Organizations that prioritize bringing together these two teams can improve retention, productivity, and the bottom line.
By Rosalie Hawley
Finance teams measure success in numbers. But HR–the function closest to the people behind those numbers–rarely gets a say where those decisions are made. That disconnect comes at a cost. Research from SHRM found that organizations that raise their HR maturity by even one unit see $62,000 more revenue per full-time employee and a 1.2 point drop in turnover. Yet only 1 in 8 organizations have reached that level of maturity.
HR is more than a support function. It’s a direct driver of financial performance. The best decisions bring HR and finance together early, rather than looping people teams in later.
Two Different Lenses of the Same Business
Finance and HR look at the same business through two different lenses. Finance protects financial health, while HR ensures the organization has the people and leadership to execute the strategy. While often framed as competing priorities, they’re interdependent: Financial performance can’t be sustained without engaged, capable employees, and investment in people isn’t possible without a healthy business.
At Medius, the partnership between people strategy and the CFO works because both sides are solving for the same outcome, just bringing their unique expertise to the table.
For example, when Medius reduced its office footprint, the financial case was clear: Reducing space improves cost and profitability, which matters in a PE-backed environment. But how that change was communicated to employees was just as important. Handled poorly, it would quietly cost trust and goodwill, damage that doesn’t show up on a balance sheet, and isn’t automatically on finance’s radar. That’s the gap the partnership closes.
What HR Sees That Finance Might Miss
Finance evaluates decisions based on monetary outcomes. HR adds the layer underneath, including how it affects engagement, leadership bandwidth, retention, and execution capacity. HR’s job isn’t to soften hard decisions; it’s to make sure leadership sees the full trade-off before committing to one.
Engagement data is an essential indicator when it comes to spotting risk early. A drop in scores on a critical team can signal retention or execution risk months before it registers in output or headcount numbers. The fix might be a coaching conversation or role redesign. A missed signal will resurface later as a departure, a slipping project, or a replacement hire that costs far more than the fix would have.
Leadership bandwidth can be another blind spot. A strategic initiative can look fully resourced, budget approved, headcount in place, and still stall because the leaders driving it are already stretched thin. HR sees that strain forming in workload data, turnover among high performers, and leaders raising concerns about burnout.
This isn’t unique to any one team. According to Medius research, nearly three-quarters of finance professionals say the drag of repetitive, low-level work has them considering leaving the profession. That’s exactly the kind of signal HR is positioned to catch, and finance often isn’t, since it shows up in workload and turnover data long before it shows up as a missed deadline or stalled rollout. By addressing this strain early by redistributing the load or bringing in support, the initiative stays on track. Ignore it, and a well-funded strategy underdelivers with no obvious culprit besides “execution.”
HR also helps identify where performance gaps are limiting output, and works with leaders on the right response, whether that’s coaching, development, redesign, or, when warranted, a harder call. Left unaddressed, those gaps compound, capping what a team can deliver long after the decision that created them.
Working Together
When HR and finance collaborate before a decision is finalized, organizations make better calls and avoid costly consequences later, including attrition, slower execution, or lost capability. In a PE-backed environment, this dynamic is amplified. Decisions move faster, investor pressure on cost and efficiency is sharper, and the margin for misalignment is smaller. The best partnerships aren’t based on “HR asking for budget” or “finance saying no.” There are two functions making sure the decision thrives with the real world, not just the spreadsheet.
For HR leaders looking to build that kind of partnership, it starts with commercial credibility. That means knowing how the company makes money, what drives margin, and what actually keeps the CFO up at night. Pay attention early to what the CFO raises concerns about and where they hold strong opinions. Understanding how they think shapes conversations that land and ensures decisions can be made together.
Rosalie Hawley is chief people officer for Medius.
