I didn’t like maths at school – in fact, I refused to attend class until someone could tell me why I needed to know quadratic equations.

First year Chemistry at University answered that.

I had a lot of catching up to do.

Now, I’m always fascinated when I find out that people can’t tell me what the important numbers are for their business.

I was fortunate to have several CEO’s and senior executives demonstrate why knowing the numbers that make up the key metrics of your organisation is so critical. These numbers typically relate to the standard balanced scorecard – people/safety, customers, financial and operations.

My lack of natural talents with numbers wasn’t an excuse, nor did being in HR get me off the hook, so I intentionally set out to learn as much as I could. I was expected to know key HR metrics (e.g. employee turnover, utilisation, headcount, FTE) and how they impacted business revenue, labour costs and return on investment. Plus I needed to have a working knowledge of key customer, financial and operational metrics and what levers could be pulled to correct or enhance business performance.

I hadn’t realised how much I’d learnt being a part of global multinationals for the last 14 years, until I recently started having conversations about financial metrics in my leadership coaching sessions.

I wondered if I was unusual from an HR perspective in that I talk (passionately) about financial measures and how to leverage them (or stop leakage). Then I realised that to get anything done in HR, you must be able to talk the language of the organisation – which is financial. Even not-for-profits need to understand their financial numbers to ensure their ongoing sustainability (no excuses).

Working with senior leaders in the last few years, I understand that not all organisations share financial information with their teams, and I wonder why. Helping managers and leaders understand key metrics builds trust, context and belonging. People need to know how they are contributing and often have fabulous ideas for solving problems or creating new product or service offerings.

I’m naturally a systems thinker. I remain grateful for those CEO’s, CFO’s and operational leads who readily shared information and generously answered all my random questions to fill the financial (and other metrics) gaps, which has enabled me to better serve as an HR practitioner and coach.

Is there someone in your team you could help build their financial and business metrics literacy?