When Richard Beatty last week wrote last week that CFOs should not trust HR, my gut reaction to the headline was dismay over yet another splashy-bold, HR-bashing statement. The last thing companies need right now is more internal strife. My next thought was, “wait-how many people actually trust the finance guys in these times of global financial crisis?” While there may be some fun to the glass houses and pot-vs.-kettle perspective, it’s probably not a good idea to take that low road.
And over on ZNDet, Steve Howlett opined, including his impression of the “softening” of Jim Holincheck, who felt it was a bit harsh, too – while identifying some merits to the rant. While opinions rule the day in the blogosphere, they’re still fun to gather and mull over, especially on hot topics. So, the article having been floated around to my peers, I sought commonalities in our perspectives, hoping for a core truism upon which we could all agree. My peers made some great points:
• “A vast majority of what he said is true – and this is what we are up against almost every day with our clients. I would argue that most of our clients are in fact “enlightened” HR people – and they get the business discussions Beatty is talking about. I would also argue that a very high percentage of our exec sponsors and leads at clients are non-HR background people from finance, strategic planning, operations, sales, etc., which gives them a higher chance for success.”
• “As much as we know how much value we bring and planning/analytics brings, we always have to remember that we have to clearly paint the picture for clients in business terms, not HR terms, if we are to be successful in this market.”
• While Beatty was likely making a case for segmentation of engagement strategies, a blanket statement about engagement not linking to results is off-base: “We’ve seen examples where engagement is a predictor of results…within what we know about our members and conference speakers. In addition, certain analysts have been including engagement as part of their evaluation of companies.” There’s widespread evidence to the contrary – Dr. Rucci, Starbucks, the entire Sears model.
To be sure, after reading Beatty’s full article, I couldn’t argue with plenty of the points he makes, if not necessarily the “shock jock” statement itself. There are clear differences in the motivators for success: “business decisions” are made rationally, focused on the final judgment of business success (dollars), which usually aligns with a “greater good” – a viable business generally means more people gainfully employed (although not always) than the business that goes under for failing to make the hard-but-necessary workforce reductions. Also,more stakeholders are taken into consideration in true business decisions than just the employees themselves. The problem is often those decisions aren’t very well thought-out, such as when blanket percentages dictate that every department, and business unit needs to reduce.
Does HR still struggle to make decisions without emotion – wanting to do the right thing for people on a more individual basis? Probably true pretty often. You could call it a priority conflict…but, ideally, HR and Finance should each have a good balance of moral and fiscal responsibility, without such a clear delineation between the functions. It’s a dynamic tension that I doubt will dissipate any time soon.
Tags: CFO, Finance, HR, HR Analytics, Strategy, Workforce Analytics, Workforce Planning