The Human Capital element’s contribution to business success can not be over emphasized. This critical factor therefore necessitates that rapt attention must be paid to the prevailing culture and practices of every organization, especially as they determine the A to Z of the Human Capital Development among others.
What then forms the basis of an organization’s corporate culture? As an entrepreneur what is your personal vision and mission? These, more often than not will greatly influence the vision and mission of the business and equally shapes the process of business objectives development and goals setting
I must add at this point that, the personal core values of the visionary (the leader), shapes and feeds the values to the leadership team. This flows from top to bottom (organization-wide), and directly or indirectly shapes the organizational culture.
How do all these then influence the Human Capital Development of the organization, you might ask? For the purpose of this write up let us examine the full lifecycle of an employee and see how a good/bad or suitable or unsuitable corporate culture impacts and shapes employees from recruitment to exit stage. From the very beginning we realize that certain factors, call them preferences or prejudices determine who is recruited. Without mincing words, these, you will discover are most likely based on the core values of the interview panel members and or those of the organization’s or respective department’s leadership.
Following the conclusion of the recruitment exercise, the orientation and on-boarding is usually the next stage. Again, this is heavily colored by the prevailing culture, the organization’s vision and plans for the new employee’s settling-down/assimilation, productivity and career development priorities. This is by and large the same for the remainder of the employee lifecycle. It typically reflects in the annual skills gap management needs to personal effectiveness/soft skills development needs. Also, from the systemic management of succession planning for critical roles and mentoring/coaching for or otherwise, to understudying program management up to the exit stage.
Summarily, an organization’s vision, mission, objectives, and core values shape corporate culture and invariably in turn shape the Human Capital element amongst other elements. Now having said that, the following key questions are essential for all business leaders out there:
To What Extent Am I Raising Leaders?
You are raising a team of leaders when you have an open-door policy across board in your organization. When for example, the decision-making mechanism is such that superior argument carries the day and not compulsorily the boss’s.
When you can confidently expend resources for training and development of your employees irrespective of the obvious reality that they can opt out and leave your organization anytime in spite of your investments in their professional personal development. And you, full of the assurance that wherever such employees find themselves, they are busy making positive dents to make the world a better place.
On the contrary, when those employees choose to stay and not leave your enterprise, the impacts of the investments in their developments are truly rewarding and fulfilling.
Am I Building Local or Global Enterprise?
What is the true yardstick for measuring performance?
Performance is best measured at individual employee’s and corporate levels. The is very important for enterprises with ambition to compete with global brands and play at the global stage.
The earlier the employees are taught to inculcate the global best practices culture to drive the business growth the better. In other words, the earlier employees and teams are made to understand the corporate culture is that of a local firm with an ambition of a global champion, the quicker and better they get on the quest to drive the business in the direction of a global championship.
Am I Developing And Replicating The Spirit of Enterprise?
One thing you should not do mistakenly or intentionally is to be the only go-to person in your business for any subject matter for any period of more than 3 months straight.
The spirit of enterprise dictates that problems are meant to be solved and barriers are meant to be worked on till we get around them. Again, with reference to corporate culture and how it impacts Human Capital recruitment, this factor most likely might have already heavily influenced your recruitment style or strategy. Now, rather than offering a contract of employment to the guy with the many certificates, the spirit of enterprise is more interested in the other guy without so much certificates but with a track record of problems solved or with potentials to be a mega problem solver given certain variables you can observe. Little wonder many fortune 500 firms have started doing away with the college degree entry requirement. That right there is the point.
The fire of enterprise continues to burn in your employee’s development. It may be in the form of continuous periodic recognitions and celebrations of the ‘rock-star’ performances, or you go out of your way to have regular feedbacks on how to approach different subjects and issues in and outside the business. It may also be that employees are having the enterprise challenge while working on different projects all year round.
In closing, the cherry on top of all I have discussed above is a critical tool for driving business growth using human capital development continuous vision casting. Define what business success is for your business per time. Where we are and what the goals are per time. The importance of what must be done to achieve business success within certain time frame, and so on. This may be weekly in meetings, surveys, newsletters, performance reviews, and so on. Whatever works best for employees to accomplish success in their respective roles and in turn adding up to business growth.
