First of all, many of the 170 CFO's surveyed came from "small companies." Second of all, it's obvious that what CFO's/finance see as important HCM issues are very different than what HR practitioners see.
Question #3: Compensation is the biggest driver for employee effectiveness? I've written about this before. Comp drives employee recruitment, but it's engagement, opportunities and satisfaction that drive retention. I think what drives employee effectiveness are opportunities to grow. I will cave in however and say that a good incentive comp plan will also inspire certain types of workers to increase effectiveness.
Questions #4 & #5: It's interesting that employee learning is the best way to increase employee value, but training and skills/competencies are low on the issues list. CFO's in this survey are obviously looking at (in Q5) cost factors and not ways to drive employee value. I'm not entirely sure I want to make this next sweeping statement, but if you look at real cost vs value metrics, I bet the value in enhancing employee productivity incrementally are much greater than time spent shoring up benefit costs. Don't take that to mean they shouldn't work on benefit costs. I just think the CFO's are wrongly focused.
The below image comes from CFO.com. Please click here to read more about their survey.
