Human Capital Essay - The Talent, Skills And Knowledge Of An... part 1 Essay - 3,012 words

Human capital - the talent, skills and knowledge of an organization - is one of those buzzwords that makes the rounds periodically. The concept of leveraging the human resources of an organization is not new, but the reality is that few companies realize the importance of looking beyond employees as merely an expense and recognizing the intrinsic value of human capital. The key is to calculate the return on investment (ROI) of that capital and leverage it to increase revenues. Of all the assets an organization has, the only one that produces any value is human capital. "You can have the most advanced equipment, but it just sits there until a human being leverages it," says Dr. Jac Fitz-Enz, founder of the Saratoga Institute and author of The ROI of Human Capital. "Human beings are the only active assets a company has." An enterprises, industries and countries are faced with grater competition as market are opened to global competition, the competitiveness of an enterprise or economy in the globalized market depends largely on its ability to adapt to changes in markets and to take advantage of the latest technological innovations.


To enhance this ability, the labor market have to be made more flexible. The terms labor flexibility can have two different interpretations. The first interpretation is so called negative flexibility which focuses on making workers more disposable and more adaptable to the changing requirements of the employer. Flexibility, as defined in this way, is opposed by most trade unions. The alternative to this meaning I flexibility in the interest of the workers. It allows greater freedom for workers in organizing their work and private lives, and also stimulates skilled and ambitious workers, because they have a better opportunity to progress.


What is labor flexibility? Labor flexibility can be defined as the ability of a firm and its employees to: adjust the level and timing of labor inputs in response to changes in demand vary wage levels according to productivity and/or profitability change workers tasks in response to changes in demand. There are four main types of flexibility: time flexibility flexible employment pay flexibility work organization flexibility. Improving every type of flexibility, appointed main advantages, the enterprise can create its own HR strategy. The main advantage of time flexibility is a worked-oriented meaning of flexible working time which includes the idea of time sovereignty: the ability to influence the patterns of the working day, week, year and lifetime to optimize the temporal linkages between employment, leisure, career development and domestic life. The flextime provides for personalization of the working day. Traditional rigid conceptions of working time do not anymore suit the diversity of employee interests. Working-oriented time flexibility leads to more women, particularly mothers, entering the workforce, encourages life-long learning as more time is allowed for study and training, and enables older workers to continue working while enjoying some of the benefits of retirement.


This can be beneficial to employers as well, as they have a lager, more diverse, and higher skilled supply of labor and can negotiate time schedules that benefit both employer and employee. One trend annualization of working time, which refers to the practice of calculating the working time on a yearly basis and enabling the working time to vary from week to week. but time flexibility has another type. It involves making workers more available and disposable to suit the changing requirements of employers. This can mean the extension of working time to unsocial hours and days, e.g. evening and night work or weekend work. It can also mean payment only for those hours when the employee can actually used at work.


An example is zero-hour contracts where the employee must be available, but is paid only if called to work. This can be very beneficial for employers, as labor expenses are incurred only when labor inputs are necessary. But treating labor mainly as a cost, as opposed to a valuable asset, also tends to cause the employees to be less loyal and less skilled, leading to higher employee turnover and lower productivity. Flexible Employment Flexible employment is any form of employment that is not full-time employment for an indefinite duration. Similar to the time flexible work described above it is also called atypical employment, contingent employment, precarious employment. It provides employers with an alternative standard, full-time, open-ended employment. It can be favorable for employees, because they could have more than one job at the same time and can freely organize their private lives. It provides the labor market with mobile workforce.


Its main types are: 1) part-time employment, 2) temporary work, 3) casual employment, 4) employment under tr ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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Essay Tags: work organization, human capital, flexibility, worker, industrial society

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