4. Human Capital

The most intense battle in global business today is not for capital or advanced technology or market share. It is for talent.

Human Resource specialists have been aware of new attitudes in the work force toward what is now widely known as work/life balance. Survey data confirm that employees wish to temper their ambitions for professional achievement and material reward with greater attention to interests away from the job. This work/life adjustment is the reflection of a deeper shift, an insistence upon defining one’s own life, priorities, and choices to a far greater degree than before.

Rejecting old corporate practices, today’s employees have a passion for autonomy—a belief that, given appropriate training and experience (both of which they will help define), and given substantial latitude, they will make decisions that advance the value of the company while advancing their own interests.

This mentality finds full expression in the new phenomenon of E-Business. The Internet has revolutionized the customer-supplier relationship, making knowledge and instant information access the focal points for value, and giving the customer a wealth of alternative choices and vast power to make and revise decisions.

However, few companies have grasped that the employer/employee relationship has become the most important of all customer-supplier relationships. In a tight labour market, the level of intimacy and personalization of the customer/supplier relationship is becoming decisive. The degree to which the employer recognizes that each employee is a market of one, a unique customer, will substantially determine that employer’s fortunes in the competition for talent.

Accepting the new culture and adapting to the new relationship will help attract talent, but will not guarantee retention.. Today’s employer must provide its talent with the opportunity for both wealth accumulation and knowledge accumulation. The more employees earn and the more they know, the more independent and mobile they become—and the more attractive to other employer/suppliers.

Conversely, employees provide knowledge to the employer about their education, training, experience, skills, learning, developmental needs, and lifestyle choices. With this information, the employer can improve the personalization of its relationship with employees, keep it full of reward and opportunity, demonstrate respect for the employee’s autonomy—and stay attuned to the marketplace for new talent.

This requires a combination of powerful technology, application of the knowledge base derived from the use of that technology, and recognition that traditional employment cultures and the laws that support them are becoming outmoded. The Internet has made personalization a possibility; to win the battle for top talent, employers must make it a necessity.

 

                                                 

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