A few HCM concepts I've been noodling on for some time ...

1. Employee Value Indicators … various dimensions, numerically scored, that complement a Performance Rating or revenue-generation metric – thereby presenting a broader picture of the employee’s value to the organization. These dimensions might include latent competencies, trajectory of an employee’s engagement level, and trajectory of the value of an employee’s particular competencies (i.e., will become more or less business-critical).

2. Latent Competencies … competencies that employees possess that might be invisible to the organization, and therefore not leveraged, because they are not relevant to their current job function. Various HCM systems only track competencies at the position level.

3. Total Realized Value (or “TRV”) on HCM Solutions … is the degree to which the broad potential value that an HCM Solution can deliver gets marginally (or even significantly) reduced due to such factors as system underutilization, improper utilization, ineffective change management (causing lower system adoption), data model compatibility issues, on-going system integration issues, the need to alter well-conceived business processes to accommodate system idiosyncrasies, or the need to develop and maintain elaborate competency models.

4. Job Milieux … as implied by this French word for environment or setting … Job Milieux factors might include a direct boss’ management style, whether work is team or individual-based, whether the culture at work is formal or informal, whether the organization is in rapid change mode or more steady-state, etc. The importance of Job Milieux is that these factors could all potentially influence job performance, but influence performance or productivity differently for different employees.

5. Total Rewards Optimization … Related to the notion of Personalizing rewards, but also factoring-in both cost as well as value perceived by the individual, employers will likely be putting forth more effort toward maintaining an “optimal rewards and engagement/retention plan” for every key employee. The objective is to generate the biggest bang (perceived value = better retention and engagement impact) for the buck. Inherent in this exercise is the fact that (a) non-financial types of rewards (like an opportunity to be exposed to different parts of the business) can have the biggest impact in some individual situations, and (b) individual situations are not static very long so these plans must be updated as needed.