updated their investment-return and interest-rate assumptions to reflect the current conditions of low interest rates and dismal stock-market performance. And while plenty of plans are now underfunded, the...

By Joseph McCafferty • Nov. 1, 2002

Facing the Bear

“I’m willing to lay it all on the line in terms of performance.” Four years ago, that was what WorldCom’s Scott Sullivan — at the time the highest-paid CFO in our compensation survey — told us when he chose a cash bonus over a base-pay increase. Two years later, our biennial survey showed that CF...

By Tim Reason • Nov. 1, 2002

Data Management: Applying a Little Leverage

These days, you’d be hard-pressed to find a publicly traded company that doesn’t use supply-chain software or customer relationship management (CRM) applications. The tools, often browser-enabled, have enabled companies to gain a measure of control over functions that were once considered too far...

By Jennifer Caplan • Nov. 1, 2002

Cost-Sharing and Tiered-Pricing: Shift or Shaft?

As health-care benefit costs rise, most plan sponsors have been left with little choice but to pass on some of their expenses to employees. Usually, that passing on comes in the form of higher premiums, co-payments, and deductibles. Others employers are introducing or extending tiered-pricing arr...

By Jennifer Caplan • Nov. 1, 2002

HRAs: The Next Wave?

Increasingly, employers are turning to consumer-driven health plans to rein in rising medical benefit costs. Consumer-driven programs shift some of the responsibility for managing health costs to employees.Often called Health Reimbursement Accounts (HRAs), the plans require the setting up of comp...

By Jennifer Caplan • Nov. 1, 2002

Health-Benefit Costs: Up Up and Away

With corporate revenues continuing to limp along, health-care benefit costs have become a matter of considerable concern for CFOs. The hard reality is, group medical-plan premiums will undoubtedly rise again next year. The jacking-up of premiums has left finance chiefs scrambling to rein in costs...

By Jennifer Caplan • Nov. 1, 2002

The Waiting Game

Jim Meer lost his job as treasurer of Schein Pharmaceutical Inc. when the company was sold to Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc. But he wasn’t worried; he’d received a nice severance package, and decided to look for a CFO slot next. More than a year later, he’s still looking.“Moving up to a CFO spot in ...

By Kris Frieswick • Nov. 1, 2002

What Works: Building a Strong Finance Team

Companies often pause to digest a giant merger. But after Kraft Foods North America combined its cheeses with Nabisco’s crackers in December 2000, the company realized that internal reporting needed an antacid.“It was overload,” says Greg Oster, vice president of Kraft’s cheese, meals, and enhanc...

By Roy Harris • Nov. 1, 2002

Excuses, Excuses

Excuses, Excuses Between heightened certification requirements and shorter Securities and Exchange Commission filing deadlines, more CFOs may be hunting up excuses for filing late statements. Recent extension-request forms offer options from the mundane to the dire. Netsalon Corp., for instance, ...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Nov. 1, 2002

Truancy Problems? Try a Little Tenderness

Faking a stomach ache and playing hooky from school never warranted rewards. But rewards may be just what the doctor ordered for employees that feel they have to feign illness to take some time off. What’s more, granting more flexible working conditions may slash some corporate costs. Here’s why....

By Lisa Yoon • Oct. 31, 2002

Dealing with a Stressed-out Workforce

Two new surveys have put work-related stress in the headlines again. What’s causing the neck-aching, shoulder slumping tension? It depends.According to one survey, fear of getting laid off was the least-cited cause of stress at work. Rather, the latest Employee Outlook Index Survey by UBS and The...

By Lisa Yoon • Oct. 30, 2002

What Are Employees Saying About You?

Once you make it to the CFO post, you’ve arrived. After all, executives don’t make it to the C-level without a proven mastery of skills and a track record of success, right?Not exactly. In some ways, your job is just beginning. Research from Center for Creative Leadership, a Greensboro, N.C.-base...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Oct. 29, 2002

Résumé Mistakes that Recruiters Hate

The recruiters of America have a message to job seekers: Spell check is your friend.That’s according to a new survey published by ResumeDoctor.com, a division of South Burlington, Vermont-based staffing agency Personnel Department Inc. The survey, which polled more than 2,500 recruiters throughou...

By Lisa Yoon • Oct. 28, 2002

Life in the Drive-Through Lane

Strategy and operations don’t typically fall under a CFO’s purview, especially at a corporation that’s a household name. In that sense, Kerrii Anderson, finance chief and executive vice president for Wendy’s International, is a rarity.Shortly after joining the fast-food chain in 2000, Anderson wa...

By David Katz • Oct. 25, 2002

Rough Sledding? Don’t Stop Recruiting

Companies may be laying off workers, but most are still on the prowl for top talent.According to an earlier study (2001) by HR consultancy Towers Perrin, the vast majority of companies that cut staff (73 percent) were still hiring top talent. And forty-two percent had created targeted programs to...

By Lisa Yoon • Oct. 24, 2002

Blackout Rule Hits the Books

The corporate playing field is being leveled-off again, this time by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration.Yesterday the agency issued interim final rules requiring defined contribution pension plan administrators to provide participants 30-day advance notice ...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Oct. 23, 2002

Unequal Pay for Equal Work?

Across the board, women in finance are earning substantially less than their male counterparts. This, according to a new survey by CareerBank.com.Based on responses to an E-mail survey from 2,575 finance staffers, CareerBank.com’s 2002 Salary Survey Report found that on average, women make $19,00...

By Lisa Yoon • Oct. 21, 2002

Human Resources, the Game Show

It was only a matter of time before the worlds of reality television and business converged.Apparently banking on the peculiar notion that unemployment is damn entertaining—provided it’s happening to somebody else—Sony Pictures Television International recently bought the international format rig...

By Lisa Yoon • Oct. 17, 2002

How to Ace That Interview

Jeffrey Christian wants you to make him hustle. The founder of executive-search firm Christian & Timbers, known for its placements for big-name tech companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard, likes to see passionate candidates who like to take charge.He doesn’t mind if you don’t want...

By Lisa Yoon • Oct. 17, 2002