cover feature
FINANCIAL
SKILLS EVERY HR
PROFESSIONAL
NEEDS TO KNOW
By Melissa Campeau
Former Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca once said, “You can have
brilliant ideas but if you can’t get them across, your ideas
won’t get you anywhere.”
As HR pros increasingly sit shoulder to shoulder with
other senior executives on leadership teams, many face a commu-nication
barrier. For better or worse, finance is still the primary
language of business. HR pros, though, speak the language of hu-man
capital, with a value that’s often tough to quantify. To bridge
the communication gap, it’s critical for HR pros to understand
the intricacies of the financial conversation and be able to position
HR initiatives in a way that makes sense to those with dollars and
cents backgrounds.
“I think it’s fair to say a lot of people in HR are uncomfortable
with the financial side of business,” said Tony Dimnik, a professor
at Queen’s School of Business Executive Education and president
of Vednost Inc., a company that teaches finance and accounting
fundamentals.
It’s a missing puzzle piece that can hamper an HR professional’s
ability to be influential and contribute fully to the decision-making
process.
BEWARE THE (KNOWLEDGE) GAP
“The trouble with not speaking the finance language is that num-bers
can lie, or at least appear to,” said Michelle Causton, professor
with the accounting department of Canadore College in North
Bay, Ont. Understanding a little about how numbers find their
way into reports can let a human resource professional contribute
more fully to strategic discussions.
“For starters, you have to feel confident enough in your under-standing
of something to challenge it when it doesn’t make sense,”
said Causton. “That’s why it’s important for people to build their
financial muscles a bit.”
HRPATODAY.CA ❚ MAY/JUNE 2014 ❚ 21