By Julie Zawacki-Lucci
A NeuGroup discussion among peers reveals you probably shouldn’t.
As the projects and priorities chart below shows, talentmanagement has risen in importance over the last year. And arecent NeuGroup Tech20 ShopTalk conversation gives a goodexample of talent considerations. One member wanted toknow: 1) Do ATs hold the VP title? and 2) If so, was there aninflection point in either revenue, assets, cash under management,etc., at which this became institutionally viable? Thequestions were posed by a member who is considering thecase to VP his AT.
The clear majority, 87% of respondents, said no. Of those,69% said their ATs do not have the VP designation, but arerather typically one level below as Managing Director,Executive Director, Senior Director or Director, and 31% saidthey do not have an AT position at all. Reasons for not addingVP to the AT title included: avoiding inflation of titles and joblevels, “de-layering exercise,” company size, or title is reservedfor CFO reports and those at the Officer level.
Conversely, 13% of respondents, SVPs themselves, do haveATs with the VP title. One says it was dependent on aligning joblevels beyond a revenue threshold being reached and the otherbases it on job scope. “The AT job was clearly a VP position inthis regard,” as the respondent citing job alignment and revenuethreshold notes. “Also, I probably would not have done itbefore ~$5Bn of revenue.” The other respondent with an ATwho’s a VP notes the scope of job responsibilities. “The scope ofhis role is larger than just treasury, he says. This is in line withthe treasurers’ own SVP role: “I’m an SVP but treasury is aboutone half my overall job scope, the other half is split betweensales, IR, global safety, security, business resiliency and crisismanagement.”
One member company that does not have VPs at the ATlevel thinks “it’s unlikely going forward (approaching $14bnrevenue), due to pressure to avoid job level inflation.” At anothercompany, with well over $100bn in revs, the SVP is reservedfor direct reports to the CEO, so it follows that the treasurer isVP and his direct reports are mostly Director and Senior Directorpositions. This is the case even though “my direct reportshave large jobs,” he notes. The absence of ATs indicated by 31%of the responding companies demonstrates another point ofvariance across companies; namely, the case for giving directreports to the treasurer an assistant treasurer title. But that is aquestion for another Q&A.
Apart from these questions, it seems the decision to VP anAT is dependent on the layering of titles corporate-wide, andspecifically within finance, which is a decision that gets madeat some point along the way when a company reaches a certainsize (revenue). Here, the vast majority reserve VP for directreports to the CFO. This comment is indicative: “VP designationsare extremely rationed at [the company], and in Financegenerally reserved for direct CFO staff.” This is true for even thelargest companies responding.