Strong Finance Starts with HR: The Overlooked Partnership Every CFO Should Prioritize

The partnership between FP&A and HR is one that is rarely talked about, often overlooked, and certainly deemphasized at many companies. However, this critical partnership has an enormous impact on the scope, depth, efficiency, and effectiveness of each team. 

Recently, I co-hosted the FP&A Unlocked podcast with Paul Barnhurst and was joined by Cynthia Kenny, Chief Human Resources Officer of Sunland Asphalt & Construction and Deb Hill, Vice President of Human Resources at Avid, to discuss what makes a great FP&A-HR partnership and best practices around goal setting. 

This partnership, for CFOs and finance leaders, is about collaboration and forecast credibility, disciplined capital allocation, governance, and scalable operating performance. When FP&A and HR operate in sync, organizations make better decisions with greater confidence.  

Forecast Credibility Starts with Trust and Workforce Data 

Have you ever started at a company and found that headcount was not aligned with the departments or cost centers? From an FP&A perspective, how do you hold a department manager accountable for their budget if their compensation line doesn’t have the people that report to them? 

My career has taken me to several companies across seven industries, and one underlying theme of success has been developing strong cross-functional partnerships, and at the top of that list is Human Resources. FP&A analyzes, forecasts, and reports on business performance, but about 90% of the data comes from Accounting and HR. HR provides headcount, compensation, payroll taxes, benefits, employee tenure, titles, reporting structures, and so much more. HR works with the same businesses that FP&A supports and creates hiring plans, promotion plans, and layoffs or reductions in force (RIFs). 

Without clean, trusted HR data, FP&A cannot produce reliable forecasts, accurate labor modeling, or accountable variance analysis. Given that labor is often the largest operating expense line item — frequently representing 60–80% of total operating costs — inaccuracies in workforce data directly weaken margin visibility and forecast precision. Furthermore, if headcount data is misaligned with cost centers or GL mapping, variance analysis becomes unreliable; performance accountability erodes, and board reporting loses credibility. 

I’ve experienced both extremes: strong HR partnerships where we were all at the table working together, and situations where FP&A operated in the dark. Clearly, being at the table and aligning early enables accurate forecasts, better workforce decisions, and larger organizational impact. 

In the podcast discussion, Deb importantly pointed out that great FP&A partners are business translators, not data gatekeepers, and they explain why the numbers matter, not just what the variances are. This is key, as the best partnerships have data flowing freely to allow greater insight and drive a better decision-making process.  

Cynthia reinforced that trust is the foundation. HR must understand what FP&A brings to the table, and FP&A must understand HR’s strategic value. When these two teams come together, both can deliver and design a better organization for everyone. 

Goal Alignment as a Financial Control Mechanism 

Every year, companies put forth key objectives or goals they want to achieve. Often, these goals are cascaded down from executives to departments and ultimately to individual contributors. This cascading structure is critical because it creates a line of sight – ensuring each employee understands how their goals and work directly impacts the whole company strategy and financial outcomes. As Cynthia pointed out, without the connection to the broader company goals, the employee goals would just be tasks. 

Applying disciplined goal-setting practices — for both functional leaders and their teams — can significantly improve execution and professional development. Consider the following: