连接财务和人力资源团队可以重塑企业规划

The value people bring to an organization is always a vigorously discussed topic among senior leadership, especially as it relates to strategic planning. You would think investing in the organization’s people is a settled argument, but it still puts finance, who holds the purse strings, in an uncomfortable position.

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CFOs cannot just say “no,” nor can they just say “yes” to approving requests for investments in the organization’s people. Like other business function leaders, they will make the best decisions they can with the tools and information they have available balanced with the need to keep costs at check. CFOs and their finance organization are experts at appropriating the greatest value from the resources the company controls, along with managing how money flows through the enterprise. However, they are not experts in how people, as resources, are translated into organizational and financial performance. That is why without insights and guidance from HR, finance will make people-decisions from a predominantly financial perspective, which obscures the view of the some of the organization’s key growth levers, such as managing headcount to increase productivity or capacity. 

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Finance agrees in concept that investments in people are valuable. What they want to know is, how valuable? They are not usually looking for a single number, but rather a clear map of the value chain using specifics. More importantly, they want to know which investments in people create the most customer and business value, and what are the paths to achieving that value. To do so, HR needs to communicate in the language of finance, not the other way around.

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Here are three effective ways for HR to become conversant in the language of finance when discussing investments in people:

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1. Build up a strong vocabulary around long-range planning

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One of finance’s main preoccupations is long-range planning, which aims to achieve and maintain competitive advantages. For the CFO, the more focused objective is setting up the business to generate sustainable positive cash flows. No one would dispute either is possible without assembling a high-performing workforce and leadership, but getting it done requires a deliberate and well-informed people investment plan based on HR’s expertise.HR needs to complement and extend finance’s efforts in long-range planning by developing strategic workforce plans to drive the initiatives of the long-range plan. An essential task for HR is to assess the long-term demand for critical roles against both workforce supply and future trends for skills transformations, hiring, terminations, retirements, and competition.Accordingly, HR’s analysis will identify gaps and surpluses to account for and address. Workforce planners can then build scenarios (build, buy, borrow, or bounce) to close the gaps, incorporating costs with each scenario. Finance then evaluates the proposed options and their associated costs, so HR is empowered to execute and track the chosen options, and assure the right resources are put in place to realize long-range plans.

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2. Structure people investment proposals as business cases

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To help the CFO and CEO make prudent, effective people investments, HR needs to do their diligence in developing business cases for their proposals. Business cases should make heavy use of the language finance speaks to facilitate better communication.For example, HR can build business cases for initiatives like employee learning and development, or employee engagement. Then, they can create scenarios that compare the cost and timing of training and promoting from within versus hiring or using contractors from outside. Another scenario could compare the cost of employee engagement versus the cost of attrition.It is important that HR presents business cases in a format finance understands. Connected Planning helps provide HR the data and structure to create business cases in the language of finance. Communicating unambiguously in a common language enables collaborative, data-driven conversations to clarify the assumptions and dependencies around investments in people, and how they map to investments in the business. This language must be rooted in an agreement on fundamentals, such as how headcount is calculated.

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3. Translate nontraditional ROI so it can be better evaluated against financial measures

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Return ratios such as ROI are powerful ways to describe succinctly the performance of a company’s investments and to evaluate future investment opportunities. Finance uses ROI regularly in both cases, such as operating revenue, profit, and expense per employee, as it is another part of the language of finance. Yet, investments in people are difficult to connect directly to financial outcomes. HR can help finance quantify and understand HR’s nontraditional ROI models, such as culture, employee engagement, and training.Remember that to finance professionals, ROI has a very precise meaning. So, HR needs to be careful not to force-fit nontraditional ROI into financial terms. Often, HR can communicate nontraditional ROI effectively using a benefit/cost framework as an agreeable basis to finance in evaluating and comparing people investment options.

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Don’t tell your leadership peers what to do. Show them how it gets done.

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By connecting HR data to finance’s forecasting and planning systems using a common platform, HR takes the first step in breaking down organizational silos and becomes a model for the rest of the enterprise by actually doing so right at the planning stage. From there, everyone can find the answers to “so what” and “what’s next” questions, thanks to actionable data.

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Through a closer collaboration, HR and finance can avoid reaching impasses due to the CFO lacking sufficient contextual information to confidently say “yes” or “no” in their decisions. Instead, HR’s input in areas such as talent and location strategy become codified into the broader business strategy in ways that make sense to finance, who in turn can communicate more effectively to the CEO, where strategic decisions ultimately get made.

