OK let me start by saying that I work in Finance and have been for my whole
My main consideration was that after having worked as a student in a HR department for more than a year I found myself thinking that no one actually likes those working in HR. Seems this topic is still trending as you can read here.
There is no fun in spending the first many years of your career being hated or trying to convince others about all the good work that HR is doing and can do for an organization. The odd thing is though that I found that many of the same things I thought true about HR was true about Finance as well. I have written more about some Finance stereotyping here.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140515194255-3379004-how-to-break-free-from-a-stereotype
So what have I learned from working in a function which no one in the business truly enjoys working with? I have learned that if you develop a strong business partnering concept you will find that the frontline actually wants to work much more with you. The journey about developing a strong business partnering concept is far from over and I have written about this quite a few times already. Among other post see the two below.
In HR they also have a business partnering concept and I am not even sure where it popped up first i.e. HR or Finance, but I find that with the HR business partnering concept it seems less about supporting the business by asking how can I help you add value than it is about helping the business with the transactional part regarding recruitment and compensation. How many of you have worked with a HR business partner who was more interested in your business and how he/she could help add value than just being there for the administrative issues? This is also one theme in the post published on www.hbr.org by Ram Charan.
http://hbr.org/2014/07/its-time-to-split-hr
One answer from USC professor John Boudreau is that while Finance can certainly teach HR a thing or two there is absolutely no need for HR to reside under Finance.
http://ww2.cfo.com/leadership/2014/08/hr-function-should-finance-take-over-hr/
While this may be true I think HR has a lot more to do compare with Finance when it comes to developing a strong business partnering concept. Why not learn from Finance about how a support function should add value to the business?
What do you think? Can HR learn anything from Finance and if so in your opinion what is it? If you think it’s the other way around feel free to express that opinion as well!