How AI Is Changing the Needs and Values of Finance Leaders and Their Teams - SPONSOR CONTENT FROM DELOITTE

With finance teams increasingly defining and driving corporate strategy in the era of artificial intelligence (AI) transformation, more CFOs appear to be tapping talent for the human knowledge, experience, and qualities AI can’t offer. At the same time, AI is also driving change in the workforce, altering finance employees’ values and motivations, sometimes in ways that might seem unexpected.

Deloitte’s latest survey of 1,800 global finance leaders and workers on workforce trends reveals a shift from the previous survey in 2022 in how financial experience and AI know-how and capabilities now combine to shape organizations’ needs and expectations.

The 2022 survey showed that finance leaders anticipated AI would lead their teams away from transactional processing and shift the workplace emphasis to core finance skills. But that hasn’t fully happened—in 2025, finance employees were still managing transactional work—and the finance C-suite may now be looking beyond financial knowledge and hiring for digital, data, and analytics skills, as well as for vital soft skills that may not show up on résumés.

More CFOs are finding the most vital differentiators of tomorrow’s finance workforce go beyond traditional metrics like technical proficiency and financial acumen.

These skills, along with human traits such as teaming, creativity, and empathy, can determine how organizations make decisions, unlock value, and lead their sectors. But despite recognizing the importance of these capabilities, relatively few surveyed organizations report that they have made meaningful investments in upskilling their finance teams.

Paths of Disruption

AI is driving disruptions in financial planning and analytics and strategic finance as organizations apply this technology to core planning, forecasting, and performance management to boost efficiency and improve decision making.

And beyond bringing change to the entry and junior levels, AI adoption is also increasing senior-level responsibility for making judgments and building strategy based on insights AI helps uncover.

More finance leaders appear to be leaning into digital upskilling, growing teams’ digital skills and data science and analytics capabilities as much as their financial knowledge and experience. Organizations tend to favor training workforces over hiring for AI-related technical skills.

Changing Roles, Changing Values

Finance teams’ biggest challenges in meeting C-suite expectations often come up where talent and technology intersect. Half of the respondents to the most recent survey report issues with employee engagement. Nearly as many say they encounter resistance to new technology and a shortage of skilled talent.

While finance leaders still look for backgrounds in cost management, regulatory and compliance, and other traditional finance knowledge, the demand for AI fluency and evolving digital skills continues to disrupt the finance workforce. Some of the most difficult skills to find and hire for include cash flow management, financial analysis, budget and forecasting, and generative AI experience.

Finance’s recent focus on data cleansing and AI training is evolving into data monetization in value creation over the next five years. But AI has yet to fulfill the potential of its capabilities in finance. Some workers using AI report now spending more time, not less, on transactional processing rather than on the strategic and analytical work AI theoretically frees them to do.

Still, technology’s capability for automating routine tasks has increased the value of creating centers of excellence and made them easier to open and maintain.

What Workers Want

As AI reshapes roles and work design, the employee value equation appears to be shifting with the changes. At all experience levels, today’s talent values job flexibility and recognition over compensation and career growth—a dynamic of “stagility” that gives finance teams greater agility while offering finance professionals stability in a fluid environment.

Responding finance workers today place more emphasis on flexibility and recognition than did respondents to the 2022 survey. Workers now especially value flexibility in where they work, and they seek visibility for their work.

The importance of meaningful work has decreased for finance employees and increased for leaders. And while employees focus less on career growth and development than was reported in the previous survey, the top work experiences they desire include digital upskilling and AI integration.

The advance of AI hasn’t changed everything. Finance leaders still need employees with strong finance and accounting skills. But they also need backgrounds in operations, technology, and engineering as well as team-oriented service mindsets. To attract that digitally savvy, human-oriented talent, they should ensure their value proposition meets the values of that larger talent pool.

The future of the finance workforce is a leader’s opportunity. Read Deloitte’s full perspective on “The finance workforce of 2026: AI, skills gaps, and supply challenges” to learn how.