Gaining Executive Approval for HCM Investments
Gaining leadership buy-in for HR tech investment is as much a game of strategy as it is storytelling.
HR leaders get to the big budget meeting with what seems like an open-and-shut case. Engagement is down, employees are leaving, and recruitment costs are skyrocketing.
After running the numbers, the team has a watertight use case for a new tool. But the message falls flat. And worse, there’s a polite pause before the CEO says, “Okay…so what?”
The problem isn’t your data — it’s in the delivery.
In this article, we outline some common roadblocks HR leaders face, how to translate HR metrics into business impact, and how to build a business case that actually gets approved.
Key Takeaways
- To win buy-in on HR investments, HR leaders need to tie their case to the company’s overall strategic objectives, such as expansion or market leadership, and prove its impact on growth, revenue, or other key drivers of success.
- Building a strong business case means translating HR metrics like retention and employee engagement into tangible business outcomes (e.g., cost savings).
- Hard numbers alone won’t secure buy-in — you also need a clear narrative, the right message for different stakeholders, and cross-functional support to make the case stick.
Why Executives Push Back on HR Investments
Your HR tech stack is the nerve center for how your business operates day-to-day, shaping everything from workforce planning and hiring to your employee experience. The trouble is, HR and business leaders rarely view this investment through the same lens.
For HR leaders, a new software investment could be the difference between a disengaged workforce and one that performs at its peak. An employee engagement platform isn’t just a place for disgruntled employees to vent in the monthly survey. It’s also a mechanism for retaining top talent, enabling frontline managers, and ensuring high performance.
Unfortunately, that strategic value often gets lost in translation with executives. For them, it’s an operational cost — a line item that has more to do with the IT department than the bottom line.
Case in point, 56% of HR teams aren’t confident that they’re getting the most value out of their HR tech, while 55% of HR leaders report that their current stack doesn’t meet evolving business needs.
And that’s exactly why it can be hard to make the case for a new platform — the perceived gap between dollar spend and measurable return on investment.
How Different Leaders Evaluate ROI
In a business environment where competing investments fight for their share of a limited budget, being unclear about the ROI of your tech stack means HR investments risk getting sidelined in favor of initiatives with more obvious returns.
To change that dynamic, you need to view any HR software investment through the same lens as your C-suite, in terms of revenue, risk, growth, and financial performance.
The tricky part is that different functional leaders weigh those factors from different perspectives, with different risk tolerances, budget pressures, and metrics driving their decisions.
"For me, it starts with building trust by listening, not pitching,” said Ciara Lakhani, Chief People and Culture Officer at Element Logic. “HR earns influence by showing we understand the business first. So, when I come back with a proposal, I'm not selling 'an HR thing'. I'm connecting to how [senior leaders] already think about value."
But what does that look like in practice? The following table shows how each type of leader might handle an HR software decision based on their key concerns and metrics, as well as the questions they’re most likely to ask.
|
Leader |
Key Concerns |
Key Metrics | Most Likely to Ask |
|
CEO |
Competitive positioning and growth
|
|
How will this help us hit revenue or growth targets? |
|
CFO |
ROI and cost optimization |
|
What is the bottom-line impact of this investment? |
| COO | Efficiency and operational scalability |
|
Will this help us operate more efficiently as we scale? |
Translating HR Metrics into Business Impact
When every executive has an eagle eye trained on the bottom line and business performance, your pitch for HR investment has to show how it aligns with broader strategic objectives.
To that end, you need to have a clear understanding of your organization’s near- and long-term goals. In other words, the things everyone in the company is pulling towards. That might be product category leadership, market or product expansion, or going public. This means asking:
- What is our organization working towards in the next 12 to 18 months?
- What are our long-term strategic goals?
- How are we measuring progress towards these goals?
- What are our biggest risks and challenges?
- How might a new HR investment support these goals
When you have a good grasp of the strategic landscape, you can frame your proposed investment with data that supports it. Use data from your HRIS platform (e.g., engagement, performance, sentiment, etc.) as tangible proof of how the investment can support the business.
If, for example, your organization is planning to launch in a key new market next year, don’t just say that sales team turnover is high at 25% in a global team of 100. Show the cost of rehiring and training 25 new employees at 1.5x the salary compared to the savings from a targeted retention plan.
