Enterprise learning through a well-managed human capital management system enhances brand value.
By the time you read this your organisation has most probably just completed its annual HR reporting period and submitted EEA2 reports, workplace skills plans and skills levy claims, to name but a few of the plethora of modern-day statutory compliance reports. These activities probably placed significant additional pressure on your human resource practitioners, and again raised the question of whether the cost of compliance is covered by an increase in your organisation’s human capital value.
By optimising human capital management software solutions that are integrated and able to cover the total sphere of HR solutions, significant value can be created. However, a general concern is that sending staff on courses is not enough. If organisational learning is not structured and linked to the strategy of the organisation, the learning process can become expensive and generally ineffective.
What do winning organisations do to ensure that training and development activities increase their brand value? Human capital value and organisational learning are major components of brand value.
In the autumn of 2010 the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published the first standard on monetary brand valuation in ISO 10668:2010.
This standard strongly emphasises internal HR measurements. Apart from behaviour analysis and financial metrics, the additional component of the standard under legal analysis is ‘goodwill’ or ‘customer value’.
Since there is a growing consensus that customer loyalty and staff loyalty are largely aligned, the standard concludes that brand value is mainly determined by internal metrics and staff responsiveness, i.e. human capital.
At the turn of the century great emphasis was placed on the concept of a learning organisation. The value of learning is not disputed, but modern-day organisations demand that organisational learning, staff training and staff development must be aligned with the organisation’s strategic imperatives. An increasing concern is that organisations in South Africa that are incentivised to claim back a portion of their skills levies, are spending money on training for the wrong reasons.
To enhance the organisation’s brand value it is important that staff are empowered
with an electronic personal development plan (PDP) that is accessible anytime and anywhere via the internet. Additionally, training only enhances an organisation’s human capital value if it addresses the staff member’s skills gap and organisational skills gap.
Some modern cloud-based human capital management software solutions are highly effective in determining staff member skills gaps through on-line questionnaires and linking skills gaps to a library of training courses.
Recommendations can be automated, and access to these courses can be facilitated through well-developed workflows. Determining skills gaps in turn requires detailed
job descriptions, and if job descriptions are not current and aligned to the organisation’s strategy, the organisation runs the risk of under-valuing its brand. ISO 10668 emphasises the responsiveness of staff members to market demands. As a result, organisations of greater value are those that have effective learning systems in place, enabling them to seamlessly link people, processes and strategy.
Conclusion
In today’s fast changing and demanding workplace, organisational learning is imperative for the long-term survival of an organisation. Don’t equate complex and manual compliance activities with effective learning. If, on the other hand, organisational learning is aligned to the organisation’s strategy through on-line job
descriptions and performance agreements, then you are on the right track, especially if the assessments automatically update the organisational skills grid.
If your organisation has the ability to automatically recommend courses and training events via an easy-to-use technological platform, then an increase in brand value, and a subsequent increase in shareholder value, should be expected. ❐
Author: Chris Luyt is a director of Petros Business Solutions that develops and implements the SCubed human capital management software.
