In most companies, the Finance and HR departments are an important support function to the core business. That being said, relationships between Finance and HR can sometimes be strained. Both departments are spending resources that may be seen to not be directly linked to revenue, and they sometimes need to justify their value to the revenue driving departments of the business and the CEO.
According to our CFO Relationship Map, CFOs need effective interactions with Human Resources to deliver and enhance their value.
We recently completed a Survey which asked CFOs about their interactions with HR. Our survey results will be released over the next few weeks.
Survey Finding #1
A large majority of CFOs want to get both Functional day to day tasks AND Strategic & Long Term Value from their HR Group
Yet
Half of these CFOs only get Functional day to day tasks from HR.
Opportunity for improvement
Opportunity for HR: Your CFO wants Strategic Long Term Value. There is a good chance that if you can prove the value of strategic initiatives to them, they will pay for it.
Opportunity for CFOs: Challenge your HR leaders. ½ of you are not getting what you want.
Question for discussion:
As CFO, are you getting what you need from HR? If not, why not?
Interesting. However, I am wondering if both department speak the same language. I am not sure ‘strategic’ in the finance and Hr world do have the same meaning.I d like to hear what other Hr and finance rep’ have to say about it…
Sarah, Thank you for your input.
Perhaps ‘strategic’ doesn’t mean the same for a CFO as it does for HR. However, it is clear from the survey that CFOs want more than just ‘day to day’ support from HR, and that HR has an internal customer that wants more value. The challenge to HR is to figure out what ‘more than day to day’ means to the CFO and work with them to deliver it.
Samuel