from business challenges to bottom-line wins: 4 real-world scenarios (and solutions) for 2022.

Backlogs. Looming business deadlines. Lingering vacancies in management or leadership roles. Lack of infrastructure to fully support remote and hybrid teams. Inadequate in-house resources to proactively pipeline candidates in an increasingly geographically distributed world of work.

If business challenges like these are on the horizon for your company in 2022, what's the right approach? From executive consulting to executive search, professional search, financial project support and more, you don't have to go it alone. Let's walk through four scenarios your organization might face in the year ahead, unpack challenges and then turn to solutions.

Ultimately, you might see a blueprint to help you navigate the next 12 months and beyond.

Organizational redesign and change management will be top priorities in 2022 for nearly half of all human capital leaders, according to a survey from Gartner. Yet for meaningful change to take hold — especially change of that order of magnitude — it often needs to start at the top.

The case of a $230 million U.S.-based furniture manufacturer is illustrative in this regard.

Here's the situation in a nutshell: With the departure of the manufacturer's long-serving CFO, the company saw an opportunity to restructure, focus more tightly on value-drivers and improve long-term financial performance, all in one fell swoop. But to do that, the company first had to tackle a much more immediate challenge: finding and onboarding the right CFO for the job.

Time was running out when company turned to Tatum for support:

• developing a short list of best-fit candidates on a tight timeline, and selecting only for candidates capable of driving organizational transformation in a CFO capacity
• consulting on not only the selection process itself but throughout the subsequent transition stage as well, ensuring a smooth leadership transition
• providing strategic recommendations at the client's quarterly board meeting, and serving as an integral member of the client's executive team throughout the engagement

This manufacturer's success story clearly underscores why strengthening the current and future leadership bench ranks among the top-three priorities for HR leaders in 2022, according to the same survey from Gartner.

For deep-dive insights into how Tatum can help drive your own organizational transformation, check out the full case study.

Navigating change is going to remain the order of the day in 2022, and in many cases, leveraging the expertise of outside consultants will be the most cost-effective way forward.

That certainly proved true for a managed healthcare organization and licensed HMO with approximately 160,000 members. Coming off of a rough year financially (ahem, $14.2 million in the red) and the departure of their CFO, the company sought the executive consultants from Tatum for support.

The results? After aligning on needs and priorities, our executive consultants led the way:

• spearheading the healthcare company's one-year turnaround from $14.2 million in the red to $8 million in the black
• delivering more than $34 million in year-over-year revenue growth by negotiating actuarially adequate premium rates with Medicaid
• rescuing a stalled external audit and completing it ahead of schedule
• submitted operating and capital budgets for the next fiscal year, which were approved by C-suite leaders as well as members of the board

Want a more in-depth look at our executive consulting capabilities? Read the complete case study.

Why should finance projects, in connection with current resources and talent needs, be top of mind for organizational leaders in 2022? 

For one, because the composition of the finance talent pool itself is rapidly changing — and aging, too. In fact, the average age of CFOs has increased by more than 14 percent in recent years. Meanwhile, according to Deloitte, even as the share of older employees working in U.S. financial institutions nearly doubled over the past two decades, representation among all other age groups declined during the same period. And as so many skilled finance employees near retirement, who exactly is going to step in to replace them?

That wasn't a theoretical question for a publicly traded leader in the consumer benefits space. Despite $500 million in annual revenue, the company had delayed filing its annual 10-K report on account of disagreements between auditors and management — and when both the CFO and general counsel at the company subsequently resigned, things weren't looking any easier.

However, once Tatum took the reins, we quickly got to work on these and other finance projects:

• reducing costs by more than $200,000 through a redesign of the company's finance function
• hiring a new CFO as well as a new VP of accounting
• providing hands-on temporary resourcing assistance to stabilize finance operations — and curb the company's sky-high turnover rate
• reassessing the structure and talent associated with the company's internal accounting and controls functions

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Click here to read the full case study.

Liquidity concerns continue to hamper growth for organizations across industries. But for private equity companies evaluating the performance of portfolio companies, such concerns can have a determining influence on the overall success (or failure) of an acquisition.

In fact, one publicly traded education company with a majority private equity owner knew that all too well. In the aftermath of a leadership shakeup, stock prices were sinking and disappointed shareholders began exiting in droves.

That's when the company’s PE ownership asked Tatum to right the ship. Soon, the company had:

• three new finance leaders onboard in key roles, which bolstered investor confidence — to the tune of a 127 percent uptick in share prices during the engagement
• EBITDA and cash-flow gains in excess of $30 million, or nearly 10 percent of the company's total revenue
• wide-ranging efficiency improvements, which enabled a seven percent reduction in overall headcount without disruption to the business

With approximately 40 percent of employees globally considering leaving their jobs or looking for opportunities somewhere else, according to the latest data from McKinsey, having more than one vacancy at a time in key management or leadership positions isn't a far-fetched scenario — on the contrary, it's a very real possibility down the line. To see how Tatum's professional search practice delivers value for organizations like yours, be sure to read the full case study here.

While COVID-19 remains a global health crisis, a "crisis mindset" needn't be the prevailing one at your organization in the year ahead. In fact, there's a broader point to be made here. That is, in the ongoing urgency to address logistical concerns related to the pandemic — how many days employees will work in the office, for example, or what tech best supports collaboration — many organizational leaders have continued to operate as if a "finish line" is in sight, or right around the corner, at worse.

But that isn't the case. We aren't just going to pause, hit the reset button and go back to 2019 if and when, say, the Omicron variant ceases to be so pervasive. The world of work has changed irrevocably, and most of those changes aren't going to be reversed.

That's why forward-looking leaders are turning to partners like Tatum, as the preceding four examples should make clear. From executive consulting to executive search, professional search, financial project support and more, find out all of the ways Tatum can help move your business forward. Or get in touch with us if you're ready to get started today.