Fast Company
Here's my comment posted on an interesting article at Fast Company -- It's All About The People:
Let's suppose they don't do it for a good reason. People usually do things, or don't do things, for a good reason. They might think that quantifying exactly how their approach to their people helps improve their numbers means quantifying their approach to their people. They might think that would be a bad way to treat people. I agree that it would be.
Human capital is one of those substances that cannot be measured because the very act of measuring it changes it. In other words, measuring people usually has a deleterious effect on the people.
But there is another way, maybe what you're thinking. Even though you can't measure the thing itself, you can measure the effect of a change in or a difference in the environment.
They can compare the company's performance on any measure before and after they changed their approach to their people. Or they can compare the company's performance to another company's performance that has a different philosophy.
The only prerequisite is that they are very clear about what their philosophy is. Which is a very cool thing. Because once a company states clearly and in detail what they believe about how people should be treated, the people themselves will hold them to it.
There might be an unspoken axiom here, which is that one hundred percent of a company's performance is dependent on how they treat people. But you wouldn't disagree with that, would you?
Let's suppose they don't do it for a good reason. People usually do things, or don't do things, for a good reason. They might think that quantifying exactly how their approach to their people helps improve their numbers means quantifying their approach to their people. They might think that would be a bad way to treat people. I agree that it would be.
Human capital is one of those substances that cannot be measured because the very act of measuring it changes it. In other words, measuring people usually has a deleterious effect on the people.
But there is another way, maybe what you're thinking. Even though you can't measure the thing itself, you can measure the effect of a change in or a difference in the environment.
They can compare the company's performance on any measure before and after they changed their approach to their people. Or they can compare the company's performance to another company's performance that has a different philosophy.
The only prerequisite is that they are very clear about what their philosophy is. Which is a very cool thing. Because once a company states clearly and in detail what they believe about how people should be treated, the people themselves will hold them to it.
There might be an unspoken axiom here, which is that one hundred percent of a company's performance is dependent on how they treat people. But you wouldn't disagree with that, would you?
posted by Marianne at 12:29 PM
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