ATLANTA, Ga., Feb. 20, 2002 — Increasingly, energy companies are finding an effective, long-term competitive strategy is to invest in their human resource “assets” — their employees.
Those companies are also increasingly using metrics to measure the value of their human capital, according to energy and human resources experts cited in the Energy Competition Strategy Report.
At PECO Energy, an energy delivery business unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corp., for example, company leaders realize that if PECO’s employees are not knowledgeable about their jobs, and if they are not happy, their customers won’t be well-served and happy either. To achieve its goal of being number one in customer satisfaction nationally, PECO Energy makes major investments in customer relations training for all employees.
That training is a tool to leverage the employees’ social and intellectual capital — a key company asset — to have an impact on the company’s performance. Other such tools, according to one expert, are culture management, organizational development, staffing strategies, performance management strategies, and reward and recognition strategies.
Once these programs are put in place, measuring the results becomes essential – in the same way as measuring the growth of other company assets is essential. Some companies are creating new balance sheets to account for their human capital, and using metrics including human capital ROI, human capital value added, and training investment factor to quantify the value of employees.
