【正文】 te your organization’s performance, what measures e to mind?Chances are, you first think about your balance sheet measures: how much revenue did we generate last quarter, how much was our growth in sales and profits or what gains did we make in our market share? Next, you may think about the costs: equipment, material, travel and so on. Or perhaps it is your customer measures that e up for consideration: have plaints increased, are they repurchasing our products? These key performance indicators (KPIs) are important and you consider them on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis.What is often missing from this list is an area that accounts for one of your largest expenses and perhaps creates the most value: your people, or what many now call “Human Capital”. People are one of the most important indicators of an organization’s ability to create and sustain value: they e up with the ideas for new innovations, they delight your customers, and they produce your products. In spite of this, many organizations have difficulty demonstrating how spending on people and people programs produce a return on investment.Human Capital Measurement (HCM) bridges this gap by helping organizations focus on people measures, to better understand and predict how employees contribute to their success. It allows panies to quantify how employees are impacted by programs such as training and development, recognition and worklife balance. It also assesses how employees react to organizational changes such as mergers or major restructuring. Most importantly, it can provide the same level of rigor that other areas of your business apply to evaluate their investments.Hewitt Associates has developed a leadership position in the use of Human Capital Measurement. Our Best Employers research supports a growing amount of evidence connecting effective people management with longterm organizational performance. Similarly, we have a number of HCM approaches that we have applied to help organizations sharpen their people investment strategies. In this issue of HQ, we give you some insight into our approach to HCM and describe several specific client situations where this approach has helped them achieve their strategic goals and realize tangible results. Our philosophy toward HCM is to align the approach to your specific situation. We illustrate a wide range of approaches that describe how people scorecards and key organizational performance metrics are developed, optimal people behaviors identified and predictive models framed.HCM can appear daunting and plex but our consultants can work with you from wherever you are starting and to whatever level of sophistication you desire, to help you understand and realize the value of your human capital. HCM is fun, challenging and a leadingedge work. It provides our consultants with a feeling of success and it produces great value for our clients.Mick BennettManaging Director, Asia PacificHewitt Associates LLCThe average human life span has risen dramatically from a life expectancy of 40 in the early 1900s to 75 years at the turn of the millennium. The human race has learned what factors need to be monitored to increase longevity: a balanced diet, regular exercise, monitoring key measures such as blood pressure, cholesterol, etc. Identifying, monitoring and acting on the right measures has doubled the human life span in one century.Company life expectancy has not fared as well. In the late 1920s and 1930s the average pany life span was over 60 years. Now the average life span of panies is 1215 years. So many panies will “die” in their teens and only a handful will survive into the next century.To plicate the situation, the world as a marketplace is shrinking and petitors straddle the globe. A new service offering is duplicated within hours, a product launch sees petitors39。? reply on the shop shelves within days and a technical breakthrough is copied within weeks. The sourcing of raw material and talent spans the globe. So does the supply. Along with these changes, the days of a lone entrepreneur who performed all functions singlehandedly or with a couple of apprentices are long gone. Today, worldclass factories that house nonstop assembly lines work with hundreds of employees. Products, processes and technology are easily available or duplicated. So why do some panies survive and others fail in a short period of time?The pany’s workforce has emerged as a key asset and is often described as the only petitive advantage that a pany possesses. Employee behavior, the knowledge and experience they bring, together with their mitment to the organization are key drivers for sustainability and growth.Squeezing savings in the supply chain, ensuring higher capacity utilization at the shop floor, continuously upgrading the product and delighting customers with efficient service models are all efforts that are steered by employees. Every business needs workers who take ownership of their work and the workplace. They need to be bargain buyers, effective salespeople, have unfaltering faith in their products, zealously guard their customers, painstakingly track the petition and above all, have an unpromising mitment, loyalty and honesty towards the organization and its stakeholders.To survive, sustain and grow in this context, where employee excellence is required more than ever before to achieve sustainable growth, the role of the corporation has been changing too. The old systems of training, monitoring and awarding employees are inadequate. The sheer size of businesses deems that impractical. Businesses now need to focus on attracting, retaining and harnessing the best talent in a more holistic and strategic manner.To be successful in all this, panies need to measure the value that employees bring to the organization, evaluate their impact on business performance and then align them with the business results. Companies have always measured their investmen