Product Description

The lifeblood of any business enterprise is its people. Yet it wasn’t until the publication of the groundbreaking book The ROI of Human Capital that there was a reliable way to quantify the contributions of people to corporate profit.

The second edition contains new material on topics including corporate outsourcing, developments in behavioral science, and advances in trending and forecasting that have dramatically changed the way organizations measure the bottom line effect of employee performance. Utterly up-to-date, this is the go-to resource for organizations performing the essential task of measuring the value of their people.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #174488 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

About the Author
Jac Fitz-Enz has been called “the father of human performance benchmarking.” He is founder of the Saratoga Institute, known worldwide for its pioneering research and reports on performance measurement and improvement, and of the consulting firm Human Capital Source.

Customer Reviews

Easy read - limited depth
Fitz-enz has a very chatty and easy to read style, which makes his contribution to what can be a rather dry topic a pleasant change. For example, he uses examples such as his son's experiences with a company, to which I think everyone could relate. I love his comment on "error". He argues that people who constantly complain would have benefited from a "good spanking early in life" which would have as adults "a more tolerant viewpoint".

The book tries to tackle the thorny issuer of measuring the contribution of human capital. I personally liked how he tried to adapt the Profit and Loss Account for human capital. I also made use of his adaptations of EVA and CVA for use in measuring human capital. There is also some discussion of key HR issues such as mergers.

The main difficulty I had with this book is that all aspects of measuring the return on human capital are discussed at a fairly superficial level and there is very little in depth discussion. I would say therefore that this book is a nice introduction to the topic. It allows the reader to easily understand some of the main issues and these can then be followed up in more depth elsewhere. The fact this book is so easy to read means that it is very accessible to non-native speakers of English.

Highly Recommended!
Jac Fitz-enz presents a breakthrough approach to measuring your return on investment (ROI) in human capital. This book could have been dull, dry and dusty in someone else's hands, but instead is absorbing and a pleasure to read. Using studies done by the Saratoga Institute - his own facility - and drawing upon the work of other researchers as well, the author places this new methodology in the context of today's business challenges, including e-commerce. He pinpoints satisfaction as the baseline value employees pursue, and shows how you will profit by working toward employee fulfillment. We highly recommend this book to those in human resources, and to managers, executives and entrepreneurs who run their own businesses.