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Human Assets

In: Business and Management

Submitted By charlottetachu
Words 580
Pages 3
Human Assets versus Other Organizational Assets
September 18, 2014
Schuler and MacMillan (1984) stated that gaining and maintaining a competitive advantage is critical to any organization’s growth and prosperity, this involves recognizing and capitalizing on their human assets (p.1). Human assets are one of the most critical parts of a business that helps the company to maintain a competitive advantage in the market (Mello, 2015). Unfortunately, some organizations do not recognize and capitalize on their human assets. So why does senior management fail to realize the value of human assets versus other organizational assets. Human assets are often ignored compared to other assets because of five factors: management values, attitude toward risk, nature of employee skills, availability of outsourcing and utilitarianism. Each of these major factors affects how “investment oriented” a company is compared to other organizational assets (Mello, 2015, p. 12).
The first factor, management values and their actions involve the readiness of the company to integrate successful plans to invest in human assets; and the second factor, attitude toward risk involves the risks the company is willing to take to invest in their human assets (Mello, 2015). In order to lessen the risk associated with human asset investments, organizations need to develop successful strategies that appeal to their employees or risk losing their investments. Employees today, seek more of a challenging or non-traditional work arrangement than their predecessor and do not want the employer to think of them as owned (Mello, 2015; Newsweek, n.d.). Factor number three, the nature of the skills involves the specialized training provided by organizations; these skills may or may not be transferred to other organizations within market. Skills such as technical knowledge, commitment, teamwork, and

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