In tough economic times, budgets shrink and many senior leaders will push back on financial approval requests that lack a clearly defined business case. CEOs, board directors, CFOs always use financial payback tools like NPV, IRR, ROI to determine payback of investment in tangible assets like building, plant, inventory and raw material; but when it comes to investment in workforce, generally no such metric is used and this is the reason that HR leaders face hurdle in funds approval as compared to their peers in marketing, finance, sales or operations.
