Six partners have shown their support for finance and HR at the Finance Meets HR Summit.
Workday, SAP Concur, Jaguar Land Rover, ClarkHouse Human Capital, Transparent and Coupa have thrown their weight behind the finance community by sponsoring the Finance Meets HR Summit taking place on 18 February at the Equinox Leadership & Innovation Centre in Sandton, Johannesburg.
The summit will look at how the finance and HR professions collide and collaborate when it comes to their businesses’ strategy, accounting, profit and people.
Principal partner Workday’s country MD Zuko Mdwaba says that although finance and HR represent different disciplines and skillsets, they’re responsible for what’s at the heart of any successful company, namely financial performance and talent.
“Traditionally, the relationship between finance and HR has ranged from tense to ambivalent,” he says. “For most of the last 100 years of business, things (assets, inventory, goods) were the cost driver and the value store, while labour was just one more cost to be minimised. As finance cared about cost and HR cared about people, the two functions were natural adversaries.”
Zuko adds that it couldn’t be more different today. “Businesses increasingly recognise that talent drives business performance. Talent costs, supply, assignment, development, and optimization are now top-level business discussions upon which the success or failure of ventures and whole companies depend. Human output is no longer a commodity to be minimized, it is a resource to be optimized, and this puts HR and finance on the same side of the table.”
ClarkHouse Human Capital co-founder Deborah Booth believes in the potential of finance and HR collaborating and support the idea of getting them together in the same room. “The summit presents a unique opportunity for the two functions to understand their respective roles and challenges in more detail and for finance and HR to start moving towards taking their true position in a company, which is to lead and coach the CEO collectively,” Deborah stated. “Too often the finance and HR function work in silos, and often the CHRO function is not seen to be as important as the CFO function. We believe that they are equally important, especially now in the wake of the digital transformation era.”
Deborah also stated that knowledge is key to any form of growth in a business. “The Finance meets HR Summit is an amazing platform for the CFO and CHRO community to learn to bridge the gap between the HR and finance functions. Our sponsorship of the summit is a brilliant opportunity for us as a business to remain relevant and to stay ahead of trends across the finance and HR community.”
Jaguar Land Rover South Africa fleet and business manager Palesa Mabuza said: “Jaguar Land Rover South Africa is pleased to be in partnership with one of the old organizations in the country supporting finance professionals across all spheres and fields. It is in the sharing of knowledge, best business practices and networking opportunities that we find the partnership valuable in an ever-changing working environment.”
