1. WHITE PAPER
10 Principles for Building an
Effective Human Capital Plan
By Tim Weyland
National Director
Organization and Talent Development
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2. WHITE PAPER: 10 PRINCIPLES FOR BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
Almost every business leader will say that people 1. Human capital issues can have a big
What is Human Capital? are their most important asset, but few do anything impact on business
about it. If you are going to take this principle seri-
Your company’s competences, Recognize how significantly human capital issues
ously then human capital planning is crucial.
can affect your business. Without acceptance of its
knowledge and personality The Human Capital Plan is an important tool that importance in your organization’s framework, all
attributes embodied in the organizations use to drive focused actions that can plans regarding your workforce will fall flat or at least
ability to perform labor so as ensure goal achievement and business success. It be deprioritized. Realizing how your human capital
to produce economic value. allows organizations to assess, plan for, and respond decisions affect your bottom line is an important step
proactively to its human capital challenges and before drafting the plan.
needs. It helps shape the organization by building a
plan to develop the workforce and practices needed Examples of Human Capital Issues
to meet an organization’s vision, mission, and goals. Impacting Business
Human capital challenges such as having capable One company we work with built a performance
leaders, building workforce skills, driving high per- management process that allowed them to achieve
formance, and ensuring retention of top talent can be their goals more quickly. It was a pre-revenue start-up
addressed through effective human capital planning. business. This meant they were able to gain an advan-
The Human Capital (HC) Plan will establish a frame- tage by being first to market and also accelerate their
work of policies, practices, and actions that guide revenue generation.
your efforts in meeting these workforce needs.
Another client company under 50 employees was
Here are 10 principles to follow in order to build an growing rapidly in size and was a government
effective human capital plan for your organization: contractor. However, the company did not know it
needed to have an affirmative action plan if it wanted
to go after larger government contracts in the future.
Putting that in place allowed them to continue to
build their government business. This was a human
capital initiative they had to implement before con-
tinuing to grow the business.
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3. WHITE PAPER: 10 PRINCIPLES FOR BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
2. Tie human capital plans to Case Study: Leadership Skills Training
Human capital matters business outcomes Brings Good Results
are investments with Human capital matters must not be viewed as tied One of TriNet’s clients had project managers onsite
expected returns. to a cost center, but as investments with some working in teams to serve customers. Because the
return expected. project managers were not as effective as neces-
Human capital matters sary in regards to managing their people, TriNet
From a human capital point of view, you can do one
are investments with of two things:
worked with them to develop leadership skills
via online learning and facilitated development
expected returns. • Help increase revenue per employee, or activities with the PM team. The result was an im-
• Optimize or minimize the cost per employee provement in their leadership and a correlating im-
provement in customer service. The leaders were
If you go for the first option, then take into account more productive and completed more work due to
all the things that you offer which are unique to better planning and resource management.
your organization. Offering differentiated prod-
ucts enables you to dominate a market. And those Case Study: Sears Improves Customer
products or services cannot be offered without the Experience with Training
tremendous talents of your workers. A 1998 Harvard Business Case on Sears showed
You have to be careful about the second option that the company was able to improve the capa-
though. With minimizing, you do not want to bring bility of its customer-facing employees and thus
the cost per employee so low that you then face improve the overall customer experience. The
retention issues. Focus instead on optimizing. result directly affected Sears’s bottom line. Sears
measured the staff interactions, the customer feed-
back and subsequently improved the company’s
financial results. See chart on following page.
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4. WHITE PAPER: 10 PRINCIPLES FOR BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
The Employee-Customer-
Profit Chain
Harvard Business Review:
Jan.-Feb. 1998
This is the model we use today. The rectangles represent survey information, the ovals, hard data.
The measurements in gray are those we collect and distribute in the form of the Sears Total Performance Indicators.
