Welcome to the People Profits Human Capital blog!!
Relational versus Return on Investment HR professionals
In my 20+ years of being the VP of HR for four different companies, I have heard the following from CEOs and CFOs:
- “HR has no idea how much they are costing us!!”
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“Do they have a clue how much it takes to pay for the stuff they do?!?”
- “I asked HR what the Return on Investment was on a project and they had no idea!!”
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“Don’t they understand that they have to bring Value to the table?”
Within the HR community, a discussion has been raging for years, if not decades, about how HR professionals need to be more focused on the financial implications of the HR functions. Many people would say that progress has been limited.
Relational vs. Financial
In the past, the vast majority of HR professionals have been relational extroverts. They moved into HR because they have highly advanced people skills and enjoy working with people. Obviously, there is a huge relational component within HR.
However, at the end of the day, it is all about value! Their relational strength generally comes with a weakness of not being “numbers oriented.” Relational HR people are mostly not as comfortable with numbers as they are dealing with people. Most HR people will readily agree with this statement.
As the old Personnel department progressed into Human Resources and now into Human Capital the need to be more financially oriented and accountable has exploded. My Bachelors degree is in Finance and many times I have felt like a fish out of water with my HR colleagues. I have the opposite issue of the majority of HR people as I am more numbers oriented and less relational.
My blog will be focused on the financial implications of Human Capital issues.
Clark Ingram, MBA, SPHR, CEBS, CPCU is the Founder and President of People Profits, LLC which is a financially oriented Human Capital Strategy and Planning firm based in the OKC metro area. www.PeopleProfits.com.
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