Human Capital Analytics: Measuring and Improving Learning and Talent Impact
ISBN: 978-1-59571-187-8
Available Through Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.com
Word Association Publishers ($29.95)
Synopsis
In Gary Becker’s seminal work: Human Capital (1964), the future Nobel Laureate introduced the relationship between earnings and human capital, specifically investments in human capital. More than ever before, with the availability of data and technology facilitation, organizations are more capable today of collecting micro data on organizational performance and tie the data back to expenditures on human capital development.
Human Capital Analytics: Measuring and Improving Learning and Talent Impact introduces a practical approach that allows human capital practitioners of all stripes to efficiently measure the effectiveness of human capital processes.
The overarching process areas discussed in this work include: Managing the Deployment of Personnel; Managing Competencies and Performance; Develop and Train Employees and Motivate and Retain Employees. These four processes contain 18 sub-processes in the Human Capital Measurement Process Flow proposed in this book, and tools are recommended for each to help practitioners measure effectiveness and make improvements in order to align people processes with overall organizational goals.
In addition to proving value, of say your training budget, measurement provides the cornerstone for making improvements, “To optimize your learning investments, special attention should be paid to the discussion on measuring scrap or wasted learning, a new and evolving analytic practice,” says Frank J. Anderson, Jr., President, Defense Acquisition University. Moreover, these improvements apply to the larger talent management process, including measuring workforce competencies and then developing training programs to fill in gaps that might otherwise go unnoticed and hinder achieving performance goals.
Dr. Becker brought light to the value inherent in organizations developing their people, and 43 years later Kent Barnett and Jeffrey Berk introduce practical processes that today’s organization can use to measure people processes to continuously improve them. This timely work offers human capital practitioners the ability to easily apply measurement methods to their practice to facilitate growth – of people and of organizations – and provides a process to show efficacy so that Human Resources departments may begin to speak of their work as a value added.
About the Authors
Kent Barnett is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of KnowledgeAdvisors. He also co-founded and was the president of Productivity Point International (PPI). Kent helped grow PPI to over $100 million before it was acquired by Knowledge Universe. He has 15 years of training leadership and 7 years of corporate finance experience. Kent has an MBA from The Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.
Jeffrey Berk is the Chief Operating Officer of KnowledgeAdvisors. Jeff led the Benchmarking Group at Arthur Andersen, LLP prior to joining KnowledgeAdvisors and has deep expertise in measurement. He is responsible for designing and implementing the suite of products and services for the company. Jeff holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and is an Adjunct Professor at Loyola University and The Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.