Across industries, financial management is paramount. But with capital being abundant and talent scarce, CEOs must prioritise human capital management.

For decades financial capital has been seen as a company’s most precious resource. The success of a CEO is often defined by how well he or she manages and allocates it. However the emphasis placed on financial capital is not a true reflection of its availability as a resource. According to Bain’s Macro Trends Group, global financial capital has tripled over the past 30 years, equalling nearly 10 times the global GDP. It is also cheap. Thanks to factors such as global quantitative easing and relatively low demand for R&D and capital investments, the real cost of borrowing is at rock bottom.

While financial capital is now fairly easy to come by for any reasonably well-performing, established company, the same cannot be said for human capital. In terms of the time, talent and energy of a company’s workforce, it is actually the scarcest resource. Time is finite. And talent – especially the kind the Harvard Business Review refers to as “difference-making” – is rare.

The war for talent is predicated on the difficulty of finding, developing, and retaining talent. Energy, also limited, equates to the amount of inspired employees in a company’s workforce: Harvard Business Review’s research found that these individuals are three times more productive. It is essential to identify them, and make sure they are assigned to mission-critical roles and initiatives.

One of the reasons human capital management tends not to get the attention it deserves is the perception that it cannot be measured. However, it can be measured, the therefore properly managed. Metrics such as the Harvard Business Review’s productive power index, for example, “looks at the cost of organizational drag and the benefits of effective talent and energy management on your overall productive power.” One can measure the time expended on a project against its returns. The amount of difference-making talent is another valid measure.

Because time really is money, human capital can be invested in much the same way as financial capital. One metric is the “opportunity cost” of a lost hour. When it comes to gobbling up time, meetings are a prime culprit. Bain & Company looked at one large company’s use of time, and found that 300,000 hours a year were spent on a weekly executive committee meeting. Projects should also be considered in terms of hours and dollars, by taking the opportunity cost of time and talent into account. It is also possible to monitor human capital. Big data tools, such as Microsoft Workplace Analytics, can generate reports on how time is being used.

If the kinds of rewards bestowed upon CEOs and other senior executives for their management of financial capital were proffered for human capital management, the latter would doubtless become a higher priority. Further, given the higher productivity of inspired employees, leaders should be recognised for being inspiring. High-performing employees are worth their weight in gold; therefore executive performance might be measured by the ability to recruit, develop and retain them.

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