Breaking down the organizational silos between CFO and CHRO

Historically, HR departments sometimes fell under the finance department, particularly in smaller companies. Any crossovers have been in finite, well-defined functions: managing overtime costs, regulatory compliance, taxes, compensation, and so forth. The chief human resources officer (CHRO) or chief people officer (CPO) looks at a company through the lens of organizational structure and supervisory/management hierarchy, whereas the CFO sees it in terms of cost centers. The CHRO sees the workforce in terms of skills, capabilities and work histories, whereas the CFO sees headcount costs and outputs.

However, this is becoming less frequent as the complexity of HR and its strategic importance have grown. Financial, workforce, and business outcomes are too intertwined for siloed planning to succeed. To stay competitive, organizations need a shared view of talent, costs, and business strategies and priorities, enabled by connected planning and real-time insight.

The modern CFO: More than cash management

On top of the typical responsibilities — tracking cash flows, managing costs, financial reporting, regulatory compliance, meeting with banks and investors — modern CFOs also help drive growth. This involves keeping an eye out for potential acquisition or merger opportunities, considering more efficient ways to reorganize departments, and serving as a role model in promoting analytics and making data-driven decisions. 

In a larger context, a modern CFO’s duties relate to managing risk. Nowadays, that’s not just price spikes in fuel or raw materials or shocks in the markets for insurance or capital; it’s also the risk of missing revenue, deadlines and deliverables, quality standards, or cost targets due to talent shortages and mismatches. The financial impact of poor performance can be enormous, not just in immediate revenue but in long-term brand value and sustainability.

Increasingly, driving growth and managing risk require CFOs to think about their people. Over the last two generations, changing business models and increasing productivity has depended on better technology and more skilled workforce to create and use it. So, finding and keeping people with the right skills and experience has become ever more important. And as the pace of change itself keeps accelerating, the specialized skills needed keep evolving.

CHROs are expanding their horizons too

As work becomes more specialized and dynamic, the stakes for workforce decisions have never been higher. CHROs are stepping into a more strategic role — not just because of new tools and technologies, but because they’re on the front lines of minimizing workforce risk, ensuring the right people are in the right roles, and aligning talent to shifting business priorities.

Meanwhile, the rise of the knowledge economy has amplified the need for targeted training, upskilling, and smarter hiring. Many of today’s in-demand skills are so new or tech-driven that schools haven’t caught up — putting the onus on employers to fill the gap.

At the same time, just-in-time design, manufacturing, and inventory practices require more flexible workforce models with variable costs. Emerging digital tools and workforce analytics make it easier to quantify engagement and productivity, helping CHROs minimize risk and ensure the right people are employed in the right place, at the right time.

The turning point: A call for collaboration

CFOs and CHROs already share a common goal: aligning people and performance to deliver business value. But fragmented planning processes make collaboration difficult. Disparate tools, timelines, and assumptions create disconnects that slow down decision-making, and the business pays the price while the competition finds ground to move ahead.

As workforce demands evolve rapidly, alignment between finance and HR becomes a competitive and core necessity. That means creating shared plans, shared forecasts, and a shared understanding of what success looks. “The human capital or talent agenda is going to be what leads your organization – and then that’s supported by the finance agenda,” Eric Hutcherson, then CHRO for the National Basketball Association, commented during Anaplan’s conference. “Things are turning and changing at such a rapid pace that if those two departments are not in sync, you run the risk that either your human capital or your financial plan get out in front of the other, and you’re not going to be prepared to make the pivots you need – because you won’t have the resources you need in order to meet your financial goals.”

Conversely, “If you can get your CFO and CHRO working in synergy, helping each other to think predictably about ‘What do I need from a talent standpoint?’ and ‘Where do we think the finances of our organization are going?’, you’re going to be much more successful in the future,” Hutcherson said. “You can end up with the right resources at the right time, with the right skills, at the right cost.”

Collaboration through a shared planning platform

What does it take to turn this kind of synergy into reality? It’s essential to have a shared planning platform that tightly connects the business with its HR, finance, sales, and operations, so they can model and forecast a wide range of business scenarios and strategies in real time and react to changing conditions.

At Anaplan, we believe that breaking through organizational silos is critical if you want to foster real-time, confident decision-making across functions. With the Anaplan Operational Workforce Planning (OWP) application at the foundation, you’re equipped to connect strategy to execution through continuous, scenario-based workforce planning.

By bringing HR, finance, and business leaders together on a common platform, you gain a real-time, detailed position-level view of your workforce. You can model key drivers like hiring surges, attrition trends, recruiter capacity, and cost center budgets with greater agility and precision. Built-in dashboards, best-practice templates, and seamless HRIS and talent acquisition system integration reduce manual work and boost forecast accuracy.

With Anaplan, you can:

• Accelerate plan-to-hire workflows with automated position and requisition management
• Align recruiting plans to real-time demand to minimize over- or understaffing
• Reduce budget variance by linking top-down targets to bottom-up plans
• Run “what-if” scenarios to adjust quickly to market or strategy shifts

The outcome is a workforce strategy that’s agile, cost-effective, and built to enable long-term success — all powered by a single platform designed for confident, cross-functional decision-making.