Partnering HR

Bhavin Ashar, Regional Director-Finance with Perrigo API India Private Limited, discusses the dynamics of finance function, partnering with HR and the transaction of HR function.

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I HAVE BEEN thinking of jotting down my thoughts on this topic for the past few months. The idea emerged in the last CFO conference where one of the topics was on a survey of soft aspects of Finance team. During the break, one of my industry colleagues, a CFO, and I got discussing about the session being an eye-opener. We, as a driving force in finance function, are generally focused on top line and bottom line. However, this session which connected us with HR, was a great learning experience.

It is anyway a given for both functions to collaborate in their respective domains.

Transaction HR has more to do with payroll related matter, bonus and negotiation, with certain class of employees, actuarial valuation related matters and so on and so forth. I would rather like to focus on how this partnership could be useful to build competency based model within finance. The article focusses more on learning and developments and how it can help finance professionals to get connected with HR.

During my two decades of career in finance, I was fortunate to work with some learned HR heads at various organisations. Also during the process of training and development, I got associated with leading HR professionals. I was also fortunate to be part of theme designing for certain training and development programmes of the organisations along with the HR head and the CEO. This provided me with a different kind of learning and perspective.

When one talks about HR, it is generally assumed that the HR function is all about handling people. People are not things to be handled. HR is more about dealing with people and by looking within you, being influential while collaborating with other functions. This becomes possible by getting knowledge partnering with HR function.