The intersection between HR strategy and HR technology

CFO Magazine Survey on Employee Performance

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, I found this article at CFO.com on employee productivity. 1

First of all, many of the 170 CFO’s surveyed came from “small companies.” Second of all, it’s obvious that what CFO’s/finance see as important HCM issues are very different than what HR practitioners see.

Question #3: Compensation is the biggest driver for employee effectiveness? I’ve written about this before. Comp drives employee recruitment, but it’s engagement, opportunities and satisfaction that drive retention. I think what drives employee effectiveness are opportunities to grow. I will cave in however and say that a good incentive comp plan will also inspire certain types of workers to increase effectiveness.

Questions #4 & #5: It’s interesting that employee learning is the best way to increase employee value, but training and skills/competencies are low on the issues list. CFO’s in this survey are obviously looking at (in Q5) cost factors and not ways to drive employee value. I’m not entirely sure I want to make this next sweeping statement, but if you look at real cost vs value metrics, I bet the value in enhancing employee productivity incrementally are much greater than time spent shoring up benefit costs. Don’t take that to mean they shouldn’t work on benefit costs. I just think the CFO’s are wrongly focused.

The below image comes from CFO.com. Please click here to read more about their survey. 2

CFO.com Employee Performance Survey Results


  1. CFO Staff, September 15, 2005. “Our Assets, Ourselves,” CFO.com. Retrieved December 8, 2005 from CFO.com. [back]
  2. ibid [back]

One comment

  1. Het DD I see you are now nominated yourself, congrats.

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