Human Capital Development: A Key to Business Success

The key findings from TAFEP’s research study on Human Capital Partners (HCPartners) were shared at a recent webinar. This article is the first of a two-part series on key learning points from the research findings and HCPartner best practices.

TAFEP partnered with Mercer Singapore on this research study to understand how HC practices impacted business performance 52 HCPartners and 28 non-HCPartners participated in this study across industries. 

How can businesses strengthen the positive linkage between strong human capital (HC) practices and good business performance?

As exemplary employers who have exhibited strong commitment to developing their workforce, HCPartners have demonstrated that they have their hearts in the right place when it comes to HC development. How have HCPartners built a strong partnership between business and HR leaders that has allowed for the successful implementation of HC strategies that effectively drive and sustain business success?

The research data revealed that HCPartners demonstrated a higher awareness of the key role that people play to the business, with these organisations taking more proactive steps in investing in HR practices and giving HR a voice at strategic business meetings. 

People are part of the business strategy. HCPartner leaders believed that HR leaders could influence business decisions, leading to greater alignment of HR programmes to business priorities. They were also committed to investing in people initiatives, and viewed the people development plan as an enterprise, measuring the effectiveness of initiatives through returns on investment.

HR function is more commercially astute.  Leaders in HCP companies recognised that their HR leaders displayed a strong commercial acumen and a keen awareness to grow the organisation through the effective use of HC practices. They also demonstrated strong ability to obtain buy-in from key stakeholders. 

And in turn, what can a commercially astute HR function do for the organisation?

The result of this is HR practices that are generally more aligned to business objectives through goal cascading, and organisations that are generally more effective at sourcing for the talent they need. This enables employees to better align to business objectives and provides them with a sense of purpose and meaning to their work. 

HR are also more well-equipped to embed people-related indicators into their leadership performance metrics, such as investments in talent development or training hours per employee; and have a better understand of how to treat people development initiatives as an enterprise – outlining necessary investments and measuring return. 

This is key towards obtaining the necessary support to drive business growth, both in terms of involvement and investment, from Leadership. 

It requires a concerted effort to achieve business success.

While mature HC dimensions play a key role, achieving sustainable and superior success also requires leadership support, synergy with line managers and organisation culture to benefit the business. This is achieved by strategically building HR commercial acumen and speaking the language of the business; to attain stronger leadership support and investment in HC initiatives and ultimately enabling the business to succeed.

Look out for the next instalment in this two-part series.