HR and Finance may sit in the same meetings, but they’re often speaking completely different languages.
HR thinks in terms of experience, engagement, capability, and culture. Finance thinks in terms of predictability, forecasting, burn rate, and budgets.
Both sides are accountable for growing and protecting the company’s bottom line. But when their assumptions, data, and definitions don’t align, planning slows down.
In this episode of the People Proud podcast from HiBob, we brought both worlds into the same conversation and explored what it actually takes for HR and Finance to plan as one team.
In the conversation, we hear from:
- Limor Raz, VP of people foundations and experience at HiBob
- Joe Garafalo, general manager of HiBob’s FP&A product line
- Plus your hosts, Tali Sachs and Dr. Ken Matos
The discussion moved beyond vocabulary differences into the structural realities of workforce planning, KPIs, forecasting, org design, and AI-driven change. Organizations move faster and make better decisions when they build people strategy and financial strategy together.
As Tali put it, “It’s time to stop treating people and budgets like separate conversations.”
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Let’s talk about the words that create friction
Certain terms can instantly change the temperature in a room.
When terms like “EBITDA,” “overhead,” “burn rate,” “bonus,” “equity refresh,” or “total rewards” come up, they can introduce tension before the real conversation ever begins.
For Limor, financial acronyms used to feel like a wall.
Early in her career, when “EBITDA” entered the conversation, she felt “very anxious.” Her background was in design, and she saw herself as “the human part … and not numbers and analysis.”
Over time, her relationship with that language changed. “Today I feel proud that I can really translate to people,” she said, connecting financial realities to the people decisions that shape them.
Joe experienced the tension as a Finance professional. “Total rewards” made sense to him as a talent strategy, but it made forecasting feel like trying to predict the weather.
He remembers joining Palantir and discovering perks like on-site haircuts, laundry service, free lunches, and gym memberships. These were incredible employee benefits, but terrifying for planning. “How the heck do I forecast this?” he asked. “How do I know which team members are gonna use their laundry service every single day versus which are never going to use it?”
What becomes clear is that HR and Finance often navigate the same uncertainty—from different perspectives.
Bridging the HR–Finance gap
Collaboration rarely breaks down because of intent. It breaks down because of assumptions.
“Two words that kind of strike a nerve are both ‘HR’ and ‘Finance,’” Joe said. Each comes with loaded connotations. HR can feel like trouble. Finance can feel like a hard no.
But he reframed both functions clearly. “What a really good HR and FP&A team actually does,” he said, is act as “a customer service org to the rest of the business.”
Both teams exist to enable the business—and each other.
When HR and Finance work in parallel instead of interdependently, gaps appear quickly.
Limor describes what this disconnect looks like on the ground: QBRs where HR and Finance teams show up with their own dashboards, but no shared narrative.
“Each came with their own dashboards and data points,” she said, “and they didn’t speak to one another. Not at all.”
Her fix is practical. Focus on shared KPI definitions, map data sources, and agree on how cost accounting connects to workforce reality. Because “The human capital is the asset,” she said.
Once HR and Finance agree on the language, the next challenge is timing.
Build alignment in the “messy middle”
Joe frames this challenge through something Finance teams already understand well: revenue planning.
When a business sets a revenue target, it doesn’t simply declare a number and hope it lands. Pipeline has to be generated, often by Marketing or outbound teams. Sales conversations warm up the pipeline and move through defined stages before any revenue can be realized. No one expects to “just hit a hundred million next quarter” without accounting for that journey, Joe said.
Workforce planning follows the same logic. “What is the time that it takes to fill an open requisition?” he asked. And once someone starts, “how long does it take for them to actually ramp up?” When those timelines aren’t built into the plan, headcount projections look solid on paper but break down in execution.
This is where HR and Finance can move from parallel planning to shared accountability. Real alignment happens when HR brings clarity to hiring and onboarding timelines, and when Finance incorporates them into the constraints that underpin workforce planning.
Alignment in execution is powerful. But the best teams embed long-term alignment into their design.
Org design is where people and budget strategy come together
Org design is a strategic decision about how companies create and sustain value.
As companies move from hypergrowth to scale, structural choices begin to carry long-term weight. For example, location strategy, team composition (e.g., senior/junior ratios), and manager spans all shape how work gets done—and how much that work costs.
A team built with one manager for every three employees operates differently from one built with one manager for every ten. Those ratios influence development, performance, accountability, and leadership leverage. They also shape overhead and long-term spend, Limor said.
When HR and Finance approach org design together, they define capability, cost structure, and the organization’s ability to scale responsibly.
The AI twist: Planning gets reinvented (together)
The next challenge extends beyond alignment today.
As more companies embed AI across functions, they’re redefining what planning means and how it gets done.
Organizations are moving toward hybrid workforces composed of humans and AI agents. That shift introduces planning questions teams have never had to answer before.
“It’s a new field,” she said. “No one did it before, and we need to really invent it together.”
In this environment, planning cannot happen in silos. HR and Finance must design new forecasting models together that account for evolving roles, blended teams, and the dynamic mix of human and automated work.
The future of planning will not be defined by headcount alone. It will be defined by how intentionally organizations integrate people, capital, and technology.
“We’re on the brink of a brand new era where everything needs to be built from scratch,” Tali said. It’s “a great opportunity to be creative, to bridge gaps, destroy gaps, and just come together.”
Making the HR and Finance partnership work
A strong HR–Finance partnership is achievable and practical.
Joe’s advice for Finance leaders is to get out from behind the spreadsheet. “The spreadsheet should be like the end-of-the-day focus,” he said. Real partnership happens when Finance starts conversations with HR early—before decisions are finalized and forecasts are locked.
Limor reinforces the same principle from the HR perspective. Communication, transparency, and co-design are fundamental to building solid partnership. When HR and Finance come together early—aligning on philosophy, cost, progression, and retention ROI—leaders make informed decisions. Without that alignment, surprises always show up downstream.
The line between HR and Finance may be organizational, but the responsibility they share is strategic. As technology reshapes work and expectations shift, the strongest companies won’t choose between people and numbers. They’ll design systems where both move together—intentionally, transparently, and with long-term impact in mind.
Key takeaways: HR and Finance alignment for workforce planning and growth
- Alignment starts with shared definitions. HR and Finance must agree on KPI definitions, data sources, and how cost accounting connects to workforce reality before strategic decisions are made.
- Workforce planning requires timeline discipline. Time-to-fill and time-to-ramp shape revenue outcomes just as pipeline stages shape sales forecasts. Strong planning accounts for the full people journey.
- Org design connects people strategy to financial strategy. Manager spans, seniority mix, team composition, and location strategy directly influence capability, overhead, and long-term scalability.
- Early collaboration prevents downstream surprises. When HR and Finance align early on philosophy, cost, progression, and retention ROI, leaders make clearer, more durable decisions.
- AI-driven organizations require new planning models. As hybrid workforces blend human talent and digital agents, HR and Finance must redesign forecasting and headcount models together.
- HR and Finance partnership is a competitive advantage. Organizations that integrate people strategy and financial strategy scale more intentionally, allocate capital more effectively, and adapt faster to change.
