Measuring Human Capital

Stacey Bushfield and I are investigating ways of measuring the impact of human capital investment in public services as part of a project funded by the Scottish Government and ESRC. Currently we are at the stage of producing a literature review on the topic but are still searching for new material and insights into this problem. Has anyone come across or developed interesting ideas that you are willing to share with us? In return, we would be happy to send you our review.

The work done so far is a systematic review of most of what has been written on human capital and its relationships with social capital, organizational capital and innovation. This is linked to a discussion of public value and client outcomes from public services, an important topic in public sector management.

The next stage of the exercise is to investigate how public services currently measure their investments in human capital. Judging from our preliminary work, there is little evidence of predictive measures of the kind, 'to what extent does investment in, say, leadership development, pay-off in key outcomes measures' and the timing of any returns. If anyone has come across any examples of predictive measures of this kind, we would be pleased to hear about them and exchange ideas.