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Investing In People summary

Name: Investing In People
Rating: 4.3 (15 reviews)
Author: Wayne Cascio and John Boudreau

Wayne Cascio and John Boudreau

Financial Impact of Human Resource Initiatives

4.3 (15 ratings)

15 mins

Table of Contents

Investing In People
summarized in 8 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 8

What’s in it for me? Learn why effective HR is crucial to success and how you can achieve it.

Are you passionate about human resources? Probably not. In all the areas of business, personnel management is considered the least sexy of roles. This attitude often leads to HR becoming the “forgotten zone,” with managers apathetic about its activities, as long as they’re not too expensive.

Yet HR is one the most important elements in the profitability of a business. The bottom line: companies that constantly improve their personnel strategies do better than those companies that ignore them.

These blinks show you just how important human resources can be and how you can make your company’s HR department as strong as possible.

In these blinks, you’ll discover

why you need a LAMP to shine a light on human resources;
how you can make your employees healthier people; and
how one visionary manager doubled employee pay and increased profits.

Great HR and your company shines. Poor HR and your company suffers. Ignore HR at your peril!

The importance of human resources as a key driver of a company’s success is acknowledged but rarely appreciated.

Any manager knows it’s important to have and maintain good employees. But could you, if pressed, articulate what’s good and what’s not about your own personnel management strategies?

Many managers can’t, and continue to fumble with HR, for better or often, worse. The fact is that human resources is a crucial element in determining whether your company will grow and thrive.

Why then, do we so often value HR not on its effectiveness but solely on whether it’s efficient?

You might easily see the connection between effective marketing and revenues, but teasing out the link between HR and financial success is trickier. Because of this, business leaders are largely indifferent to human resources issues, and only assess strategies with regard to cost efficiency.

But the advantages of good HR are plain to see. Companies depend on both the quality and commitment of employees. The Hay Group’s “World's Most Admired Companies” list even shows that companies that treat their people as valuable assets are as a rule more successful.

It's paramount to make the connection between decisions regarding human resources and a company’s financial performance visible and understandable.

But what’s the best method for doing so?

One powerful option is to use the LAMP framework, an acronym that stands for logic, analytics, measure and process.

LAMP is about understanding the logic behind a problem, finding the correct ways to measure it, analyzing the data and creating a process to respond to the issues you’ve discovered.

Want to learn how to shine your own LAMP on your HR processes? Read on for more.

Establish a logical framework to get behind the numbers to figure out the real HR problem.

When a company wants to measure success, what does it do? Most companies will simply look to data. But if all you do is crunch numbers, you’ll miss out on some deeper issues.

To start making better decisions, you need to look at the issues behind the numbers.

Only a sound analysis of data will lead you to relevant insights and help you sniff out solutions.

If you ever tackled a college thesis paper, you know the challenges of sifting through tons of data. But only once you have all the necessary data, can you start the real work of analysis and writing.

Data without analysis – “A” in LAMP – doesn’t make a good thesis, nor does it make a good HR strategy.

Choosing appropriate measurement techniques helps put your HR problems in context.

From punctuality to turnover, there is a whole range of metrics for human resources. But as a manager, you’ll learn nothing without a good grasp of your problem’s context.

Decreasing employee turnover, for example, seems like a worthy goal. Your employees will be overall more experienced, and you’ll spend less time and money finding and training replacements.

To put your insights into practice, it's important to get non-HR managers on board.

After all that hard work in researching HR problems, you need to make sure the company benefits from your new insights. In other words, company managers need to get on board to make your new HR processes a success.

If you want your insights to shape decisions and conduct, you or your HR managers have to keep in mind that each company branch has its own priorities and focus.

Eliminate unnecessary expenses through absenteeism by investing in your employees’ health.

It’s a worker’s nightmare. A coworker falls ill, and suddenly, all her work is on your plate, too. It’s high time that companies pay more attention to health at work!

The largest share of health-care costs – some 75 percent – actually stems from a small number of diseases strongly related to lifestyle choices: cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity.

Employee happiness and financial success are linked. Make it your priority to boost morale.

In January 1914, Henry Ford cut the work day for his employees to eight hours and increased the daily minimum wage to $5, almost double its previous level.

People thought Ford had gone mad. But his pro-employee decision proved successful, as workers performed better and worked harder as a result.

Work-life programs benefit both employees and companies. Today, more employees expect them.

Some employees are “married” to their jobs. But for many, life is more than just a career. Importantly, work-life programs are on the rise. So how exactly can such programs help your company?

The aim of work-life programs is to help employees find a balance between employment responsibilities and personal life. As the structure of work has changed radically in recent decades, so too have the needs of employees.

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What is Investing In People about?

Investing in People (2011) shines a light on human resources, a crucial department in a successful company that too often is undervalued and underappreciated. A savvy personnel strategy can fine tune a company’s performance and boost employee well-being. The book provides an easy-to-follow, four-step process to improving your human resources strategies.

Best quote from Investing In People

Analytics transforms HR logic and measure into rigorous, relevant insights.

—Wayne Cascio and John Boudreau

Who should read Investing In People?

Leaders and managers in human resources
Entrepreneurs looking to expand their company’s workforce
Employees interested in ways the workplace could be improved

About the Author

Wayne F. Cascio is a distinguished professor at the University of Colorado, and holds the Robert H. Reynolds Chair in Global Leadership at the University of Colorado Denver.

John Boudreau is research director at the Center for Effective Organizations and professor of management and organization in the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.

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