How well do HR and Finance work together in your organisation?

We don’t often put a number on the financial potential of a relationship between functions. But when people are on average 70% of an organisation’s costs, and HR don’t partner well with Finance – the benefits of fixing that are obvious.

We’re working with a client on a business partnering programme that will bring HR and Finance together. To be honest, this started as a way of getting the numbers to work – they only have 3 HRBPs, and want business partnering across all HO functions.

But I’m getting excited about how much impact this will have – measurable impact, especially if we tackle strategic projects like workforce planning and people measures with HR and Finance collaborating energetically – and partnering with their business units at the same time.

Here’s a powerful quote from EY in their Executive summary in ‘The Master CFO Collection Partnering for performance Part 2: the CFO and HR’:

‘A strong relationship between the CFO and the CHRO is linked with superior performance.
Our survey has found that there is a powerful link between a business’ performance and the extent to which its finance and HR leaders collaborate. Companies where the relationship has become much more collaborative over the past three years report average higher EBITDA growth and stronger improvement across a range of human capital metrics, including employee engagement and productivity.’

How well does this work in your organisation?