HR Elevated

Organizational Optimization Through People Optimization It’s quite insightful to comb through  Fortune  magazine’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For and compare each one to the top financial and growth performers in their industry. Interestingly enough, they are either at or near the top of their industry's list. I’m convinced there is not only a correlation but a cause and effect relationship. Some argue that the causal relationship goes from success to taking care of their people. Personally, I’ve never experienced such a relationship, nor have I read any research that supports such a claim. Let’s look at the more obvious relationship—achieving organizational optimization through people optimization. What does it mean to optimize an organization? Let’s start with the central point in this phrase—optimization or optimize. To optimize is to make as effective, perfect or useful as possible or to make the best of. I don’t think it would be too much of a stre...

Return on Value: Measuring the Impact of  Developing People   Return on investment (ROI) is a widely accepted metric when it comes to measuring financial benefits received from the use of resources. However, I’ve come to question the accuracy - and even the integrity - of using it in measuring the impact from developing people. Even with the most complex calculations, it is virtually impossible to account for and extract the impact of the variables that contribute to the financial gains from developing people. Instead, I’ve come to realize that return on value (ROV) is a much more accurate and transparent measure of impact or benefit received, particularly when assessing development activities. Please permit me to explain. Let’s start by clarifying the distinction between ROI and ROV (I’ll simply refer to it as value). The simplest explanation is that they are related, just like the rectangle and the square. Remember the distinction taught in elementary s...