human capital management (HCM) Human capital management (HCM) is an approach to employee staffing that perceives people as assets (human capital) whose current value can be measured and whose future value can be enhanced through investment. The term human capital management can be controversial because the word capital has an impersonal connotation, implying that employees are simply an expensive operating cost that should be minimized whenever possible. A responsible human capital management strategy, however, is built upon the understanding that an organizations employees are its most valuable asset -- and spending time and energy on keeping records that allow managers to effectively manage staff development and promote employee engagement will help the organization achieve both its short and long-term monetary goals. Successful human capital management requires a lot of documentation and HCM software can streamline and automate many of the day-to-day record-keeping processes. When an organization evaluates an HCM system investment, it must weigh the benefits of a standalone HCM approach against those of an all-in-one enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite that includes HCM modules. In a large enterprise, having one integrated platform with a single database for everything can save on the cost of maintaining and upgrading individual software applications and application program interfaces (APIs). In a small or midsize company, however, it may just be easier to manually enter the same data into multiple systems.
Posted on: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 08:00:28 +0000