Product Description

Driving strategy through workforce performance

In a marketplace fueled by intangible assets, anything less than optimal workforce success can threaten a firm's survival. Yet in most organizations, employee performance is both poorly managed and underutilized.

The Workforce Scorecard argues that current management and human resource practices hinder employees' ability to contribute to strategic goals. To maximize the power of their workforce, organizations must meet three challenges: view their workforce in terms of contribution rather than cost; replace benchmarking metrics with measures that differentiate levels of strategic impact; and make line managers and HR professionals jointly responsible for executing workforce initiatives.

Building on the proven model outlined in their bestselling book The HR Scorecard, Mark Huselid, Brian Becker, and coauthor Richard Beatty show how to create a Workforce Scorecard that identifies and measures the behaviors, competencies, mind-set, and culture required for workforce success and reveals how each dimension impacts the bottom line.

Practical and timely, The Workforce Scorecard offers crucial lessons for leveraging human capital to achieve strategic success.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36514 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 278 pages

Review
"Practical and timely, The Workforce Scorecard offers crucial lessons for leveraging human capital to achieve strategic success." -- Workspan, June 2005

"The Workforce Scorecard can be recommended on the grounds that a bit of fiber in your diet is healthy." -- The Financial Times, March 28, 2005

About the Author

Mark A. Huselid is Professor of Human Resource Management in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University. Brian E. Becker is the Chairman of the Department of Organization and Human Resources at SUNY-Buffalo. Becker and Huselid are coauthors of The HR Scorecard (HBS Press, 2001). Richard W. Beatty is a professor in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University.

Customer Reviews

CUTTING EDGE HUMAN CAPITAL STRATEGY
You realize the importance of human capital in an economy based principally on intangible assets. You know you need your workforce to perform at its best. Yet you suspect that you could be managing employees more effectively and drawing more out of them. The difficulty lies in effectively and precisely aligning employee activity with strategic goals. This is where Huselid, Becker, and Beatty come to the rescue in this follow-up to their previous book, The HR Scorecard: Linking People, Strategy, and Performance. The Workforce Scorecard argues that to make the most of strategy execution, companies must meet three challenges: the perspective challenge, the metrics challenge, and the execution challenge. They can do this by adopting a workforce scorecard consisting of four elements.

The authors present three central points of their approach as challenges because these requirements for workforce management and measurement will go counter to the existing order in many organizations. The perspective challenge calls on companies to view their workforce in terms of contribution rather than cost. The metrics challenge means replacing benchmarking metrics with measures that differentiate levels of strategic impact. The execution challenge requires making line managers and HR professionals jointly responsible for executing workforce initiatives.

Before diving into great detail on the construction of the framework, Huselid, Becker, and Beatty first explain how the workforce scorecard fits into the more general scorecard approach. They intend to refer to a specific kind of business performance, strategy execution, in the tradition of Kaplan and Norton's balanced scorecard. The workforce scorecard sits in between the balanced scorecard-which addresses the company's strategy and operational goals along with a strategy map, and the HR scorecard-which focuses on HR systems and HR workforce competencies. Although they take the trouble to explain how the three scorecards interrelate, the authors note that they do not believe a company must use all three.

The book then goes on to explain and detail the four elements of the scorecard: workforce success, workforce mind-set and culture, workforce competencies, leadership and workforce behaviors. The authors devote chapters to explaining the three central challenges from the perspectives of the CEO and senior executive leadership team, line managers, and the HR function. Another chapter explores in depth the work of data analysis, decision making, and communication of workforce metrics. The final chapter integrates all these elements by explaining the defining characteristics of organizations that have successfully met the challenges. These include six characteristics to define the right perspective, eight to define the right measures, and six to define the right execution.

The only reason I'm not giving this book 5 stars (which I give very rarely) is that I'd like to see empirical evidence for the effectiveness of this scorecard process to confirm its theoretical plausibility. In addition, I do have some doubts about the probability that many companies will actually use such a sophisticated approach, particularly if it's up to HR.

How to increase the ROI of human "capital"
It is more important now than ever before to measure human performance accurately and consistently, especially given the rapidly increasing use of outsourcing which requires effective supervision of those to whom important tasks are entrusted. Although this book was written primarily for HR executives, I think it can also be of substantial interest and value to other senior-level executives as they are challenged to determine organizational priorities and then to formulate strategies by which to achieve specific objectives. I agree with countless others that is it difficult (if not impossible) to manage what cannot be measured. I am also convinced that appropriate metrics must be selected, and, that primary importance must be placed on measurement of those initiatives on which success (however defined) depends. The authors of this book provide a cohesive, comprehensive, and cost-effective program by which workforce success can be monitored and measured.

