HR Budgets

Well, the new year is here and your budget should be in place for 2014. What most new P&L responsible people do is spend immediately on things that have been building up over the past quarter or when your budget was slashed.

Word to the wise, be mindful of how you utilize your budget. Rethink those things you put into it and make sure that they will have the most impact on your business. To be a key business partner what will benefit those in your perview most.

Another thing, I want to take this a step further. Again, I have always advocated that the CFO is one of your best partners in business, besides the CEO relationship and is probably the next most important. Why you ask, well just think about it for a second. Who manages the finances in the organization and who do you go to when you want to add extra dollars into a project, manpower, program or budget line? The CFO.

Over the past 20 years in business I have made it a point to partner very closely with my CFO. With that relationship we worked together on strategy with the CEO, innovation and the other very important parts of the business. HR & Finance was in all the meetings together with business leaders, driving deeper into the budgeting, strategy, business change, customer, supply chain, and human capital issues. It was a great relationship that was built on trust, understanding, a need for change, and a keen sense of business economics.

The only way for HR to flourish within an organization is with a close relationship with your finance department and your CFO. Do you have that type of relationship or is it an arms length, adversarial relationship, I hope not.

Happy 2014, and spend your budget wisely and manage your P&L like a pro. 

Start The "New Year" Off Right - Reassess

Now that we have entered into 2011 it is time for every HR executive and manager to reassess everything top to bottom. When you think of it you probably did your budget in September or October, your staffing plans about the same time when the strat plan was being done. You also built your own strategy plan around the company plan. 


Well, now that 2010 is gone and some assumptions may not be valid today reassess everything. It is also time to reassess your own value to the organization and how you can add additional value and less HR bureaucracy and other HR administrivia. Now I know that as executives in the new world of HR you do not focus on this stuff you should make sure your managers and key subject personnel have a direct line of sight to the business and not to build their own castle. 


So, in summary, reassess the following in detail and re-evaluate the net effect on the bottom line:

• HR strategy plan
• HR budget for 2011 and subsequent years if you are on a multi-year planning basis
• HR staff and what the business needs today vs last year
• Staffing plans by group(s), division(s), department(s)
• Training and development - although in your budget, make sure you have departments that are outliers re-added to your budget and reassess each individual plan
• HR technology needs
• HR products that move your company to a self-service, self-reliant organization

Check these things out now and make sure that you are ahead of the game rather than your CEO telling you to look at these things