Metrics, visuals, and working with finance colleagues

Covering Assessment Criterion 3.3 of FREE03 – People Professionals and Finance, this video addresses the practical communication challenges that arise when people professionals present financial information to different audiences. It focuses on three distinct but interconnected areas: the selection and presentation of quantitative measures, the use of visual formats to convey financial data, and the collaborative dynamics between people and finance functions. Specific metrics discussed include cost per hire, time to competence, training return on investment, absence rates, and employee engagement scores, with attention given to how different audiences — finance colleagues versus operational leaders — may prioritise different indicators.

The video gives substantial attention to visual communication, examining how bar charts, line graphs, pie charts, and tables each serve different analytical purposes when presenting financial proposals. Design principles covering simplicity, clarity, accuracy, and accessibility are addressed, including the distortion risk associated with techniques such as truncated axes. The discussion of metrics goes beyond selection to cover the quality of what is measured, contrasting outputs such as training hours delivered with outcomes such as competence improvements, and making a case for focusing on a limited number of meaningful indicators rather than a broad set that dilutes the core message.

The third area covered concerns the working relationship between people professionals and finance colleagues, including the practical contributions finance professionals can make during the development of proposals — validating calculations, surfacing overlooked financial implications, and advising on framing that resonates with senior decision-makers. The video also covers the pre-agreement of success measures before implementation, with specific guidance on constructing measures that are time-bound and tied to concrete targets, using the example of reducing time-to-hire from forty-five days to thirty-five days as an illustration of the level of specificity that distinguishes a credible measure from a vague aspiration.