In our continued focus on the CFO and the evolution of their role beyond the finance function, here, we explore the intersection between HR and finance and discover how the two are inextricably linked: it’s a widening overlap that’s creating excellence in a talent-driven world. In today’s complex business environment, the role of the CFO has moved beyond traditional number-crunching – no longer confined to budgets, forecasts, and financial statements, modern CFOs are becoming pivotal strategic influencers—particularly across finance and human resources divisions. As organisations embrace hybrid work models and face mounting pressures to attract and retain top talent, the CFO’s involvement in talent strategy is not just valuable, it’s essential.
‘I’ve always had a strong collaborative relationship with HR: it provides numerous benefits, including a better understanding of the current talent and future requirements, enabling quicker, better and more strategic financial decisions related to talent retention initiatives and hiring, and a positive impact on the bottom line’.
CFO, Global Investment Management firm
A CFO’s evolution from cost-centre manager to human capital value-creator.
The nature of the CFO’s role means they have business-wide visibility and typically work closely with the CEO. So, they’re in a unique position to align business objectives with talent acquisition and development.
Human capital is often a company’s largest and most strategic investment: every hiring decision, training initiative, or employee engagement strategy has financial implications. By embedding financial logic into HR decision-making, CFOs can help organisations optimise workforce spending, while building capabilities that drive long-term performance.
Aligning financial and human capital strategies is born from both shared goals between Finance and HR and integrated execution. Strategic alignment can be driven by:
- Treating talent as a capital investment:
View hiring and development through the same lens as R&D or capital expenditure. Ask yourself: what is the ROI of upskilling versus hiring externally? What talent risks could impact our revenue goals? - Embedding financial agility into the workforce strategy:
Encourage a flexible workforce model to support business objectives that allows for rapid scaling or reallocation of talent as market conditions shift. - Measuring impact and communicating it:
Analyse, highlight and communicate the financial value of strong leadership, nurturing talent and employee retention to boards and investors. People are typically a company’s most important asset.
Mastering the optimal working model.
Collaboration between Finance and HR has become crucial in the development of flexible working models over the past five or so years since the pandemic, driven by a need to hire and retain talent and create an optimal working environment. Although there’s an ongoing debate over the impact of flexible working on productivity, there’s been a definite upward trend in the practice. ONS data suggests it’s here to stay for now, with more than a quarter of working adults in Great Britain (28%) who were hybrid working in the autumn of 2024.
There certainly isn’t a “one-size fits all” solution: some businesses see hybrid working to attract top talent whereas there’s increasing pushback in some sectors like finance. Companies such as JP Morgan, Amazon and Goldman Sachs say that it’s a drain on productivity and demand a return-to-office for all employees.
However, if you embrace hybrid working it can lead to a much happier and fulfilled workforce. So, how does a CFO and CHRO develop a hybrid working model?
Here are a few starting points:
- Data-Driven Workforce Planning:
Finance teams can bring their analytical rigour and forecasting skills to workforce planning. Align with HR’s insights into talent trends and employee engagement to get a more responsive and resilient talent strategy. - Investment in People Analytics:
CFOs can champion investments in tools that integrate financial data with HR metrics like attrition, productivity, and engagement. This fusion enables smarter, faster decisions about where to allocate resources for maximum impact and so keeps people engaged and businesses nimbler. - Aligning Incentives with Strategy:
Together with HR, CFOs can design compensation models and KPIs that drive both financial results and cultural alignment which are particularly important in a distributed workforce.
There are other considerations and caveats to the hybrid working model that need to be considered to optimise roll-out and management. On the one hand, you can gain real estate saving and digital infrastructure investments, along with enhanced employee well-being and productivity. On the other, there’s the issue of nurturing and incentivising talent and supporting the company’s culture. It’s a fiercely contested debate across sectors, roles and workforce demographics – the jury is very much out in terms of how companies can best support their people, their clients and the growth of their businesses.
Building a future-ready workforce.
We’ve talked about closer collaboration with the HR function and developing a hybrid work model, but what does the future hold and how can a CFO help shape a future-ready talent pool?
A CFO can ensure that talent investment is tightly linked to long-term business goals such as digital transformation, sustainability and international expansion. A workforce planning strategy also needs to anticipate future skills requirements. With the advent of AI and the increasing need for data literacy, the CFO and CHRO need to develop capabilities in these areas, either through training or new hires.
Budgeting for continuous learning programmes instead of just one-off training means that your people will be able to track their personal progression and feel more valued as employees. With the right incentives and training in place, your team is more likely to increase their productivity, innovate more readily and understand and engage with digital tools, enhancing the business’s competitive advantage.
Experimentation budgets can allocate small pools of money to teams so they can try new things without excessive red tape. But this shouldn’t mean that money is just thrown away. Embedding financial discipline into talent programmes creates a culture of cause and effect – ROI and KPIs linked across Finance and HR mean that you can spot what’s working and what isn’t.
Fear around automation can be faced head on with clear communication and open discussions about how it will impact jobs. Make sure that any future work strategy is “human plus machine” rather than a pure replacement model.
The Human-Centric CFO
So, what should we take from all of this? Today’s CFOs are not just financial stewards—they are human capital strategists, culture architects, and key partners in shaping the future of work. By deepening their understanding of the hybrid model and forging stronger ties with HR, CFOs can help build organisations that are not only financially sound but also talent-rich and future-ready.
Above all, the most successful CFOs will be those who can see talent not as a cost, but as a catalyst for value creation.
At The Siena Partnership, we work with our clients to recruit top finance professionals who can guide their organisations through complex economic challenges. If you’d like to continue the conversation with our finance expert, Mike Faull, contact us here: mike@thesienapartnership.com