Human Capital Briefs

The realities of doing business today often require that employees and their managers work from different locations. When you’re not co-located with your boss — often separated by large distances and time zones — a different set of considerations comes into play.

The concatenated rise of social media, Big Data, and the predictive analytics championed by human capital gurus such as Google’s Laszlo Bock virtually assures that testing will play an ever greater role in the selection and management of employees and their managers.

Actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services predict that growth in health spending will begin to increase this year. And that is not a worst-case scenario. How will federal policymakers react to runaway health spending? Not well, if the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is any indication.

Michael Jensen wrote a landmark HBR article arguing that “It’s Not How Much You Pay CEOs, But How.” He wanted boards to adjust pay according to company performance as shown by stock price. V.G. Narayanan’s recent post in this debate goes a step further.

Successful companies are notoriously prone to pursuing tactical fixes rather than confronting strategic problems. They exhort their people to try harder, introduce overhead cost reduction programs, and reorganize – anything rather than admit that their strategy needs an overhaul.

A scandal affects all of a company’s employees in significant ways. In fact, there is new research to suggest that the impact of a scandal is far more significant, especially on lower-ranking employees, that anyone would have ever thought.

Believe it or not, Twitter Inc. has a perfectly respectable mission statement. CEO Dick Costolo had to point this out after a slide from an investor presentation by CFO Anthony Noto became the laughingstock of Twitter. Does it really matter if a company has a good mission statement?

Walmart’s recent decision to cut healthcare benefits for its part-time employees obviously cuts their labor costs for a group of employees who are not that important for the company to retain. Whether they can afford to pay for it is another question, but that’s no longer Walmart’s problem.

Highly engaged organizations emphasize a core purpose that does not entail mere financial or operational objectives. These organizations create a common understanding among employees that they play a role in creating value for the entire community.