The Future of Your Business Begins and Ends with Your Human Capital Strategy

By Jessica Miller-Merrell  

Recruitment, development and retention. These are three most important aspects in how business is shaped, developed and executed and it starts with your supply and demand of your most precious business resource, talent and your employee.

Companies often refer to your employee population as human capital. According to Deliotte, the concept of human capital recognizes that not all labor is equal and that the quality of employees can be improved by investing in them. The education, experience and abilities of an employee have an economic value for employers and for the economy as a whole. 

I’ve said before that they (human capital) are your most important and largest business expense. Like any asset in business, investments must be made in order to retain the value and top productivity. If you don’t continually promote and engage with your investment they basically be come devalued (i.e. unengaged) over time becoming more harm then good to your company.

Recruitment, development, and retention are essential for you to grow or at minimum maintain your business. Competition for your human capital is growing at a staggering rate because the labor pool is shrinking while the demand is growing.

Recruitment. The initial touch point that a recruiter has with a potential candidate is in the recruitment phase. With recruitment a candidate is instantly able to gauge how a company conducts themselves and what type of work environment they can expect if they apply and get the job. A recruiter’s job is important because they set the tone for the entire process. 

Development. Once a candidate has become an employee it’s important that the company keeps investing and building up their employee. A company is only as successful as their most important investments, which in this case (and most cases) is the workforce that they employ. Setting up boundaries and mentor programs are easy and cost-effective ways to make sure your employees are constantly being developed and pushed to their full potential. It also helps in the areas of employee engagement and retention.

Retention. One of the greatest challenges a company faces is employee retention. Retention is directly tied to how an employee is developed. If your employees don’t feel like they’re growing within your company it’s likely they’ll move onto another company who takes employee development more seriously. Retention plays into several factors that ultimately come down to your company culture and how much your willing to invest in your company.

Having a strong recruitment strategy is the first step in the mix. Once you’re able to brand yourself accordingly a dominoes effect is set in motion. You hire the best, develop them to be better and invest in their future, which turns into higher retention rates. When companies invest in their employees their business is more successful. 

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s is the Chief Blogger & Founder of Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @jmillermerrell.   

How To Personally Manage Your Human Capital

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

We talk a lot about recruitment at large, focusing on organizational recruiting and hiring strategy. But let’s take an up-and-close personal view on ourselves, not as an employee, but as an individual.

As recruitment professionals, we understand the importance of creating a work life plan and personal strategy to be successful in not just our career but in our personal life too. The work-life balance is critical to a long fulfilling life.

I see a lot of professionals particularly woman who experience a pre-mid life crisis. At the early age of 30, they come to the realization that the hours they have invested in their career and focus on climbing the professional ladder has taken a front seat while the self-care for our personal life of family, friends, hobbies and passions ride shot gun, or, worse they’ve been left on the curb.

This is not just a woman-related issue, a lack of balance between work and life is a national problem too. According to the 2013 Better Life Index, compiled by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development that tracks economic and social data, the United States ranked 28th in a total of 36 countries with the best work life balance. From this research, 11% of Americans reported that they spend more than 50 hours a week working.

A new generation of over worked humans

This imbalance of work and life is a serious liability in our human capital. It is causing a void in leading a fulfilling life, putting us at risk to stress that leads to serious physical- and mental health concerns. More than a career plan, human capital must be fully invested in and managed properly. There are many challenges that we are faced with that require us to manage our own human capital.

We are faced with challenges that the older generations never had to deal with. Challenges that stem from globalization and technology are giving us the ability to be connected forcing us to be responsive 24/7, adapt to change at a faster pace and process gobs of content being delivered from multiple sources on multiple screens, all of the time.

These current trends that impact our lives professionally and personally, can be dangerous pitfalls when we are not fostering healthy habits for a thriving human capital in ourselves.

How to thrive as humans

Because we are all created as human beings, not human doers, or human workers, it is essential that we invest in our own lives to grow our human capital. I met up with a college friend the other night. I had not seen much of her for the past few months and as soon as we connected, she shared with me that she had just gotten a new job, the best title she could ask for at the best agency.

