2. Tie human capital plans to business outcomes
Human capital matters must not be viewed as tied to a cost center, but as investments
with some return expected.
From a human capital point of view, you can do one of two things:
• Help increase revenue per employee, or
• Optimize or minimize the cost per employee
If you go for the first option, then take into account all the things that you offer which
are unique to your organization. Offering differentiated products enables you to
dominate a market. And those products or services cannot be offered without the
tremendous talents of your workers.
You have to be careful about the second option though. With minimizing, you do not
want to bring the cost per employee so low that you then face retention issues. Focus
instead on optimizing.