How HR Leaders Can Build a Better Business Case
One of the biggest challenges many HR leaders face is getting company decision-makers to agree to invest in people operations including training and executive coaching. I wanted to share some thoughts about why this happens, and how you can influence the outcomes you’re looking for.
Isn’t it obvious we should invest in our people?
I’ve found that HR/people operations professionals need to be able to influence without authority by helping managers, leaders, and executives understand how and why they need to prioritize their people. This means understanding the natural tension between taking care of employees vs. the cost and helping others understand the benefit of investing in the company’s culture through training and coaching. Demonstrating the impact of training can be challenging, especially when benefits accrue over time and can be hard to measure in isolation.
I’ve also seen People Operations leaders get stuck unsuccessfully advocating for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Sometimes knowing it’s the right thing to do prevents them from building a strong business case for why DEI is vital to their company’s success. As much as I wish we no longer needed a business case for DEI, many leaders want one to understand how this work stacks up against competing priorities.
Five Ways to Influence Decision Makers
- Use data and gather research. When it comes to DEI for example, there’s unlimited evidence that diverse teams are smarter as described in HBR. Just Google ‘diverse teams better results’ and you’ll find more. Additionally, this post on HR Technologist provides good information about how to measure the ROI of employee training and development programs.
- Benchmark your peers: How are similar companies investing in their people? Leaders know they need to compete for talent. If they’re not already asking what their competitors are doing, they should be.
- Ask hard questions: for example, “What if we do nothing?” Richard Branson famously said, “Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.” It’s scarier not to develop people at all, don’t you think?
- Start with a pilot or experiment: I call this the path of least resistance. Propose a three- month trial with a clear budget and success measures. This gets you permission to start, and approval to continue if you can prove the investment pays off.
- Enlist advocates who can influence the final decision maker. Don’t have the ear of the CEO? Ask yourself who does. Enlist influential sponsors who believe in what you’re doing. These are often the people who can help you make things happen.
Look for hidden benefits too. For instance, training managers and improving your company’s culture can help increase engagement and productivity. These kinds of metrics impact a company’s bottom line and can help you make the case to invest in people at all levels in your organization.
Consultants Are Ineffective (if you hire the wrong one)
It can be even tougher to influence decision-makers when you want to bring in outside resources to help. Leaders may resist at first, saying vendors are too expensive, don’t understand your culture, and are likely to work in a vacuum. That may be true in some cases, but not always. Understanding these common challenges and forms of resistance can help you vet which vendors you choose and reassure your leaders.
A final note about cost, because in my experience, this is the biggest obstacle leaders face around investing in their employees. Hiring fractional resources, experts who specialize in what you need is often cheaper and more practical than adding full-time staff for things like coaching and training that critical but aren’t done on a daily basis.
