Writing a Reward Business Case Your CFO Will Fund
A practitioner guide to reward strategy
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Every HR leader has experienced the graveyard of unfunded initiatives. The compensation review that never got approved. The recognition platform that died in procurement. The pay equity audit that kept getting "deprioritised." In most cases, the problem wasn't the idea — it was the case made for it.
The Core Design Challenge
CFOs don't reject bad ideas. They reject unclear financial propositions. Here's how to build one they can't argue with.
SCQA — Situation, Complication, Question, Answer — is a structured narrative framework originally developed by McKinsey consultant Barbara Minto. It's the scaffolding behind every compelling boardroom presentation.
• Situation: What's true right now, without judgment. "Our voluntary turnover among mid-level analysts is 28% annualised."
• Complication: Why that's a problem. "Each leaver costs an average of £42,000 to replace, generating an annual attrition bill of £1.176m. Exit interviews show 67% cite compensation competitiveness."
How the Approach Works
• Question: The question your audience is already asking. "What's the most cost-effective intervention?"
• Answer: Your recommendation, front-loaded. "A targeted market adjustment of £212k to the bottom quartile of analysts, combined with a structured career framework, projects a £560k reduction in attrition cost — a 264% ROI with payback in under 3 months."
HR leaders often structure business cases backwards: here's the problem, here's our analysis, here's the solution, here's the cost. CFOs read the cost first and stop there. Flip it. Start with the outcome and the financial return. Then explain how you get there.
Your model needs four lines:
Governance and Implementation
• Current cost of inaction: Attrition bill, productivity loss, recruitment fees, manager time.
• Proposed investment: The pay adjustment, programme cost, implementation resource.
• Projected benefit: Modelled reduction in attrition, time-to-hire, agency spend.
• Net ROI and payback period: (Benefit − Investment) ÷ Investment × 100.
Putting It Into Practice
Be conservative on the benefit side. If you model a 50% reduction in attrition and deliver 30%, you've undermined your credibility. Model 25%, deliver 30%, and you're a hero.
Every CFO will ask it. Pre-empt it. Build a sensitivity table showing low/medium/high scenarios. Even in the low scenario (15% attrition reduction), your ROI is X%. That's not a risk — it's a range.
Your appendix can run 15 pages. Your executive summary must fit one. Five elements: the problem in one sentence, the cost of inaction in pounds, the proposed solution in one sentence, the projected ROI, and the decision requested (approve/reject, by when).
If a busy CFO reads only that page, they have everything they need to approve the investment. That's the bar.
- →Every CFO will ask it.
- →Your appendix can run 15 pages.
- →If a busy CFO reads only that page, they have everything they need to approve the investment.