The Business Case for HR Managing Human Capital to Optimize the Business of the Business: Piecing Together the Organizational Performance Puzzle
Let’s think of the three critical P’s of optimal organizational performance:
- Product
- People
- Processes
Regarding people, let’s refer to them as Human Capital (HC) because they are indeed one of your key assets. HC is one of three parts of the performance puzzle necessary to ensure successful business outcomes. With that operating premise, evaluate your people against the same criteria you use for your product and processes. All three need to be operating at peak performance in order to produce accelerated, sustainable business outcomes and growth. If any one of the three is not at maximum performance, the results of the other two will be compromised or decelerated.
It is under the banner of accelerated corporate growth that we should be evaluating both HC and the HR role relative to that acceleration. Here is the if/then logic:
To do this, HR needs to operate with a high-level, holistic, macro business acumen, where HR is the voice of HC as a business accelerator, understanding how peak performing HC is vital to the business outcomes of the business.
This puts HR right in the middle of everything, translating the ‘soft’ issues of HC into tangible, quantifiable business language that can be easily understood by the business units they support. For every business decision, HR should be integrally involved in the discussion as the business partner and voice of HC. HR can’t expect that business units can or will do this on their own. It’s not their job.
So that brings us to think about the role of HR as a business accelerator. With that, we have put together a blog mini series that will focus on the following key areas aligning HR’s role in each of the following:
- Culture
- Leadership
- Learning & Development
- Metrics
During this upcoming blog series, we will look at each of the key business partner drivers and discuss the importance of the role of HR as both a business accelerator and then as a business anticipator. It is in that space where HR makes the business case for HC and truly becomes a strategic business advisor. We invite you on this journey.
Do you want to make sure your Human Capital is operating at peak performance to produce accelerated, sustainable business outcomes and growth? Download our exclusive checklist to find out how to more effectively manage human capital.
