Insights / For both
Let's settle the WFH debate: it's a bit more nuanced than we're led to believe
It depends entirely on what work you have planned for each environment, and the tools you use to do your work.
Do many topics generate more heat and less evidence? One camp says the finance function hasn't needed an office since the ledger moved to the cloud. The other says nobody learns anything on Teams and the close falls apart the moment people aren't sat together. We've been doing this for a few years now, since the pandemic. So let's get into that nuance, and how much of it is down to businesses not adapting.
What does the data actually say?
Hybrid working hasn't gone away, despite the headlines about return-to-office mandates. The Office for National Statistics found that 28% of working adults in Great Britain hybrid worked in January to March 2025. For senior people it's much higher: among managers, directors and senior officials earning £50,000 or more, 56% hybrid worked. In other words, the people most likely to be fractional finance leaders already split their week, and have done for years.
So the question isn't whether senior finance work can be done away from an office. It's already being done. The real question is how, as CEO, you get complete confidence that productivity doesn't suffer when colleagues work from home, and equally that the office doesn't turn into a talking shop when everyone is in it.
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What works well remotely?
The mechanics of the close. Cloud ledgers like Xero, Sage Intacct and NetSuite, shared workbooks and a clear close calendar mean reconciliations, journals and review can happen anywhere.
Modelling and analysis. Building a three-way forecast or a debt model is deep work. It's usually better done without an open-plan office interrupting every nine minutes.
Reporting. Power BI or Tableau dashboards, board packs and investor updates don't care where they were built.
Review and oversight. For a fractional CFO, reviewing the FC's work, challenging the numbers and preparing for the board is often most efficient done remotely on a set day.
What really needs you in the room?
The first two week