Jamie Durling
Vice President of Human Resources, Luxury Goods & Retail
Luxury Goods & Retail (various organizations)
Episode 250
Beyond HR Costs: How to Quantify People's Impact on Revenue and Profit
Current chapter: Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built By PeopleMarch 28, 2025 · 10:06
Thesis
“HR must transcend traditional people-centric views to become a strategic business facilitator, quantifying its impact on financial outcomes and proactively partnering with finance to drive top and bottom-line results.”
Show notes
"HR is never just about people. It's about how people drive business — a mix of strategy, psychology, finance, and sometimes crisis management, with a little talk therapy thrown in." That line from Jamie Durling explains why he's spent a career inside luxury retail and media making the CFO his closest strategic partner.
Jamie has built his practice around a straightforward but underused discipline: quantifying HR's impact in financial terms. That means moving conversations away from engagement scores and PTO policies and toward revenue contribution, P&L impact, and bottom-line profitability. His most concrete example: implementing performance-based scheduling algorithms that identified top performers and optimized their deployment — reducing personnel costs while simultaneously lifting revenue. It's the kind of initiative that earns HR a strategic seat at the table because it speaks the only language every C-suite understands: money.
His work spans international post-acquisition integrations, where he's learned that cultural intelligence matters as much as employment law. Understanding how people receive information, how they process change, and how local culture shapes expectations isn't a soft consideration — it's the variable that determines whether a merger actually integrates or just merges on paper. His parting advice to HR professionals: spend more time with the business, in the field, sitting with operators — because credibility isn't built in HR meetings.
What you'll learn:
- How to connect HR initiatives directly to revenue, P&L, and profitability — in language finance respects
- Why making the CFO your "BFS" is the most underrated HR career strategy
- The dual-lens decision framework: how does this initiative develop our people AND impact the bottom line?
- How performance-based scheduling algorithms drive both cost savings and revenue growth
- What global M&A integrations reveal about cultural intelligence in HR leadership
- Why field time with the business builds more HR credibility than any boardroom presentation
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What you'll take away
- 1Quantify HR's impact: Connect HR strategies directly to revenue, P&L, and profitability, moving beyond discussions solely focused on costs and PTO.
- 2Proactively partner with finance: Cultivate a strong relationship with the CFO (making them your 'BFS') to speak the language of business and gain executive influence.
- 3Adopt a dual-lens decision-making framework: Evaluate HR initiatives by asking how they drive employee engagement/development and how they impact the bottom line.
- 4Implement data-driven scheduling: Utilize performance-based productivity algorithms to optimize personnel costs and strategically deploy high-performing employees to boost revenue.
- 5Master cultural nuances in global HR: Recognize and adapt to differences in employment law, local culture, communication, and change management during international M&A integrations.
What most organizations get wrong
- •HR's role extends beyond 'people' to encompass how people drive business, integrating strategy, psychology, finance, and crisis management, challenging a purely soft-skills perception.
- •Achieving a true 'seat at the table' for HR is less about advocacy for employees alone and more about demonstrating financial acumen and forging a strategic partnership with the CFO.
- •HR can be a direct driver of profitability, as shown by implementing performance-based scheduling, which counters the traditional view of HR primarily as a cost center.
In Jamie's words
“HR is never just about people. It's about how people drive business. It's a mix of strategy, psychology, finance, and sometimes even crisis management with a little bit of talk therapy thrown in.”
Defines HR beyond a soft skill, positioning it as a multidisciplinary business driver.
“I believe strongly that HR executives, chief HR officers need to make the CFO their BFS.”
Highlights the critical importance of a strategic partnership with finance for HR influence.
“How is what we are doing and how is what I'm going to do driving the overall engagement and development of the employee population and prospering the employee? And then conversely, how is it actually impacting the bottom line?”
Provides a dual-lens framework for balancing people-centric and financial decisions.
“Implementing performance-based productivity-driven schedule management. Allowed us to not only save on personnel costs and costs of employees... but it also allowed us to identify those individuals who are driving the highest performance.”
Gives a concrete example of HR directly impacting profitability through strategic operational changes.
“Ultimately, at the end of the day, international experience for me has done a couple of things. Number one, it's really about understanding the differences of culture.”
Emphasizes the importance of cultural understanding in global HR, especially during M&A.
“The more time you spend with the business, sitting with the business as opposed to with HR and being in the field... the more that you will not only develop credibility, but you will also develop a strong understanding of the overall operational aspect of the business.”
Advises HR professionals to embed themselves in the business to gain credibility and operational insight.
The problems this episode addresses
- •HR leaders struggle to gain a strategic 'seat at the table' due to an inability to speak the language of finance and quantify their impact in business terms.
- •Difficulty in balancing employee engagement and development initiatives with the organization's ultimate goal of maximizing shareholder profit.
- •The challenge of navigating diverse employment laws, local cultural nuances, and communication styles during international M&A integrations.
- •Lack of proactive, strategic partnership between HR and finance often limits HR's influence on core business decisions and profitability.
- •Traditional HR views often fail to demonstrate how people strategies directly impact top-line revenue and bottom-line profitability.
In this episode
Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built by People
HR is never just about people; it's about how people drive business
What Keeps You Engaged In HR?
Jamie has developed expertise in connecting HR initiatives to financial outcomes
Connecting HR Initiatives to Financial Outcomes
Jamie, how do HR professionals build financial acumen and develop stronger partnerships with finance teams
How to Build a Financial Bridge with the CFO
Jamie, what are some examples of how HR initiatives directly impacted organization's profitability
Examples of how HR initiatives directly impacted the organization's profitability
Jamie Miller says international experience has shaped his approach to HR leadership
How International Experience Has Shape Your HR Leadership
Jamie, what parting advice would you like to share with our community
Jamie Crone on Built by People
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
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