Human Capital Measurement Practices in Polish Companies Empirical Evidence

Information on human capital is becoming one of the most important elements of the information base of companies in their struggle to gain competitive advantage on the market. Gathering and proper use of this information is essential for the understanding the drivers of business performance, enabling companies to identify future sources of value in the competitive environment of the organization. Thus, the effectiveness of the system of measuring human capital in the organization thus depends mainly on the proper selection of the sets of metrics and indicators. However, despite the increasing importance of human capital, the development of systems and tools for its measurement remains a major challenge for both theory and practice of management. There is a wide range of data on human capital that should be taken into account in the management of the organization, which should be linked to the information needs of the given organization. The paper focuses on human capital measurement practices of the companies operating in Poland. The outline of the research project entitled, Human capital as an element of company's value" will be presented, including the quantitative research findings of CATI questionnaire of a large sample of 600 companies (50 large, 150 medium sized and 400 small and micro). The aim of the study was to investigate the information needs, and currently used HC measurement tools of Polish enterprises of different sizes. The research focused primarily on: the experience of Polish entrepreneurs in the use of existing tools to measure human capital, the scope of information that is considered by Polish entrepreneurs in the measurement of human capital, factors that enable effective implementation and proper use of tools to measure human capital. The paper presents the major findings of this survey. Less than 15% of the surveyed companies apply human capital measurement on regular basis. The key reason for the measurement is the improvement of the personnel decision-making process and the need to reduce personnel costs. The study indicates that the main focus of the measurement is the cost-based perspective of human capital, as the most commonly used measures of HC are cost related: compensation costs, absenteeism, training costs and costs associated with staff turnover.