“I always look at it through a CFO's lens: what can we stop doing if we take this on?” Lakhani said. “I'll make it concrete: three systems consolidated into one, hours of manual reporting automated, and the equivalent of real money freed up. That's where HR proves it's not just about people systems; it's about business performance.”
“For example, I've had teams measure how much time they spend to calculate turnover in Excel, multiply that by what their salary would be on an hourly basis, and compare it to the cost for HR Analytics reporting tools."
Learn More: HCM Selection Simpified: A How-To Guide
Building a Business Case that Sticks
After you’ve assembled your data, it’s time to package it into something your senior leaders can not only use, but that also compels them to act. This is the part where you need to answer the question, “Why now?”
This relies on building a data-led story that takes your senior leaders on a journey from HR metrics to demonstrable business impact.
1. Package the Proof into a Clear Story
Research has consistently shown that humans don’t connect to data; they connect to stories.
Cherry-pick the strongest stories from your data that show a clear throughline to business impact. Then show the opportunity of acting or the stakes of not acting.
To see this in action, let’s go back to our sales turnover example:
- Instead of saying sales turnover is 25% in a team of 100, show the cost. If your average market salary for sales is $100,000, replacing those employees could cost $3.75 million.
- Quantify the domino effect by connecting limited market penetration with a fragmented go-to-market strategy and missed revenue targets.
- Position your solution alongside those risks with a detailed rollout plan that outlines costs, timelines, expected ROI, metrics of success, and time-to-value.
"Data without a story is just noise,” Lahkhani said. “Listen to what the CEO and other leaders talk about as the most important things to the business, and think about how the HR action connects. The goal is always the same: here's what's happening with people, here's why it matters to the business, and here's the decision in front of us.”
Lakhani points to Element Logic’s bonus program as an example. Rather than just presenting the program design, her team analyzed performance ratings alongside turnover data to show both the likely cost and retention implications.
“You're not just sharing ratings or turnover stats, you're quantifying both financial risk and business opportunity,” she said.
2. Tailor Your Message According to the Audience
Getting your message to land is all about delivering the right information to the right person. A few high-level slides delivered in a big meeting will definitely get the point across, but creating individualized narratives for different leaders may help influence decision-making.
Speak in their language, framing your ask through the lens of their metrics and key concerns. For example, providing financial breakdowns or a costings spreadsheet could help sway a risk-averse CFO. For detail-oriented COOs or CEOs, generate custom reports in your HCM platform or create a data dashboard.
Remember, when tailoring your message to different executives or functional leaders, frame your messaging around the following questions:
- What is the key takeaway this leader needs to walk away with?
- What outcome and metrics match their current biggest priorities?
- What additional information or data could support their decision-making?
3. Gather Internal Allies to Support Your Case
Gaining executive buy-in for a new software investment rarely happens in a vacuum. Rallying cross-functional support with internal stakeholders in finance, IT, and operations, alongside other departments, can help contextualize your case in everyday business reality.
This helps reposition and strengthen the “HR case” as a true business case, especially if it’s a platform that benefits multiple teams. A new HCM system might help centralize HR data, for example, but it can also help CFOs forecast labor costs and manage payroll processes.
4. Anticipate and Address Objections Up Front
After your data and narratives are ready, assess them through the lenses of those with decision-making power to pre-empt any questions:
- Are there any assumptions in your data that might be challenged?
- What questions or objections are stakeholders most likely to raise?
- Where might they see hidden risks or costs?
If your CFO, for instance, is likely to have questions about implementation costs, show them a full breakdown of the upfront spend. If your COO has concerns about potential tech bloat and tooling overlap, demonstrate how the proposed solution will consolidate your stack.
Transforming People Metrics into Business Outcomes
Gaining buy-in for HR investment is less about justifying what HR needs and more about what the business needs. When you anchor your case in your organization’s strategic objectives and map HR metrics to business outcomes, executives can weigh the investment accurately and make an informed decision.
With centralized data, cross-functional visibility, and dynamic reporting, Paylocity equips HR teams with the tools they need to connect HR data with business outcomes, allowing them to build a case for the next investment.
Ready to turn your HR data into business-ready insights? Request a demo and see how Paylocity helps you build a case leadership can’t ignore.
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