A COMPELLING A COMPELLING A COMPELLING
PLACE TO WORK PLACE TO SHOP PLACE TO INVEST
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5. WHITE PAPER: 10 PRINCIPLES FOR BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
3. Target your practices to your 4. Align your actions with best practices
Best practices need to be specific industry and business When you put actions in place, make sure all those
relevant to your industry. Do not adopt best practices just because others are actions work together and are integrated with one
using them. Best practices only work if they are fo- another – otherwise you will have a system that works
cused on employing targeted human capital actions against itself.
relevant to your business. Examples of Contradiction
Discovering and emulating other companies’ best • If you are trying to promote more collaboration
practices has been very popular — especially in the within your team but your incentive program
last ten years. Unfortunately, the best practices of is based only on individual actions, you will not
another company are often irrelevant to your own achieve your desired goals.
company. They generally add no value. • If you do quarterly incentive payments, yet you
It is not until you focus on what you are doing specifi- only do a performance review on a semi-annual
cally in your business and taking targeted human basis, the system will not work.
capital actions relevant only to your situation, that
best practices becomes meaningful.
You need to go through a human capital planning
process where all practices are tied concretely to your
Best practices need to be relevant
business goals.
to your industry.
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6. WHITE PAPER: 10 PRINCIPLES FOR BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
5. Plan ahead to assess results Once all these factors were analyzed, they put a plan
What results are you into action and were able to see reduced turnover and
The objective of the human capital plan is to maximize
reduced severance costs, along with improved scores
trying to achieve? the value of a company’s investment in people. This
from their patients based on their patient experience.
means you should think ahead about what you are
Plan for them. trying to achieve and what your desired results might Improving the Hiring Process Reduces Turnover
look like.
Another example: one TriNet client was experiencing
• Plan for what results you expect. significant turnover in its non-exempt workforce.
• Determine how you will assess your performance, Research revealed that the executive team
and what your benchmarks are for success. needed to improve the hiring process and make
better hiring decisions. The company took the
Case Study: Healthcare Institution Improves following concrete actions:
Customer Experience
• They improved their candidate interview
One of TriNet’s clients was a healthcare institu- process by letting candidates see what the work
tion experiencing significant turnover, much of it environment was actually like
unplanned. Because the company did not have an
• They used an assessment tool to assess the
effective performance system, they were paying a lot
candidate’s fit in the organization
of severance just to minimize their risk as employees
were terminated. TriNet evaluated the cost associated with the compa-
ny’s turnover. Part of it was overtime cost, recruiting
What they were trying to improve was the patient
costs, and training costs. TriNet also evaluated
experience. Having patients see different caregivers
the cost of training people to use the assessment
every time did not help, so reducing turnover could
tool for future job candidates. At the end of the year,
clearly impact the business. Their immediate short-
turnover was down and the company saw a return on
term goal was to understand:
its investment.
• Their current turnover rate
In each of these cases, companies began the project
• Turnover costs
by planning for their expected result –and then de-
• Severance costs termined how to assess whether their actions were
successful or not.
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7. WHITE PAPER: 10 PRINCIPLES FOR BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
6. This work is too important to be left to HR 7. It is a process, not just an event
Involve your business leaders, Many small businesses do not have HR teams or may As the human capital plan moves forward, there will
not just HR have less experienced HR managers, but even in be ongoing adjustments needed. Allow for those
regards to larger businesses staffed with complete adjustments to take place.
Involve your business HR departments, the human capital plan needs to be For example, you may have determined that you need
leaders, not just HR. led by management. It is important to have business to hire five salespeople to drive new business in an
leaders involved and participating both in planning expanded territory. You have determined how this will
and implementation. They have to be willing partici- be done and what the market rate is for their skill sets.
pants and champions or it will not work. But as you go you may need to adjust — maybe you
For many businesses today, one of the largest costs need more than five people after all, or you have to
is the people costs – it is a major cost but also a major modify the compensation.
opportunity. When you involve your company’s Ongoing adjustments are necessary but it is also
business leaders in a human capital plan, help them important to do a formal review of the whole human
understand both the business issues involved as well capital plan periodically. A good time frame is every
as what needs to be done from a human capital point quarter — long enough to get something substantive
of view — but then you also have to put measures in done, but not so long that you are far removed from
place so they are held accountable. Communicate to what happened.
business leaders that workforce success, operational
success and customer success are just as important
as making the numbers.
