The Intersection Between HR and Business
I write a lot about the intersection between Finance (a.k.a. Business) and Human Resources. I write about this intersection because my experience with Human Resources is influenced by my experiences as a business owner. In business, cash flow is king. Any time the business doesn’t have positive cash flow, it’s forced to rob from Peter to pay Paul or secure a loan to cover expenses. And the expenses of the workforce NEVER stop – they are what Finance calls “fixed” – meaning they are a constant, unwavering, unforgiving expense you cannot avoid paying.
I write about this intersection because it is in this intersection that HR strategy is born and developed. There is no way to separate who pays the bill from who does the work. They are intertwined and forever married.
You might have the impression that because I write about this intersection between Finance and Human Resources, I’m on the side of management or Finance. But I am not. I have experienced workplace bullying, incompetent managers, micro managers, bias, prejudice, and bad behavior in management within the HR Department. So if HR can be that bad with all of our emotional intelligence training, the experience other workers have in other departments must be brutal.
I am acutely aware of how miserable a bad manager can make everyone around him. And I am acutely aware how upper management can ignore that behavior in favor of non-confrontation and focusing on whether there is enough complaining to require any attention. Or typically, passing the buck to HR to solve the problem.
But I also have experience as a business owner dealing with fixed expenses and constant cashflow challenges. I have analyzed many human resources departments, and my work typically positions me right in that intersection between Finance and HR. Along with IT, these three departments are the most critical administrative departments in any company. They are most responsible for ensuring the organization functions, and they have the most influence on the budget. So to ignore the intersection between these three is to relegate yourself to a sideline - a department, person or leader that is necessary, but not very influential or important.
But here’s the thing - I have seen through my work how Human Resources can elevate their performance, their influence, and their strategic value. Why is that important?
It’s important because when you become that higher performing department or leader, then you free yourself from being buried in transactions nonstop. You free yourself from running from one meeting to the next and answering emails and phone calls in between. You step outside of the noise and start to see what you can do for the workforce as an influential leader with extra hours and extra dollars. What I teach and write about are the ways you can find those extra dollars and extra hours.
The tools that I teach reveal hidden money and hidden time in operations of every department. And it’s not only happening in HR, it’s happening in every department - Finance and IT included. But Finance and IT already have access to this training – it is part of their curriculum and on-going professional development.
So, I’m bringing these tools to the Human Resources world. That’s what my writing and teaching is all about.
I know where the gold is hidden.
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