HOW UNITING FINANCE AND HR CAN HELP BUSINESSES WEATHER THE COVID-19 STORM

By Ken Ferguson, CRO, OrgVue

 

Business leaders navigating Covid-19 are facing many challenges; implementing the infrastructure to work from home, seeing the market crash, or having to cater to a surge in staff illnesses. Planning for a future that is constantly referred to as ‘uncertain’ and ‘unprecedented’ or based on blanket economic forecasts can seem impossible. The businesses that will come out on top are those that accept the uncertainty and plan around it.

The steps to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 on business operations centre around three things; people, costs and productivity, and even more importantly, how they all come together.

 

Ken Ferguson

Monitoring the collective, not the individual

We know that there is a lot of wasted potential in poor people planning – our research has shown that an additional £10.4 billion could be injected into the UK economy, and $92.2 billion in the US, if businesses were to invest more in this area. At a time like this, just responding to individual staff illnesses isn’t going to be enough. Monitoring the health of all workers over time to get an accurate overview of how each individual’s absence impacts the wider system of the business will allow leaders to gain clarity on where the gaps and risks are and plan accordingly.

Alongside ensuring workforce capabilities are understood, it’s essential to also understand what work can be done remotely while identifying any obstacles that may affect critical day-to-day functions. The learnings from this will allow leaders to prioritise work that can be done from home as well as forecast and model different ways to sustain business operations during this uniquely challenging time.

 

Building a bridge between Finance and HR

An effective way to unlock the potential of your workforce and maintain productivity is creating a stronger link between the departments that focus on these respectively – finance and HR. It is known that this relationship isn’t explored enough, with research we conducted in collaboration with Loudhouse showing a mere 28% of finance and HR decision-makers have consolidated reporting systems and processes.

How can we go about bringing together these two very different beasts? Encouraging FP&A colleagues to work more closely with HR is the first step in strengthening the relationship. Setting up an equivalent organisational planning and analysis (OP&A) capability within the HR department itself will help ensure both are using a common vernacular when analysing the workforce.

The second step in forging a link between the two departments involves the sharing of information. HR has data on people and finance has data on costs and rarely do the two align, so having a purpose-built platform that can source data from both departments and integrate them together will give a valuable overview of how these are intersecting in real-time. This will stand businesses in good stead to be able to meet organisational objectives as well as model and plan for different scenarios in the future.

 

There is no ‘one size fits all’

Speaking of planning for various scenarios, we must acknowledge that we find ourselves in completely uncharted territory and remember that there is not one singular route to recovery. By identifying clear possible scenarios, however many there may be, will be what helps businesses make decisions with confidence.

Will there be a slow return to previous market conditions that will see us remaining in lockdown for months? Or perhaps a more rapid return followed by a second wave of infection? Clarity can be reached by considering the responses to each one of these scenarios and having clear sign posts to identify which one is in effect.

In a nutshell; preparation is key to mitigating risk, but, in a time where constant uncertainty is inevitable, planning needs to happen on a perpetual basis, not once or twice a year. Implementing the right strategies and building the right bridges within a business will make continual and dynamic planning easier. Leaders who get this right will be in the best possible place to react to whichever exit strategy is implemented in the coming weeks.

 

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