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8. WHITE PAPER: 10 PRINCIPLES FOR BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
A sample page from a human
EXPECTED OUTCOMES MEASURES INITIATIVES
capital plan.
Key Effort 1: Implement and evaluate the effectiveness of human capital flexibilities granted by Congress to assist GAO in
US Government Accountability managing our workforce
Office’s 2004-2006 Human Capital GAO’s human capital flexibilities address known
Strategic Plan Documented policies, procedures, Develop clear, documented, and transparent
challenges of attracting, retaining, motivating,
and evaluation plan are available to policies and procedures to implement approved
and rewarding a high-performing and skilled
all employees. flexibilities. (FY 2004-2006.)
workforce.
Educate managers and employees on the
Adequate safeguards are in place to ensure that availability and appropriate use of approved
Extent to which program objectives
employees are treated consistently and fairly flexibilities through new or ongoing
are met by implemented flexibilities.
and that managers are held accountable. communication mechanisms and management-
training initiatives. (FY 2004- 2006).
Managers and employees are familiar with Develop and implement a plan to evaluate
GAO’s human capital flexibilities and use Employee feedback data. the effectiveness of approved flexibilities.
them effectively. (FY 2005-2006).
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9. WHITE PAPER: 10 PRINCIPLES FOR BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
8. Don’t do too many things: A hypothetical case study: Increase Sales
Prioritize your actions: limit and prioritize Let’s say your goal is to increase sales in the Northeast
what’s of high value and easy You will need to prioritize your actions based on value by 20% to 5 million dollars. You face issues such as
and ease of implementation. turnover and low productivity in your sales force, as
to do?
Ask these two questions: your people confront powerful competitors with more
Involve your business effective sales teams. What is the capability you need
• How valuable would this be for the business?
to build to reach your business goal? What actions do
leaders, not just HR. • How difficult or easy is it to implement? you need to take?
Logically, you concentrate your initial efforts on those Some human capital solutions may include hiring
actions that have high value and are easiest to do. more people, implementing a new compensation
The actions that have high value but are more difficult plan, and revamping the sales training process to
to do will require the most planning and the largest reduce the time to productivity.
investment — though usually these are the ones that
The result should be that your sales go up, but you
give you the most pay-off. Prioritizing and limiting to
can also measure interim actions such as your time to
a few initiatives is critical.
productivity, your turnover, and the strength of your
9. Create a value chain sales pipeline. These interim actions come before
your business goal is achieved.
Create the value chain from the business goal to the
individual actions you will take to reach that goal. A Creating that value chain from the business goal to
few questions to ask: actions taken means you think about and add value
every step of the way. This simple process is flexible
• What are the human capital issues that are
enough to encompass more sophisticated business
in the way?
goals and human capital issues.
• What is the capability I need to build to achieve
the business goal?
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10. WHITE PAPER: 10 PRINCIPLES FOR BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN
10. Do the HC planning from the outside in The Bottom Line: A Good Plan is Unique
What are you trying to Remember also that it is always about the It is much more difficult to copy workforce capability
achieve for the customer? customer! You need to think about what you than it is to copy a marketing program or a product.
are trying to achieve for the customer. As you And the reality is, you don’t really want to copy any-
Involve your trying to
What are youbusiness come from the outside in, examine the processes one else’s human capital plan.
leaders, not just HR.
achieve for the customer? and capabilities you will need to have to create the Rather, you want to build the human capital plan
ultimate customer experience. that’s right for your unique situation, business model,
Some questions you need to ask: and goals. Build your human capital and build the
• What experience do I need to create for the capability of your people. The result is a powerful
customer? competitive advantage that cannot be easily repli-
cated in the market place.
• What products or services do I need to have to
satisfy the customer?
Think about revenue per employee and cost per em-
ployee in the context of what you are trying to achieve
for your customer. That should lead to the financial
results that you want. It also leads to a differentiation.
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