What is human capital management (HCM) and why is it important?

What happens when you align your mission and objectives with every member of your organization? Your staff have the opportunity to see how their individual actions impact the organization.

You’re basically telling your staff members: “Hey, we couldn’t do this without you – here’s how your individual efforts are pushing us forward.”

This not only improves morale and encourages individual responsibility, but it also ensures staff understand their value.

There are several ways to implement a strategy like this. At IRIS, we use the Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) model, which outlines what needs achieving (Objectives) and provides a measurable outcome that informs how close you are to achievement (Key Results).

Don’t forget to balance wider business goals against each employee’s individual career aspirations – for them to care about your goals, you need to care about theirs.

A strong HCM framework makes your company more attractive to potential hires.

By demonstrating genuine care for employees (and highlighting your efforts in your recruitment material), you’ll attract top talent.

Say you’re recruiting for a vacancy within your business. Rather than focusing solely on how great the role is, ensure the job spec also spotlights what makes your organization a great place to work.

Whether it’s a robust learning and development program, a culture of mutual support, scope for flexible working, or all of this and more.

Show off the fruits of your HCM labors!

Recruitment has been a hot topic for a number of years due to the talent shortage.

However, it’s equally – if not more – important to retain the talent you already have.

Good HCM can help.

Take stock of what your employees need and want, with a focus on their individual career aspirations. Explore how you can make their working lives easier and provide them with the resources necessary to go above and beyond. That might include:

• In-house or third-party training
• Role changes or job swaps
• Mentoring or coaching
• Promotions

By providing your people with support and learning opportunities, you’ll see higher rates of satisfaction and fewer people giving in their notice.

Company culture is shaped by many factors, including values, ethos, employee expectations, working environments, and aspirations. 

However, company culture isn’t something you can set and forget – it takes constant work.  

You can use your HCM strategy to shape and define your company culture through actions like:  

• Talking to your people about to find out what they need or what’s holding them back 
• Defining core behaviors and providing resources to encourage adherence (e.g. inclusivity and sensitivity training to foster greater understanding between colleagues) 
• Providing staff with the means to feedback to senior leadership 
• Measuring success, celebrating wins, and commending staff for good performance
   

So much of HCM depends on collaboration across your entire organization, and for that, you need to facilitate great communication.

While regular company-wide updates or on-site meetings are great, explore how you can facilitate more meaningful communication between your people – particularly managers and their direct reports.

HCM software can help you achieve this by:

Providing leadership with performance and wellbeing data, helping managers to foster truly meaningful conversations

Enabling staff to feedback to leadership through setups like workplace surveys.