"HR and Finance - Are They Related?"
Presenter: Jim Larson, CPA
Director of Finance - Fargo Park District
In today’s business we have two major players out there. One of them is Human Resources and the other is Finance and/or Accounting. These two co-exist very closely and yet they are very different.
Today’s economy is struggling and everyone is looking for opportunities to enhance the financial position of their company. As you work as a Human Resources professional, you provide a great deal of value to the company, but as you look across the way at the Finance or Accounting Department, they might be saying “prove it”.
Today, we would like to discuss and help show how Human Resources can prove and develop worth in a company. One of the concepts that needs to be asked, whether you are in Finance/Accounting or Human Resources is, what is the business benefit? Many times as HR personnel we feel this is not important because we are managing human capital, it is the people part that is critical. But finance/accounting sometimes forgets about that.
As we look at the roles of each, we find that both are very important and neither one is necessarily more significant than the other. We need to understand the value of each and how to communicate properly between them. Both Finance/Accounting and Human Resources need to practice goo communication skills because both are critical to the success of a company.
The session will cover what a business benefit is. It is a concept that needs to be followed by all the departments, regardless of where you are in the system (Human Resources, Finance/Accounting, in the production area or Administration). The business benefit of services, process and products needs to be identified and if it cannot be identified, is it needed?
During this session, we will also look at how to help develop a budget. We are going to take some very simplistic approaches that will allow you to create a very effective budget. We will make sure when it is completed it is understood and accepted by others within the company and easy to follow. The steps that are used in developing the budget will allow you to also provide accountability back on your budget throughout the year and answer the questions – are you staying within that budget and if not, why? You should be able to easily identify the cause of budget variances.
The goal of this session is to assist Human Resources with an approach to better work with Finance/Accounting so both can achieve the common goal of supporting the company they work for.
This program is approved for 1.0 strategic credit from HRCI.