She’s been in advertising for 15 years and has grown up a steep career climb. She shared how she was working at two agencies at one time, investing in double the time of already a high-demand job. She used terms like, “I was building my team,” “I didn’t want to let my team down,” “I love my clients,” and “I couldn’t say no.”

She also was telling me that she was working around the clock. She had no life outside of her work. Going on her second year of marriage to the love of her life, she had not even taken her honeymoon yet. And, just as the teams were finally groomed and the pitches were all grand slams, she and her husband started to pack their bags and head to the airport for their long awaited honeymoon.

And then, it hit her. The stress. Coiled in a ball, screaming for help from the bathroom floor, pangs like she was giving birth to a new frazzled ball of madness shot up and down throughout her body. She passed out and instead of her husband carrying her through the door to their seaside suite along the French Rivera, he carried her limp and sick body into a taxi cab as they hustled to the emergency room.

She had to spent her human capital.

Three months later, she’s doing better. All of her clients are happy, her teams are stable and they are in a hiring spree. She did make it to the French Rivera with her husband.

However, as she shared the story with me, it was clear to me that she had burned out. Her human capital hit a level of bankruptcy and sometimes the only path of recovery is a complete change of occupation. She is now seeking to work at a non-profit, doing something, somewhere that is not at an agency.

It is easy to get caught up in the heroic mode of our profession. When we are talented and ambitious and we experience reward and progress, it is no wonder we don’t continue to invest in our careers. Self care and spending time and energy on our personal relationships and families can be difficult, especially after a hard day on the job.

As my friend shared, I realized that she needed to talk about something non-work-related. I asked her what she LOVES doing. And, instantly she lit up as she shared a weekend ritual of going to watch independent films by herself.

It’s your turn to invest in human capital

You spend everyday at the workplace, managing your organization’s workforce. How are you managing your own human capital? What do YOU LOVE doing? Are you doing it? Invest in yourself. Take that bubble bath. Go on the bike ride. Meet that college friend for dinner. Sing that song. Dance like you want. Go to the French Rivera. Go see that show. Do what you love. Don’t wait until you retire, burn out or die before you invest in your own human capital.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s is the Chief Blogger & Founder of Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @jmillermerrell. 

Women in HR should be thrilled about the appointment of Mary Barra as GM's CEO

http://www.gm.com/company/aboutGM/GM_Corporate_Officers/mary_barra.html

By Marylene Delbourg-Delphis

I was thrilled to hear that Mary Barra will be the new CEO of GM. The appointment of any woman at the head of a company is a victory for all women and the fact that she is the first woman to head a major automaker is just equally inspiring and worth celebrating. In an article about her, Jena McGregor of the Washington Post reminds us of still dismal numbers: "On average, women hold 16.9 percent of board seats and 14.6 percent of executive officer roles in large U.S. companies. But in the manufacturing-durable goods sector, which includes automakers, the percentage of female directors is 15.6 percent, and the percentage of female executives is just 11.2."

She started with a degree in Electrical Engineering in the early eighties when there were so few women at a time when the percentage of Electrical Engineering degrees awarded to women was at around 10%. Great for all the girls in this country!

Her history reminds us of something that has almost disappeared from the industrial world, a time when large organizations were deeply involved in the scientific training of the next generation. She studied at the General Motors Institute, which later became Kettering University in Flint, Michigan and ultimately worked at GM since she was 19. And according to an interview she gave to the LA Times, her father was a die maker for the Pontiac motor division for 39 years.

Here are some even greater takeaways for HR:

• The value of being able to keep talented interns.
• The power of internal mobility: Mary Barra was involved over the years with virtually every aspect of the business.
• The power of an being outstanding VP of GM’s human resources department, a position that she occupied between 2009 and 2011. She is credited with making the culture of the company evolve. 

In short, Mary Barra is living proof of the long-lasting value of talent and human capital management. There have been a lot of articles about her just recently in multiple newspapers. You can also check her bio.