Encouraging employers to use human capital reporting: A review of options
This Review explores options to encourage employers to adopt and use human capital reporting (HCR), in which employees are not solely seen as a cost but also as an intangible asset to their organisation. Greater HCR is seen as a way to optimise employer investment in workforce skills.
Greater human capital reporting (HCR) is seen as one possible way towards improving in-firm information, the failure of which is a key barrier to optimising employer investment in skills. Through a review of literature, interviews with professional and academic experts and case studies with employers, RAND Europe develops and refines three options to encourage employers to adopt and use HCR:
- mandatory reporting – the mandatory imposition of HCR via regulatory changes
- code of practice/best practice guidance – whereby organisations voluntarily provide information on their adherence to a best practice code; and
- cultural shift – whereby organisations are influenced to change their behaviour in relation to HCR.
HCR is one of a range of policy levers, or best market solutions, which are designed to encourage employers to train on a collective basis (Collective Measures). This Review seeks to develop our understanding of ways in which this best market solution can be introduced to employers in order to raise workforce skill levels.
