The Workforce Scorecard: Managing Human Capital To Execute Strategy

The Workforce Scorecard: Managing Human Capital To Execute Strategy | Mark A. Huselid, Brian E. Becker, ... | Covers both academic principle and the needs of practical reality

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The Workforce Scor...

	The Workforce Scorecard: Managing Human Capital To Execute Strategy Mark A. Huselid, Brian E. Becker, ... Harvard Business School Press, 2005 - 278 pages average customer review:based on 8 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Driving strategy through workforce performance

In a marketplace fueled by intangible assets, anything less than optimal workforce success can threaten a firm's survival. Yet in most organizations, employee performance is both poorly managed and underutilized.

The Workforce Scorecard argues that current management and human resource practices hinder employees' ability to contribute to strategic goals. To maximize the power of their workforce, organizations must meet three challenges: view their workforce in terms of contribution rather than cost; replace benchmarking metrics with measures that differentiate levels of strategic impact; and make line managers and HR professionals jointly responsible for executing workforce initiatives.

Building on the proven model outlined in their bestselling book The HR Scorecard, Mark Huselid, Brian Becker, and coauthor Richard Beatty show how to create a Workforce Scorecard that identifies and measures the behaviors, competencies, mind-set, and culture required for workforce success and reveals how each dimension impacts the bottom line.

Practical and timely, The Workforce Scorecard offers crucial lessons for leveraging human capital to achieve strategic success.

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How to increase the ROI of human "capital"

It is more important now than ever before to measure human performance accurately and consistently, especially given the rapidly increasing use of outsourcing which requires effective supervision of those to whom important tasks are entrusted. Although this book was written primarily for HR executives, I think it can also be of substantial interest and value to other senior-level executives as they are challenged to determine organizational priorities and then to formulate strategies by which to achieve specific objectives. I agree with countless others that is it difficult (if not impossible) to manage what cannot be measured. I am also convinced that appropriate metrics must be selected, and, that primary importance must be placed on measurement of those initiatives on which success (however defined) depends. The authors of this book provide a cohesive, comprehensive, and cost-effective program by which workforce success can be monitored and measured.

According to Huselid, Becker, and Beatty, their analysis "begins by being clear about what we need to know. If we don't know what we need to know, we will never know it. Too often we measure what is easy rather than what is right....Second, knowing a lot about the wrong thing not only is unhelpful, but can be misleading. The Workforce Scorecard points out that not all customers, strategies, or products are equal, [nor are all employees or workforces]...The harsh reality of managing people is that differentiation must occur, with some employees more equal than others." I agree while presuming to add that those who add the greatest value to the given customers are those who add the greatest value to the given employer. This is what the authors have in mind when noting the difference between equity and equality: "Equity means that those who give more will get more; equality means that all will be treated equally."

In this context, I am reminded of Carla O'Dell's discussion of many of these same issues in If Only We Knew What We Know in which she asserts that there are in almost all organizations what she calls "beds of knowledge" which are "hidden resources of intelligence that exist in almost every organization, relatively untapped and unmined." She recommends a number of strategies to "tap into "this hidden asset, capturing it, organizing it, transferring it, and using it to create customer value, operational excellence, and product innovation -- all the while increasing profits and effectiveness." This is precisely what Huselid, Becker, and Beatty have in mind when explaining the importance of identifying and then obtaining the information needed for managing human capital effectively to execute strategy.

I wish it were possible to reproduce within this brief commentary Figure 1.1 (on page 4) and Figure 1.2 (on page 7) which brilliantly illustrate the essential components of "Managing Human Strategy" and "Workforce Success: The Impact of Workforce Strategy on Business Strategy Execution." In fact, all of the Figures which supplement the narrative facilitate and expedite frequent review of the authors' key points after the book has been read.

With rigor and eloquence, Huselid, Becker, and Beatty examine three separate but related Challenges: Perspective (with an emphasis on differentiation), Metrics (and their relationship to strategy execution), and Execution (which holds senior executives and line managers accountable for workforce success). The authors suggest that all organizations which successfully meet these three challenges (i.e. those which "do it right") have these six characteristics in common:

1. HR professionals spend less time on employee performance than they did five years ago

2. The relationship between workforce success and strategy implementation defines the ROI of new HR initiatives.

3. Creating a shared mind-set is not taken for granted.

4. The HR function has a staffing structure that effectively balances the tension between being a strategic partner and delivering efficient and effective HR services.

5. Strategic workforce measures are "owned" and coordinated by a single individual or task force.

6. Senior executives, line managers, and HR professionals consider the results of the measurement system worth the implementation effort.

Although it may seem to some who read this brief commentary that this book will be of substantial value only to large organizations, I hasten to reassure them that, after appropriate modifications, what Huselid, Becker, and Beatty recommend can help any organization (regardless of size or nature) to improve the quality of their strategy execution by developing the right perspective on the contributions of its workforce to its success, and, by developing the right execution strategy to ensure that its managers are ready, willing, and able to use workforce metrics to drive business success.

I presume to add two additional points of my own: First, whatever the given metrics may be, they must be applied consistently so that variances can be identified and then addressed in a timely and effective manner. Otherwise, it will be impossible to measure accurately, for example, the discrepancy (if any) between what is expected of an individual and her or his performance. The same applies to departments, divisions, and business units as well as to the entire enterprise within which they are located. Also, while agreeing that what cannot be measured cannot be managed, I think that some measurements are more important than others. Hence the importance of setting priorities and then adjusting their order of importance when circumstances change.

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Covers both academic principle and the needs of practical reality

Two Professors of Human Resource Management at Rutgers University and the Chairman of the Department of Organization and Human Resources of SUNY-Buffalo combine their knowledge in The Workforce Scorecard: Managing Human Capital To Execute Strategy, a guide written especially for business leaders and CEOs looking for a means to accurately assess their human resources and capital. Chapters address how to build an evenhanded and objective "workforce scorecard", the role of line managers, workforce metrics, ideal communication and learning programs for the workforce scorecard, how to focus on the goal of a more productive workplace through expert selection and management of human capital, and much more. A slightly general but solidly written treatise that covers both academic principle and the needs of practical reality.

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A must read for every HR and Business Leader.

Workforce Scorecard is an awesome addition to the Strategy collection focussed on HR.

The authors clearly drive home the message that one of the key's to Business success is the focus on HR Strategy and Execution of the same.

Helpful for my conceptual way of doing

I have a rather intuïtive, conceptual way of thinking , working and talking. This book helped me to translate my ideas and feelings about wrong and right into a very clear approuch. It will surely help me doing my job as a consultant ! In our bussiness we're already much into BSC en HR-SC. This WF-SC was the missing link for me, when I am helping organisations and leaders to be succesfull in the execution of their strategy.

The only thing that frighten me was the "A"-player, "C"-player logic. I meet to much people that do not feel responsable for their own carreer (employability) ... what must we (organisations, society, coaches ...) do to help these people to become "A"-players again. If they don't feel the need ... no one can help them ! And what if one day, I become a "C"-player ?

Philippe BAILLEUR
HR-Consultant
SD WORX - BELGIUM

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Hard to understand

The book has some good information but it assumes you have read the other companion books and can be hard to understand sometimes.

reviews: page 1, 2

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