HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICE - Fichier PDF

2Human capital managementHuman capital management (HCM) has been described as ‘a paradigm shift’ fromthe traditional approach to human resource management (Kearns, 2005b) – a largeclaim. It is considered in this chapter initially by defining the concept of humancapital management and its relationship to the concept of human resource management.To understand HCM it is necessary to know about the concept of humancapital, which is the next section heading. The chapter is completed with an analysisof the processes involved in HCM including a discussion of human capital measurementand reporting.HUMAN CAPITAL MANAGEMENT DEFINEDHuman capital management (HCM) is concerned with obtaining, analysing andreporting on data that informs the direction of value-adding people management,strategic investment and operational decisions at corporate level and at the level offront line management. The defining characteristic of HCM is this use of metrics toguide an approach to managing people that regards them as assets and emphasizesthat competitive advantage is achieved by strategic investments in those assetsthrough employee engagement and retention, talent management and learning anddevelopment programmes.