Two professional bodies in the UK are aiming to foster closer collaboration between HR professionals and accountants.
The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) and the UK equivalent of HRINZ, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), have announced a major new partnership. The aim of their collaboration is to foster closer ties between the two professions that they represent: finance and HR.
“By working together much more closely, the two bodies are seeking to send a strong message to the professions they represent about the importance of HR and finance working together in any organisation,” according to a CIPD statement.
The new collaboration involves a joint programme of research, including focusing on ‘big data’, integrated business reporting, and shared services for HR and finance. Interestingly, the two professional bodies have decided to make all of the relevant training and continuous professional development (CPD) that they offer available to members of both organisations.
The first shared project that the CIMA and CIPD will embark upon, will be to research how organisations measure human capital. Both bodies share a concern that organisations do not consistently value the contribution of people, nor assess the risk of poor people management, according to the CIPD.
“While financial information is a critical and recognised measure of a company’s value, the importance of people data is not fully understood by many businesses and is therefore overlooked, often to the detriment of long-term thinking,” the release states.
“By working together, we hope to show that accurate and relevant reporting on an organisation’s people, as well as on its financials, provides real insight into the true health of the business, on which sound investment decisions can be made,” Charles Tilley, chief executive of CIMA, said.
