Dear Diary . . . HR Stories from the Edge: Tomorrow’s P&L is Written in Today’s HR Habits
Dear Diary,
Everyone loves to pretend HR lives in a separate universe: the soft side, the “culture” side, the place where paperwork goes to retire. Finance lives in the real world. Numbers. Controls. Forecasts.
Cute story. Completely false.
Because tomorrow’s P&L is written in today’s HR habits. Not in the dramatic moments, either. In the boring ones. The tiny shortcuts. The “we’ll deal with it later” decisions that feel harmless because nothing is on fire yet.
Here’s what I’ve learned after years of walking into companies right when the CFO’s eye starts twitching:
HR isn’t a department. It’s an operating system.
And when the operating system is sloppy, the business doesn’t just feel messy, it gets expensive.
The pattern usually starts innocently.
A founder hires fast because the team is drowning. No job scope, no pay logic, no consistent leveling. Just “we need someone good.” Six months later, that person is doing a different job than what they were hired for, and pay is now out of sync with reality. Repeat that a few times and you’ve built compensation creep, resentment, and leadership time spent mediating preventable chaos.
Or the classic: contractors.
A company uses 1099s as a convenience layer. No consistent vetting. No documented rationale. Contractors managed like employees because it’s easier. Until someone gets terminated, gets mad, and files a claim. Then finance learns a fun new vocabulary: back taxes, penalties, audits, legal fees, settlement leverage. The spend shows up fast. The distraction shows up faster.
And then there’s termination. The casual kind. The “let’s just end it” kind. No documentation. No process. No consistency. One complaint later, the CFO is funding a litigation defense with money that was supposed to ship product.
What kills me is how predictable it is.
When HR is built like internal controls including clear roles, consistent hiring practices, clean worker classification, documented performance management, it’s boring. Like drywall. And that’s exactly the point.
Because when it’s not boring, it’s a renovation. And finance always pays for the renovation.
Want a blunt read on where your people practices are quietly leaking margin? I run a Fixed-Price HR Foundation Audit (fast, focused, CFO-friendly). Message me “AUDIT” and I’ll send scope + price.