|
WHITE PAPER
10 Principles for Building an
Effective Human Capital Plan
MARCH 2010
By Tim Weyland
National Director Organization and Talent Development
1WHITE PAPER: 10 PRINCIPLES FOR BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
Almost every business leader will say that people 1. Human capital issues can have a big What is Human Capital? are their most important asset, but few do anything impact on businessabout it. If you are going to take this principle seri-Your company's competences, Recognize how significantly human capital issues ously then human capital planning is crucial. can affect your business. Without acceptance of its knowledge and personality The Human Capital Plan is an important tool that importance in your organization's framework, all attributes embodied in the organizations use to drive focused actions that can plans regarding your workforce will fall flat or at least ability to perform labor so as ensure goal achievement and business success. It be deprioritized. Realizing how your human capital to produce economic value. allows organizations to assess, plan for, and respond decisions affect your bottom line is an important step proactively to its human capital challenges and before drafting the plan.needs. It helps shape the organization by building a plan to develop the workforce and practices needed Examples of Human Capital Issues to meet an organization's vision, mission, and goals. Impacting Business Human capital challenges such as having capable One company we work with built a performance leaders, building workforce skills, driving high per- management process that allowed them to achieve formance, and ensuring retention of top talent can be their goals more quickly. It was a pre-revenue start-up addressed through effective human capital planning. business. This meant they were able to gain an advan-The Human Capital (HC) Plan will establish a frame- tage by being first to market and also accelerate their work of policies, practices, and actions that guide revenue generation. your efforts in meeting these workforce needs. Another client company under 50 employees was Here are 10 principles to follow in order to build an growing rapidly in size and was a government effective human capital plan for your organization: contractor. However, the company did not know it needed to have an affirmative action plan if it wanted to go after larger government contracts in the future. Putting that in place allowed them to continue to build their government business. This was a human capital initiative they had to implement before con-tinuing to grow the business.
2WHITE PAPER: 10 PRINCIPLES FOR BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
2. Tie human capital plans to Case Study: Leadership Skills Training Human capital matters business outcomes Brings Good Resultsare investments with Human capital matters must not be viewed as tied One of TriNet's clients had project managers onsite expected returns. to a cost center, but as investments with some working in teams to serve customers. Because the return expected. project managers were not as effective as neces-Human capital matters sary in regards to managing their people, TriNet From a human capital point of view, you can do one are investments with worked with them to develop leadership skills of two things: via online learning and facilitated development expected returns. . Help increase revenue per employee, or activities with the PM team. The result was an im-. Optimize or minimize the cost per employee provement in their leadership and a correlating im-provement in customer service. The leaders were If you go for the first option, then take into account more productive and completed more work due to all the things that you offer which are unique to better planning and resource management. your organization. Offering differentiated prod-ucts enables you to dominate a market. And those Case Study: Sears Improves Customer products or services cannot be offered without the Experience with Trainingtremendous talents of your workers. A 1998 Harvard Business Case on Sears showed You have to be careful about the second option that the company was able to improve the capa-though. With minimizing, you do not want to bring bility of its customer-facing employees and thus the cost per employee so low that you then face improve the overall customer exper... [download for more]
|
