Like so many other daunting challenges in life, this report began with the best of intentions.
We thought it would be useful to synthesize our many HR research reports into a single paper that our reach of over 1 million HR professionals could read to get an overview of the work produced by the HR Research Institute.
After all, as of early 2018, we had produced 28 reports and figured no one outside our team was going to read them all. So, as a service to our members and the HR community at large, we began writing what internally we referred to as the Uber Report (uber as in “huge” or “supreme,” not as in a certain ride-sharing company). That was over a year ago...
Now, as we write this, it is June 2019 and we have produced 61 reports and counting. (Yes, another 33 reports in about a year's time!). We have, to put it mildly, been slightly busy. It has been a challenge to 'finish' a report that is, after all, by its very nature dynamic and unfinishable — a perennial work-in-progress that must be updated every time we publish more research.
Luckily for us, we had Richard Wellins, Ph.D., on the job. As our senior research analyst for this project, Rich not only took on this often thankless job but continued to champion it when others were busy striving to meet the deadlines on our many other projects. Rich read each and every report, extracted the most essential nuggets, and then formulated recommendations based upon the research findings in conjunction with his own seasoned expertise.
So, here we are, finally, on the verge of (at least temporarily) finishing the unfinishable project.
Please don't go anywhere, Rich. We have a sneaky feeling that there may be a few research updates ahead!
-- The HR Research Institute Team
Forget tangible assets; they are yesterday's news.
As of the late 20th century, value became far more dependent on intangible assets such as brand, proprietary data, research and development, trade secrets and all the other stuff that ultimately derives from —you guessed it— people.
Even if we can't count employees on a balance sheet, there's little doubt that a skilled employee's talent represents a potent asset. If, for example, an employee decides to take her or his talents elsewhere, employees can't just hire someone else off the street without regard to their skills. Such skills and talents are assets you can't touch: that is, such skills are the mother of all other intangible assets.
How important are intangible assets today? According to Forbes, intangible assets account for up to 80% of today's corporate balance sheet.
This shift largely accounts for why the role of the Human Resources profession has become so critical. The ways we manage our people not only drives the performance of our organizations but the dollars-and-cents value of those organizations. Yes, HR still plays an administrative role in many organizations, but its primary role in top organizations is strategic. That's why there's growing pressure on HR to drive and demonstrate the fiscal impact of HR planning, actions, programs and technologies.
To help them achieve this, HR.com has adopted as its primary mission 'to make HR professionals even smarter.' Therefore, research has become one of our primary businesses. We gather data from thousands of HR professionals spanning every industry and size of company. Moreover, although the majority of our members resides in North America, they are now increasingly joining our community from all over the world.
While we wish every HR.com member could take the time to read every report cover to cover, we know that demands on their time make this nearly impossible. So, we have distilled that data into twelve short pieces, each one highlighting a few key findings that readers can quickly absorb.
Our intent is to provide you, the reader, with valuable trend and benchmarking data as well as a finite set of practices that may help your organization become even more valuable in our era of intangible assets.