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人们给组织带来的价值一直是高层领导讨论的热门话题，尤其是当它涉及到战略规划时。你可能会认为，投资于公司的员工是一个已成定局的问题，但这仍然会让掌握财务大权的财务部门感到不舒服。

首席财务官不能只说“不”，也不能只说“是”来批准对组织人员的投资请求。与其他业务职能领导一样，他们将利用现有的工具和信息，在控制成本的同时做出最佳决策。首席财务官和他们的财务组织是从公司控制的资源中挪用最大价值的专家，同时管理资金如何在企业中流动。然而，他们不是如何将人作为资源转化为组织和财务绩效的专家。这就是为什么没有人力资源的洞察力和指导，财务将做出人的决定从主要的财务角度来看，它模糊了组织的一些关键增长杠杆的观点，例如管理员工数量以提高生产力或能力。

金融在概念上同意对人的投资是有价值的。他们想知道的是，价值有多大?他们通常不是在寻找一个单一的数字，而是在寻找一个使用细节的价值链的清晰地图。更重要的是，他们想知道哪些对人的投资能创造最大的客户和商业价值，以及实现这些价值的途径是什么。要做到这一点，人力资源需要用财务语言进行沟通，而不是相反。

这里有三种有效的方法，可以让HR在讨论人力投资时熟悉财务语言:

1.围绕长期计划建立一个强大的词汇表

财务的主要关注点之一是长期规划，其目的是实现和保持竞争优势。对于首席财务官来说，更关注的目标是建立业务以产生可持续的正现金流。没有人会质疑，如果不组建一支高绩效的员工队伍和领导层，这两件事都是可能的，但要做到这一点，需要一个基于人力资源专业知识的深思熟虑的、消息灵通的人才投资计划。人力资源需要通过制定战略性劳动力计划来推动长期计划的主动性，以补充和扩展财务在长期计划中的努力。人力资源的一项基本任务是根据劳动力供应和技能转换、招聘、终止、退休和竞争的未来趋势，评估对关键角色的长期需求。因此，人力资源的分析将确定差距和盈余，以解释和解决。然后，劳动力计划人员可以构建场景(构建、购买、借用或反弹)来缩小差距，将成本与每个场景结合起来。然后，财务部门评估建议的选项及其相关成本，这样人力资源部门就有权执行和跟踪所选的选项，并确保将正确的资源投入到位，以实现长期计划。

2.将人员投资建议构建为业务案例

为了帮助首席财务官和首席执行官做出谨慎、有效的人力投资，人力资源部门需要尽职尽责地为他们的建议开发商业案例。商业案例应该大量使用金融语言，以促进更好的沟通。例如，人力资源部门可以为员工学习和发展或员工敬业度等活动构建业务案例。然后，他们可以创建场景，比较从内部进行培训和晋升的成本和时间，以及从外部雇用或使用承包商。另一种情况是比较员工敬业度的成本与员工流失的成本。人力资源部门以财务部门能够理解的格式呈现业务案例是很重要的。连接计划帮助为HR提供数据和结构，以便用财务语言创建业务案例。用通用语言进行明确的沟通，可以实现协作性的、数据驱动的对话，以澄清围绕人员投资的假设和依赖关系，以及它们如何映射到业务投资。这种措辞必须植根于对基本原则的一致，比如如何计算员工人数。

3.翻译非传统的投资回报率，以便可以根据财务指标更好地评估它

回报率(如ROI)是简洁地描述公司投资业绩和评估未来投资机会的有力方法。财务经常在这两种情况下使用ROI，例如营业收入、利润和每个员工的费用，因为它是财务语言的另一部分。然而，对人的投资很难与财务结果直接挂钩。人力资源可以帮助财务量化和理解人力资源的非传统投资回报率模型，如文化、员工敬业度和培训。请记住，对于金融专业人士来说，ROI具有非常精确的含义。因此，人力资源部门需要小心，不要将非传统的投资回报率强行纳入财务术语。通常，人力资源可以有效地沟通非传统的投资回报率，使用收益/成本框架作为财务评估和比较人员投资选择的一致基础。

不要告诉你的领导同事该做什么。向他们展示如何完成。

通过使用一个通用平台将人力资源数据与财务的预测和计划系统连接起来，人力资源在打破组织孤岛方面迈出了第一步，并在计划阶段就成为企业其他部门的榜样。从那里，每个人都可以找到“那又怎样”和“下一步是什么”问题的答案，这要归功于可操作的数据。

通过更紧密的合作，人力资源和财务可以避免陷入僵局，因为首席财务官缺乏足够的背景信息，无法自信地在决策中说“是”或“否”。相反，人力资源部门在人才和地理位置战略等领域的投入会以对财务有意义的方式纳入更广泛的业务战略，而财务部门又可以更有效地与首席执行官沟通，最终做出战略决策。