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You are here: Home / Archives for Survey

November 22, 2011 By Samuel Dergel 6 Comments

Why can’t finance and HR just get along?

This blog is a Guest Commentary written by me that appeared in Canadian HR Reporter on November 21, 2011. You can view a copy of the original article here.

Why can’t finance and HR just get along?

Finance and human resources have more in common than they care to admit – here’s how HR can improve its relationship with the CFO

I have been fortunate enough in my career to deal with organizational leaders in finance as well as human resources. For as far back as I can remember, I have noticed the friction that exists between these two groups and it has always fascinated me.

Finance and HR have more in common than they care to admit. The CFO’s role is to manage the financial assets of the company while the CHRO is mandated with managing the company’s human capital.

Both finance and HR are important support functions for any enterprise. However, neither finance nor HR drive revenue — they support it. In organizations where finance and HR work well together, they provide solid support to corporate objectives.

The biggest point of this interdepartmental friction comes from the intersection of their interests — HR deals with people, whose costs are usually the largest expenditure in a company, while finance is mandated with managing costs.

So why can’t finance and HR work well together? The truth is they can — it just takes effort from both sides to make the relationship work.

Here’s a rundown of what HR professionals can do to improve their relationship with finance:

Communicate: A CFO needs to understand what you do, how you do it and how you can help her. HR needs to be proactive to understand the needs of the CFO and work together with her to provide appropriate solutions.

It sounds simple yet how many HR groups really have an open and effective line of communication with finance?

Treat finance like a business unit: A successful CFO needs a strong team to support him to meet objectives. As an HR professional, you understand what is involved in building, developing and sustaining a solid team, so help the CFO in his quest for having the most efficient and effective team. This is one sure way to get on the same side as the CFO.

Give finance what it wants: In the spring, my firm conducted an online survey of 40 CFOs to find out if they were willing to commit internal resources for the development of their finance teams.

More than one-half (56 per cent) said they want support for succession planning, 83 per cent want help with talent management and 94 per cent want a more effective and efficient structure for their finance team. We asked them if they were willing to invest resources in these areas and the majority of them said yes. Who can better solve these challenges than human resources?

Finance training: Ask your CFO to help develop the financial literacy skills of the HR team. Imagine the synergy that can exist internally when your team better understands the financial aspects of the business, how it applies to the corporate objectives and what it means within the context of delivering strategic and tactical HR functions.

These are just some examples. To make the relationship with finance work, HR needs to take steps to build relationships — with the focus on adding value.

Do you have examples of how you were able to bridge the divide between finance and HR and have a positive impact on your organization?

Filed Under: CFO Poll, Chief Financial Officer, Succession Planning, Team Structuring, Training and Development

September 6, 2011 By Samuel Dergel Leave a Comment

New Survey: CFOs and their relationship with Sales

The Roadmap to Successful CFO Relationships shows the relationships that a CFO needs to manage well to ensure their success.

One relationship that CFOs have that has the potential for differences and difficulties is the relationship between Finance and Sales.

The Sales Department is the lifeblood of a company (no Revenue = no business) and Finance is a support function (albeit an important one). A Strong and Successful company needs to have Finance and Sales working together well.

With this context in mind, our new survey for CFOs: Your Relationship with the Sales Department is now ready for your input.

Go ahead, answer our survey and share your point of view on the subject.

I’m looking forward to sharing insights from these results with you soon.

Samuel

Filed Under: Real CFO, Sales Department, Successful CFO

August 8, 2011 By Samuel Dergel Leave a Comment

CFOs and Recruiters: Quick Survey

Of the many relationships CFOs have (see CFO Relationship Map), they seem to have a love/hate relationship with Recruiters. Speaking recently with Cindy Kraft (CFO Coach), she confirmed that this dymanic has been mentioned to her several times as well.

In collaboration with Cindy, we want to find out what bugs you about Recruiters.

Take our quick survey by clicking here.

If you have spoken to a CFO colleague who has expressed their frustration to you, forward them this post to have them share their frustrations as well.

Photo Credit: JC Lamkin

Filed Under: CFO, CFO, CFO, CFO Search, CFO Search, Executive Search, Recruiters, Talent Management, Talent Management

July 25, 2011 By Samuel Dergel 9 Comments

What do CFOs want from HR? (Part 3 of our survey results)

As the final instalment of the results from our CFO survey on HR, (Read Part 1 and Part 2 here), I wanted to share with you some of the comments we received from CFOs about their relationship with Human Resources.

In some companies, there is no love lost between Finance & Human Resources.

Below are individual comments from CFOs about their relationship with HR based on their own experiences and backgrounds. These comments were curated from our survey to prove the point that Finance and HR don’t always see eye to eye.

Here are some of the more interesting comments we received:

Having HR report to the CFO has been good for our company. It offers a sounding board for HR on tough issues and a little more objectivity vs. operations who are more concerned about staffing than possibly dealing with a difficult personnel issue.

I’ve been CFO of three organizations and have always found a conflict between the CFO and HR. HR believes they should have a direct ear to the CEO – which they should on personnel issues. Often though, this bleeds over to cover financial decisions. If HR does not agree with CFO analysis on a benefits package or offering, often there is a private discussion between HR and the CEO where it “comes up.” This usually results in many extra processes and meetings with the end result being the more logical, CFO proposed issue.

A strong HR dept can add tremendous value to the organization and support to the CFO. However, it has to be balanced in the services they provide and not be just great in one or two areas – it needs to be strong in all areas otherwise it can effect the performance of the employees and the company, similar to the finance function. HR, like finance, is an internal service organization that needs to provide the best quality of service to be an effective dept that adds value to the organization and not a drain on it. I believe that HR and Finance can be very strategic if first they are operating effectively, aligned together and operate as a team.

My biggest headache is HR. They continuously enter pay rates, SSN, address, benefits, etc. incorrectly into payroll and the Accounting software. I have complained to the CEO, but he has not corrected the problems. Accounting often does not have time to take lunch, because we are fixing HR’s mistakes. HR however, manages to take long lunch breaks daily.

(The next one is my favorite)

I should mention that the Director of HR is very pretty and the CEO cannot say no to her or will he make her do her job. Accounting is left to complete many processes that should have been completed by HR so we can do our job. I have many friends in upper levels of Accounting. The biggest complaint I have heard from all of them are their biggest nightmare is HR.

As CFO, do you feel that your fellow CFOs are facing the same issues you are? What do you feel about the comments these CFOs have about HR?

Filed Under: HR, HR

July 13, 2011 By Samuel Dergel Leave a Comment

New Survey: CFOs and their Finance Team

According to our CFO Relationship Map, Successful CFOs need a strong Finance Team to support them so they can accomplish more for the people they work for (CEO, Board, Investors) and the people they work with (Operations, Sales, IT, HR and others).

We created this survey to better understand the areas that CFOs feel they need help with to ensure they have a strong Finance Team supporting them.

With this context in mind, please answer our survey.

Thank you for your help. We look forward to sharing these results with you.

Samuel

Filed Under: All of Samuel's Blogs, All of Samuel's Blogs, All of Samuel's Blogs, All of Samuel's Blogs, All of Samuel's Blogs, CFO Consulting, CFO Consulting, CFO Relationships, CFO Relationships, CFO Relationships, CFO Relationships, CFO Relationships, Finance Team, Finance Team, Finance Team

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