Preface

Somewhere in nearly every organization’s annual report, C-level executives remark that employees are “the most important asset” in the organization. Until recently, that’s where notice of this incredibly valuable asset stopped. The executives believed that accurate measurement of the management of this asset was impossible. Now most know it is possible, but find that their organizations are not adequately equipped to measure the performance of the department with the greatest responsibility for that asset: Human Resources. Making informed decisions regarding critical Human Capital-related issues like the acquisition, development, and deployment of employees is of paramount importance to the ongoing success of any organization.

Many areas of executive decision making are indeed supported by sophisticated, time-tested tools and methodologies. Finance and marketing are now considered to be hard core sciences. The systems in place make use of a wide variety of metrics gathered internally and externally on inputs, processes, and outputs relevant to the business of the organization. The framework underlying these systems is relevant to almost every part of the organization. So why then is the one asset base of any organization without which it cannot exist—its employees—allowed to escape this measured scrutiny?

What is needed is an approach that integrates the measurement of Human Capital assets (and not just the cost of their acquisition) into the decision support models used ...

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