In case you missed it, CFO magazine recently posted a story titled: Note to CFO's: Don't Trust HR. The story covered the recent address to financial executives denouncing the corporate HR profession for being mostly unable to provide analytics that are useful in making workforce decisions that build economic value. You can read the story here: http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/13270251
My experience in working with internal HR professionals all over the world, has been different than what was cited in the review.
First, I want to make clear that not every job within the HR function should be a strategic role that requires analytics. Some jobs within HR truly are transactional and serve the purpose of executing on a strategic HR plan. If every HR role was strategic, there would be no one left to do the tactical day-to-day work. Sure, we want people to think and to consider what they are doing, why they are doing it and look for efficiences, but that is true of every job in every functional department and is not what we are speaking of with regard to using analytics to make strategic workforce decisions.
Secondly, I have had the great pleasure of traveling to conferences all over the world, meeting with HR professionals from great and small (but still great) companies and find that HR professionals are bright, thoughtful and indeed using data and analytics such as ROI to measure the impact and return-on-investment of their human capital programs.
Measuring financial impact and ROI of human capital programs is not easy, but it can be done. HR Professionals all over the world are implementing the Phillips ROI Methodology in their organization and continue to sharpen their skills in this difficult, but doable methodology.
Check out the great work at the ROI Institute, take a look at our book, Managing Talent Retention: An ROI Approach and you'll see what I mean.
CFOs, you can trust HR.
