The One Page Your CFO Will Actually Read
Your CFO compares a training request with every other request on the table. HR already holds most of the numbers that comparison needs.
A lot of training requests go in as a vendor quote and a stack of happy evaluation forms, and they come back marked "not this year." Write yours the way your CFO reads every other request, with what the problem costs today, what you plan to do about it, and how you'll know it worked, and keep it short enough to fit on one page. The case can be easier to make for a program your own HR team runs year after year than for another outside workshop. On November 17 and 18, I'm hosting a free, live masterclass where you start building that business case for your own organization, and the details are at the end.
What the CFO asks in the budget meeting
Imagine you're the head of HR at an organization of about 800 employees, and you've asked for money to train this year's new managers. The CFO asks a fair question: what did we get for the training we paid for last year? You have the attendance list and the evaluation forms, and people liked the workshop. The CFO is comparing your request with a new hire who will bring in revenue or donations, and with a software upgrade that will save the operations team hours every week. Both of those requests show what the organization gets back. Yours doesn't, so the CFO pushes it to next year.
I've seen that question from both sides
I've asked what last year's training got us, and I've had to answer that question myself. Asking is a lot more comfortable.
Finance people aren't against developing people. Their job is to weigh every request against the others on the table, and a list of workshops and attendance rates gives them nothing to weigh.
You already have most of the numbers
You know how many people left last year, and how many of them you wish had stayed. You probably know roughly what it costs to replace a manager or an engineer in your organization: the recruiting fees, the months the seat sits empty, the hours your managers spend interviewing, and the time a new hire needs to get up to speed. If your exit interviews keep naming the same few managers, you can work out what turnover on those managers' teams has cost the organization.
Your business case answers four questions in plain language. What does the problem cost us today? What will we do about it? What will that cost? What will we measure, and when will we know whether it worked? Keep it to one page. Nobody in that meeting wants to read twelve, and cutting it down forces you to decide what matters most.
If you include research, pick a study from a finance journal, because CFOs tend to trust their own field. Alex Edmans, a finance professor now at London Business School, looked at the companies on the "100 Best Companies to Work For in America" list from 1984 to 2009. A portfolio of their stocks returned 3.5% a year more than standard risk models predicted. The study, published in the Journal of Financial Economics, is about how employees experience their workplace rather than about training, so use it to show why the problem matters, and let your own numbers carry the case. At a nonprofit, your retention numbers will matter more to the board than any stock return.
Why a program your own team runs is easier to defend
A workshop you buy once leaves very little behind. The next group of new managers never gets it, so the following year there's nothing to show the CFO except another invoice.
With a program your HR team runs year after year, more of your managers go through it each year, and your HR people get better at bringing it into team meetings, onboarding, and one-on-ones. After three or four years, you can show your CFO how many managers went through the program and what happened to turnover on their teams.
Running the program in-house doesn't always cost less than buying workshops, and in the masterclass you check that against your own numbers. Save your seat here.
Join us on November 17 and 18
Your In-House Advantage is a free, live masterclass for internal HR, L&D, and OD leaders at organizations of 250 to 5,000 or more employees. It's two 90-minute sessions, run as a working conversation. In the first, we look at the patterns organizations tend to fall into with new managers, what those patterns cost, and how to get out of them. In the second, you start building a solution that fits your organization, working from your own desk while we go through it together. You'll leave with a one-page business case you can put in front of your CFO.
The sessions run Tuesday, November 17, and Wednesday, November 18, at 1:00 pm ET (10:00 am PT). They're live only, with no replay, and seats are limited. Nothing is sold in session one. In the last few minutes of session two, I'll explain how Symphony 100 works with organizations that want help.
Save my seat for November 17 and 18
Your next budget meeting is probably already on someone's calendar. I'd like you to walk into it with the numbers your CFO is going to ask for.
Frank November is the Founder & CEO of Symphony 100 and has been an Everything DiSC® Certified Practitioner since 2014. Symphony 100 Ltd. and Symphony 100 North America LLC are each independent, authorized partners of Everything DiSC® and The Five Behaviors®, which are registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., or its affiliated companies.
