Human capital matters and should be cared for

I had the good fortune to listen to an ensemble of illustrious, knowledgeable and practical speakers from different parts of the world at the Summit on Globalization of Human Capital held in Taipei, Taiwan last Sept 24 to 26. Among them are keynote speakers USA’s Dr/Prof. Dave Ulrich and Switzerland’s David Prince and concurrent session speakers: India’s Dr. T.V. Rao, Singapore/USA’s Dr/Prof. Richard Avrey, Singapore/Philippines’ Roger Collantes, Japan’s Dr. Koko Nakahara and Toyohiro Matsuda, Australia’s Martin Nally, Hong-kong’s Peter Yip, and a number of prominent Taiwanese CEOs and HR executives. Some of the interesting topics are green work environment and green HR management (not the kind of green you are thinking of right now); organizational changes; leadership challenges; recruiting, retaining and utilizing talents; building the dream team for creativity and high performance; leveraging sales competencies to drive business growth and many others. The sessions were in English and Taiwanese with simultaneous interpretation for both languages.

The equally international mix of participants was not only very active and participative; they also stayed up to the dying minutes of the conference. Of course, the books, iPhones and iPads raffled off at the end of the conference were great attractions, too. I won a book (The Why of Work by Dave & Wendy Ulrich) for asking the first question during his session.

The first thing I would like to share with you is the presentation by Dr/Prof. Ulrich, THE eminent HR guru. Instead of HR, he refers to human capital as talent. He said that talent matters because they create value such as delivery of organization goals, gain customer commitment and investor confidence and build good reputation in the community. His research findings show that for every 10percent increase in value of talent/employees (through a mix of HR management and development programs), there is a resulting 4percent increase in customer satisfaction and eventually 2 percent gain for investors. This translates to:

• Over a 10-year period (1998 to 2008) “best companies to work for” have a 6.8 percent stock appreciation vs. 1 percent for the average firm.

• Over a 7-year period, the most admired firms in Fortune’s list of admired companies had double the market returns of competitors.

• 61 hospitals in the UK had a 7- percent decline in death rate of patients when they invested in the well-being of their staff (Good talent saves life).

• Only 13 percent of disengaged (unmotivated) employees would recommend their company’s products or services, compared with 78 percent of engaged (motivated) employees.

• Disengaged employees are ten times more likely to say they will leave their company within a year.

Ulrich concludes that managing talent well makes money.

The implications and accountability for talent management are three-fold. All corporate leaders need to hone their leadership competency by asking these questions:

• Do I appreciate how important talent is?

• Do I spend time on managing talent?

• Do I help assess competencies required for the future of our organization?

• Do I help employees feel committed and engaged to the work?

• Do I help employees find meaning from the work they do?

It is incumbent upon organizations to be positive about these:

• Do we have a systematic talent management process to assess key positions, assess key people and to match people and position?

• Do we have integrated talent management practices on staffing, training, development, rewards and communication?

Finally the Human Resource/Capital professionals are accountable for:

• Are we architects of talent management processes for C-Suite executives (succession), top team (preparation), all employees (career management) and for high potentials?

• Do we have the skills required to deliver talent management?

Don’t go around blaming your talents or human resources or human capital if your business is not doing well. Talent matters when your organization, corporate leaders and the HR professionals care about them and take care of their needs. Let’s have more next column. –MOJE RAMOS-AQUINO, FPM, Manila Times

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