• What is Human Capital Management, and
• How is this different to HR Management?

The traditional HR structure consists of relatively independent “silos” addressing the different aspects of HR management, such as Remuneration and Benefits, Recruitment, Staff Development, Performance Management, Industrial Relations, and Personnel Administration.
Each of these “silos” acted virtually independently from the other with their own policies, practices and processes.

Some organizations have begun to integrate the processes of these functional silos into a unified cohesive overall strategy to maximize the return on investment in the organization’s human assets. This “integrated strategy” is called Human Capital Management.

• Human Capital Management is a strategic integrated approach to managing human capital throughout the career cycle: planning, attracting, retaining, developing, aligning, and transitioning the organization’s human assets.
• Human Capital Management is the end-to-end process of planning, recruiting, developing, managing, and compensating employees throughout the organization.
• It differentiates a company from it’s competition”.

Human Capital Management Processes in Organizations

Amongst the key concerns of senior IT management today is how to set up Human Capital Management processes in the organization to attract and retain appropriate talent. With the looming global shortage of talent, the mobility of the workforce today and insufficient high-level skills being developed in the developed world, the pressure is on IT management in the developing world to source and maintain the balance of skills and competencies needed to deliver organisational goals and strategies.

What is IT Human Capital Management

“Human Capital Management” is defined as being the processes and systems to ensure that the organisation has the right skills and abilities in the right place at the right time. Well – as a definition, that sounds good, but what does it really mean, and how do we get there?
Human Capital Management is not one single thing – it is a series of integrated processes that pull together to drive strategy delivery through “Organisational Capability” – that is, the effective management and use of Human Capital and their potential in the organisation.

IT Human Capital Management answers the following questions:

• How do we ensure that we have the rights skills to enable us to achieve our long-term goals?
• How do we create long-term career paths to help establish and retain key employees?
• How can we improve individual employee productivity and track and measure performance over time?
• How can we align individual, team and corporate goals to create a corporate culture where everybody understands how their day-to-day performance impacts the company’s goals?

To meet these needs a unified, integrated IT Human Capital Management solution needs to be crafted. The diagram below depicts Human Capital Management as an integrated system of processes.

Before IT Human Capital Management processes can be defined and implemented, there is a key “strategic” process that needs to be implemented.

• The Organisational Strategy needs to be defined and “rolled out” to the rest of the organisation.
• From Organisational Strategy the IT Strategy is derived.
• In order to deliver IT Strategy, the Organisational Structure needs to be reviewed to ensure that it is able to deliver the strategy.
• And from the IT Organisation Structure, IT Roles are defined, IT Job Descriptions drafted and an IT Competency Framework put in place that describes the complete set of competencies for each role to enable the IT organisation to deliver its strategy.

These IT Job Descriptions and IT Competency Framework are the FOUNDATION for IT Human Capital Management as they are CENTRAL to all IT Human Capital Management Processes – as the diagram above shows. None of these processes are new to HR practitioners, but the integration and the commitment and participation of line management in the processes is new – to HR and to line management.
TalentAlign provides products and services to help you save time and money in implementing YOUR IT Human Capital Management processes.

• Organization Design we have researched the IT industry and have created a hierarchy of roles found in the IT industry TODAY. This diagram and the invaluable Role Progression Matrix that shows the development of the different role – useful for career management and remuneration planning – are downloadable from the site.
• IT Role Descriptions – We provide over 450 generic, customizable IT Job Descriptions with a number of options to suite your needs.
• IT Competency Framework – we have created a framework of over 1000 IT competencies, including non-IT competencies used in the IT environment. This is fundamental information for all IT Talent Management processes.
• IT Competency Matrix– we have created a matrix of competencies that indicates graphically how competencies are grown, and how people grow through the development of competencies to achieve the outcomes and deliverables of the job.
• IT Competency Matrix – we have created a matrix of IT jobs on one axis and Competencies on the other so you can map how Competencies grow through jobs in the IT environment.
• Strategic IT Workforce Planning – we provide information on the process of Workforce Planning as well as information to help you implement Workforce Planning in your organisation.
• Resourcing Strategy – IT talent resourcing is no longer just about Recruitment and Selection. With the shortage of skills available, organisations are going to need to be more creative in their IT Talent Resourcing Strategy. We will provide information and statistics to guide you in this process.
• Onboarding – how employees are introduced to the organisation has a major impact on their commitment to the organisation and their desire to remain with the organisation. We will provide information to help you put methodologies in place to introduce and retain key it people.
• IT Career Management – is one of the most important elements of IT staff retention. Through our generic “organogram” and our “IT Role Progression Matrix”, we provide guidance for career management as well as articles on how to approach career planning in the organisation.
• Learning and Development – is a vital element of ensuring that the organisation has the skills and competencies necessary to drive strategy. Fundamental to Learning and Development is the IT Competency Framework. We also provide Career Coaching as a service – acknowledged as giving the greatest return on investment in Talent Management today.
• Succession Planning – a critical activity that ensures that roles and people critical to the delivery of strategy are not impacted on the untimely departure of key personnel.
  Rewards Strategy the process of aligning individual and team behaviours and performance with organisational goals through compensation, benefits and rewards.
• Performance Management – the process of measuring the effectiveness of all strategy driving processes in actually delivering the required results. We provide information to help you put the right metrics and methods of measurement in place.

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Human Capital Management – New Generation IT Talent Management
The IT skills shortage is set to worsen leading up to 2010 – globally! And it has nothing to do with soccer! What does this mean for South Africa? Well, for one thing, it means that there is going to be increasing pressure from outside of South Africa for our high-level skills to move to the developed world. Not because of crime, not because they’re not happy – but because they CAN! read more …

IT Staff Attraction and Retention Presentation
Organisations are already starting to feel the “pinch” of the IT talent shortage. Over the next few years implementing IT Talent Strategies that cater for attraction and retention are going to be crucial to the achievement of organisational goals. This is a presentation from given to the CSSA in Cape Town on the 22nd May 2007. Download presentation NOTES here! read more …

IT Staff Attraction and Retention Workshop
Organisations are already starting to feel the “pinch” of the IT talent shortage. Over the next few years implementing IT Talent Strategies that cater for attraction and retention are going to be crucial to the achievement of organisational goals. This is a presentation from a workshop in Johannesburg on the 29th May 2007. Download presentation NOTES here! read more …

Click here to see how TalentAlign can help with your Human Capital Strategy.

Click here to see how TalentAlign can help with your Human Capital Planning

Click here to see how TalentAlign can help with your Human Capital Acquiring

Click here to see how TalentAlign can help with your Human Capital Development

Click here to see how TalentAlign can help with your Human Capital Aligning