Poll analysis: Human capital reporting
Angela Baron analyses the findings of a poll on human capital reporting and draws out the key messages.
One of the features of the economic downturn was the determination of many organisations to hold onto their talent often using innovative and creative resourcing strategies to do so. So for example we saw sabbaticals and part time work being offered as an alternative to redundancy and training budgets being maintained even in the face of aggressive cost cutting elsewhere.
Potentially this course of action was influenced by the better quality information on the contribution of people – or human capital – to the business and a recognition that people form a significant part of organisational value. We may at last be seeing a human capital approach to people management where people are viewed as an asset to be maximised rather that a cost to be managed. Where the payback from investment in such assets is calculated in terms of the organisation’s ability to innovate and cope with change, to identify and capitalise on opportunities and provide the kind of service and value that customers demand.
As a result we intend to look again at the kind of information organisations are collecting and communicating both internally and externally to inform stakeholders about their human assets and in particular how they are using such information to inform on their likely future performance.
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