Donald H Taylor

This page contains a growing list of reports, presentations, books on Human Capital Management and Talent Management.
 

Industry Analysts

Talent Management-What is it? Why now?, Josh Bersin, Bersin & Associates  

Blog of Jason Corsello, Yankee Group

Blog of Jim Holincheck, Gartner

Magazines

Workforce Management Magazine

People Management

Books

The ROI of Human Capital, Jac Fitz-Enz, American Management Association, May, 2000
Founder of the Saratoga Institute, and HR metrics veteran Fitz-Enz proposes the Composite Human Capital Scoreboard, and demonstrates how to assign value to human activity within an organisation of any size.

The War for Talent, Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones, and Beth Axelrod, Harvard Business School Press, 2001
Updated version of 1997 original study. The thesis: better HR processes do not distinguish high-performing companies from lesser ones. What does? A wide-spread belief among organisational leaders that talent matters and needs to be developed. On average, companies that did a better job of attracting, developing, and retaining highly talented managers earned 22 percentage points higher return to shareholders.

The Human Value of the Enterprise, Andrew Mayo, Nicholas Brealey, 2001
Introduces Mayo’s Human Capital Monitor. Key concept: Mayo recommends monitoring the Human Asset Worth of every individual in the organisation. The Human Capital Monitor explicitly includes factors influencing people’s motivation and commitment.

Research Reports

Human Capital and Performance: A Literature Review, Guest, D.E., Michie, J, Conway, N & Sheehan, M, 2003
Excellent review of the literature behind Human Capital thinking and links between HCM and performance.

The European Human Capital Index, Peer Ederer, Lisbon Council, Nov 2006
For summary, see here.

Measures of workforce capability for future performance, Volume 1: Identifying the measures that matter most. (Executive Summary), Prof. William Scott-Jackson, Chartered Management Institute, July 2006

Key trends in human capital, Richard Phelps, Saratoga (part of PwC), June 2006

Talent Management in the 21st Century: Attracting, Retaining and Engaging Employees of Choice, Sandra O’Neal, Julie Gebauer, Towers Perrin, March 2006

Accounting Measures of Human Capital

Putting the Human Asset Element of the Enterprise on the Company Balance Sheet, Dr Jim Otter, University of South Africa

Organisational Measures of Human Capital

Watson Wyatt’s Human Capital Index (HCI)
Running since 1999, and now global in reach, the HCI shows how organisations focusing on key processes can improve returns to shareholders. The six areas they highlight are:

• Clear Rewards and Accountability
• Excellence in Recruitment and Retention
• A Collegial, Flexible Workplace
• Communications Integrity
• Focused HR Technology
• Prudent Use of Resources

Hewitt Associates’ Talent Quotient (TQ)
2006 study into 1,000 large companies and 20 million employees in the US. The crucial finding: the flow of pivotal employees affects the bottom line. ‘Pivotal employees’ are those in the top quartile of their peers in pay progression. Their flow into and out of an organization is a strong predictor of changes in Cash Flow Return on Investment and shareholder value.

Hewitt’s Mark C. Ubelhart explains TQ in detail in this article.

Thinkers

Theodore Schultz: agricultural economist at University of Chicago widely credited with popularising the term ‘Human Capital’ following his 1961 article Investment in Human Capital in the American Economic Review. He used the term following an interview with an elderly, poor couple on an isolated farm. Asking them why they seemed so contented, they replied that they had worked hard and sent their children to college, and these children would support them in the future - leading Schultz to explore further the concept of investment in skills and knowledge.

Schultz was a generous, intelligent man and by all accounts a great teacher - this will tell you a great deal about his life.

Gary Becker: student and colleague of Schultz’s at Chicago (and, like him, a Nobel laureate), explored Human Capital with a particular view to education as an investment, and the key cost of that investment being the learner’s time.