I am still quite often asked on what strategic Human Capital Management is about. Rather than spout on endlessly or refer you to several penned articles in our Journal (JoAHCM) I can relate to a piece of research from one of my ex-firms Towers Perrin reported recently......
'Reward and performance management programmes failing to keep pace with demands facing businesses' highlighted that there are serious gaps in terms of what performance and reward programme designs are delivering against what is actually required from retention, talent, performance and general management perspectives. Its all about incrementalism....
Strategic HCM is is ensuring that there is no gap and that incrementalism, though necessary in part, is not the main drive for organisations, i.e. having an overall system-mindset to produce value-contributing designs and practice as against value-negative outcomes. The use of a sound people philsophy together with sophisticated analytics and understanding of people management complexity are prerequisites. It is a whole layer of human capital management that is just missing as I have commented before.
Or organisations and HR functions can just ignore the strategic component and carry on in the (largely) same old way with the same old results. But I guess it keeps HR busy no matter the cost to the organisation. But what are senior management doing all day on this? It's a question I shall be asking more and more going forward......
Just one question why do we countenance such inefficiency and such diffidence with regard to people management...................
This wouldn't happen in finance, it wouldn't happen with the product/service/brand, it wouldn't happen in IT, it wouldn't happen with your real estate portfolio or intellectual property - so why is it ok to under-utilise your most critical asset in this way? It seems as though the only answer is - because you can......what does that say about management culture in general?