According to Huselid, Becker, and Beatty, their analysis "begins by being clear about what we need to know. If we don't know what we need to know, we will never know it. Too often we measure what is easy rather than what is right....Second, knowing a lot about the wrong thing not only is unhelpful, but can be misleading. The Workforce Scorecard points out that not all customers, strategies, or products are equal, [nor are all employees or workforces]...The harsh reality of managing people is that differentiation must occur, with some employees more equal than others." I agree while presuming to add that those who add the greatest value to the given customers are those who add the greatest value to the given employer. This is what the authors have in mind when noting the difference between equity and equality: "Equity means that those who give more will get more; equality means that all will be treated equally."

In this context, I am reminded of Carla O'Dell's discussion of many of these same issues in If Only We Knew What We Know in which she asserts that there are in almost all organizations what she calls "beds of knowledge" which are "hidden resources of intelligence that exist in almost every organization, relatively untapped and unmined." She recommends a number of strategies to "tap into "this hidden asset, capturing it, organizing it, transferring it, and using it to create customer value, operational excellence, and product innovation -- all the while increasing profits and effectiveness." This is precisely what Huselid, Becker, and Beatty have in mind when explaining the importance of identifying and then obtaining the information needed for managing human capital effectively to execute strategy.

I wish it were possible to reproduce within this brief commentary Figure 1.1 (on page 4) and Figure 1.2 (on page 7) which brilliantly illustrate the essential components of "Managing Human Strategy" and "Workforce Success: The Impact of Workforce Strategy on Business Strategy Execution." In fact, all of the Figures which supplement the narrative facilitate and expedite frequent review of the authors' key points after the book has been read.

With rigor and eloquence, Huselid, Becker, and Beatty examine three separate but related Challenges: Perspective (with an emphasis on differentiation), Metrics (and their relationship to strategy execution), and Execution (which holds senior executives and line managers accountable for workforce success). The authors suggest that all organizations which successfully meet these three challenges (i.e. those which "do it right") have these six characteristics in common:

1. HR professionals spend less time on employee performance than they did five years ago

2. The relationship between workforce success and strategy implementation defines the ROI of new HR initiatives.

3. Creating a shared mind-set is not taken for granted.

4. The HR function has a staffing structure that effectively balances the tension between being a strategic partner and delivering efficient and effective HR services.

5. Strategic workforce measures are "owned" and coordinated by a single individual or task force.

6. Senior executives, line managers, and HR professionals consider the results of the measurement system worth the implementation effort.

Although it may seem to some who read this brief commentary that this book will be of substantial value only to large organizations, I hasten to reassure them that, after appropriate modifications, what Huselid, Becker, and Beatty recommend can help any organization (regardless of size or nature) to improve the quality of their strategy execution by developing the right perspective on the contributions of its workforce to its success, and, by developing the right execution strategy to ensure that its managers are ready, willing, and able to use workforce metrics to drive business success.

I presume to add two additional points of my own: First, whatever the given metrics may be, they must be applied consistently so that variances can be identified and then addressed in a timely and effective manner. Otherwise, it will be impossible to measure accurately, for example, the discrepancy (if any) between what is expected of an individual and her or his performance. The same applies to departments, divisions, and business units as well as to the entire enterprise within which they are located. Also, while agreeing that what cannot be measured cannot be managed, I think that some measurements are more important than others. Hence the importance of setting priorities and then adjusting their order of importance when circumstances change.

MEASURE WHAT REALLY COUNTS-PEOPLE MAKE STRATEGY A REALITY!
This book puts a bright light on how and why an effective workforce strategy is crucial for the execution of business strategy. This vital link is explored in depth. The authors show how building on the HR function links to building the effective workforce which drives business success. The four elements of the scorecard form a series of building blocks culminating in strategy execution: 1) workforce mind-set and culture, 2) workforce competencies; 3) leadership and workforce behavior; and 4) workforce success. Ideally, workforce success is measured by its impact on business success (carrying out strategy). An extensive list of metrics is provided for these four elements. The authors bring together the HR scorecard, the workforce scorecard, and the balanced scorecard. There is an extensive discussion of strategy execution and also of the role of communication and learning programs. A final chapter provides a diagnostic tool for assessing the big picture-the capability to manage and measure the human capital dimension of strategy execution.

Finally, someone has got it right! As a reviewer, as well as a consultant (hrconsultant.com), I have seen HR fixated on measuring costs rather than profit-generating business results. This book helps us get away from seeing people exclusively as a cost (to be reduced, even if it's self-defeating) and turns to the the fact that people are the key value-creating asset. This is a terrrific book that makes it crystal clear: people turn strategy into business results...MEASURE THAT and maybe, just maybe, the light will dawn for top executives!