The majority of HR directors believe that organisations should have a ‘chief human capital officer’ working alongside the board, according to new research.
A survey of 50 senior delegates at a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers/Saratoga conference showed that 79% were in favour of creating the new role.
It is envisaged that the role of a chief human capital officer would be to take responsibility for implementing systems that “identify the data with which to deliver human capital profiles that support delivery of business strategy”.
Almost two-thirds (65%) of those surveyed believed the proposed chief human capital officer role should be closely aligned with that of the HR director and 10% thought it should be aligned with the chief executive.
Almost all respondents (98%) agreed their businesses should be able to capture, measure and manage people data and that human capital metrics already exist to do this.
Richard Phelps, partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said: “Many organisations don’t yet realise that generic measurements exist today which can be used to measure the business impact of human capital in the same way as companies measure every other asset.”
