Retention is a system

By ·

In 2017, there was no Finance team at Stuart.

There was a spreadsheet, a CFO, an accountant, and a company expanding across Europe faster than its infrastructure could follow.

I was that accountant.

By the time I left in December 2023, the team had grown to 23 people across five functions —Accounting, Controlling & Treasury, Credit & Collections, Architecture, and Procurement. Each function had its own lead. Each lead had grown into the role.

For more than five years, nobody left.

Stuart moved fast, and it cost. Hyper-growth across countries, constant pressure, leadership transitions —the kind of context where retention is normally the first casualty.

Finance was no exception to the pressure. It was an exception to the casualty.

Not because we paid the most. If anything, it was the opposite. Not because the context was easy.

The team held because of how it was built.

Three accountants and a finance assistant joined between mid-2018 and early 2019. Within months, they owned their scope end-to-end. NetSuite in January 2020 —they carried it. Pandemic six weeks later —they held the closings, every month, on time. By 2021, Chief Accountants and a Financial Controller, each leading their own team. GeoPost recognised both at the podium for the quality of their reporting.

A shy collections analyst ended up running global Credit & Collections. Another —far more extroverted— became Global Process Architect, a role soon replicated across departments. "Put POs into the system" became a Procurement department touching every team —Engineering, Legal, Compliance: politically and operationally, a complete revolution.

In 2022, I brought in a Global Head of Accounting. The Chief Accountants incorporated the new layer without drama. His onboarding: a gathering in the Catalan woods —no service, no agenda. It worked.

That's the test of retention: not whether people stay when nothing changes —but when everything does.

Peakon scores confirmed it. Autonomy: 9,2. Goal setting: 8,4. Management support: 7,8. In the middle of the most turbulent period the company had seen.

The pressure compounded every year. Deadlines got tighter. Scope got wider. Stakes got higher. The team always pushed harder —with judgment, with pushback, under real pressure. They had been built to handle that.

Structure is what makes growth visible —and visible growth is what keeps people.

That's not an HR insight. That's what I saw, repeatedly, over six years at Stuart.

In parallel, Daniel was building Eleuterio on the same principle, in a different layer. Millions in weekly billing, no technical infrastructure. It ran for six years without manual labour. The business depended on what he built in the margins.

Structure is what holds. Whether it's a team or a backend.

I didn't set out to build something that would last. I just kept making it more solid, intentional, real. One day it stood on its own.

That's the only way I know how to build anything that holds.

Retention is a system, not a perk.