Developing Human Capital

In some ways, it's surprising that learning and development (L&D) is such a large and fast-growing industry-to the tune of around $80 billion. We no longer live in an era of lifelong employee loyalty, so why are the most successful companies, from Defense Acquisition University to Pfizer, still spending so much on L&D? They know how to measure the business benefit of L&D spending. Using case studies from these and other top firms, Gene Pease, Bonnie Beresford, and Lew Walker walk you through how to ensure that your human capital dollars are well spent. Developing Human Capital is one of the first works to explore learning and development from a data-driven, analytical standpoint. This text is remarkably comprehensive, explaining study design and alignment, measurement tools, and future analytics strategy. If you have no idea what to measure or how to measure it, this book is the perfect resource. Maybe you've been building the business case for training and other development for years, but without quantitative measurement, the business case is just marketing. This book explains why now is the time to develop a measurement strategy for your firm's L&D investments. To anyone in the HR or learning and development fields, it will come as no surprise that technology is central to developing human capital. Computer-based learning modalities, analytic software, and an overwhelming surplus of data are part of the new reality. The authors incisively add the generational shift and changing workplace to this mix, and the result is an enormous opportunity to gather information that will drive better human capital decisions. And by now it is so well known that it hardly bears repeating: in the 21st century, optimized human capital investment is the permanent home of competitive advantage.