Business

WHAT IF COMPANIES MANAGED PEOPLE AS CAREFULLY AS THEY MANAGE MONEY

This Time executives spend a lot of time managing the balance sheet, despite the fact that it doesn’t represent their company’s scarcest resource. Financial capital is impartially abundant and cheap. According to Bain’s Macro Trends Group, the global supply of capital stands at nearly 8 times global GDP. As a result of capital supers abundance, global quantitative easing and relatively low demand for investments in R&D and capital projects, the after-tax cost of borrowing for many companies is at or near inflation, making the real cost of borrowing close to zero.

In contrast, today’s scarcest resource is your human capital, as restrained by the time, talent and energy of your workforce. Time, whether measured by hours in a day or days in a career, is finite. Difference-making talent is also scarce. The average company considers only about 20% of its employees to be difference makers. Finding, developing, and retaining this talent is hard — so much so that the business press refers to a “war” for talent. Energy, too, is difficult to come by. Though intangible, it can be measured by the number of inspired employees in your workforce. Based on our research, inspired employees are three times more productive than dissatisfied employees, but they are rare. For most organizations, only one out of eight employees is stimulated.

There you have it. Financial capital is abundant but carefully managed; human capital is scarce but not carefully managed. Why? In part, it’s because we value and reward good management of financial capital. And we measure it. Great CEOs are held in high regard for their clever management and allocation of financial capital. But today’s great CEOs need to be equally great at managing human capital.

How can we realize human capital well?

Measure it. As the adage goes, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. A veritable alphabet soup (ROA, RONA, ROIC, ROCE, IRR, MVA, APV, and the like) exists to measure our financial capital. To measure human capital, you can deploy metrics such as our productive power index, which looks at the cost of organizational drag and the benefits of effective talent and energy management on your overall productive power. You can measure the amount and value of the time that you put against projects or initiatives, and you can measure the return on that time. You can actively measure the amount of difference-making talent that you have in your organization. When Caesars Entertainment, a gaming company, reorganized operations in 2011, the senior team not only developed a database on the performance and the potential of the company’s top 2,000 managers but also analyzed the ability of the top 150 to take on new and different jobs.

Invest human capital just like you invest financial capital. For financial capital, the business world has developed concepts such as the opportunity cost of capital, which is reflected in a company’s weighted average cost of capital. We measure the lifetime value of investments, and we establish hurdle rates before deploying a single dollar of capital. We run Monte Carlo simulations to evaluate various returns under uncertainty. For human capital, we need to start thinking about the opportunity cost of a lost hour. One way to do this is to measure the cost of meetings. My colleagues at Bain discovered that a weekly executive committee meeting at one company consumed 300,000 hours a year in support time from departments across the company. When Woodside, an Australian oil and gas company, took a hard look at meetings, it discovered that they were consuming 25%–50% of staff’s time. A series of pilots reduced meeting time by an average of 14% among the pilot groups — a time savings equal to 7% of those groups’ full-time equivalent capacity. We should think about projects in terms of hours and dollars as well, and before taking on a new meeting or new initiative, include the opportunity cost of time and talent in the hurdle rate.

Monitor it. Teams of financial planning and analysis professionals measure actual and expected results for financial capital. Investment management committees evaluate new investments. Capital expenditure plans are subjected to detailed board reviews. We all must submit capital approval requests to release funds. Similarly, for human capital we should do periodic reviews of how much controllable organizational drag we have in our organization and what actions we are taking to compress it. Many big data tools, such as Microsoft Workplace Analytics, can provide detailed reviews of how we use time. For talent, we need to know who our difference makers are and whether they are deployed in mission-critical roles and initiatives.

Consider the case of one B2B supplier that wanted to figure out what made some salespeople top performers. A statistical analysis of metrics from Workplace Analytics and other factors revealed that top performers and average performers spent their time differently. Some of the differences were obvious: spending an average of four more hours per week than other reps communicating with customers, or being 25% more likely to cross-sell. But some behavior was surprising. For example, top performers were three times more likely to interact with multiple groups inside the company. In other words, they connected with people who could help them with customer issues, such as staff in finance, legal, pricing, or marketing.

Recognize and reward good management of time, talent, and energy. Historically, successful investment of financial capital can make someone’s career. Variable compensation is often tied to some measure of economic value added. Even though most companies no longer offer lifetime employment, they should still find a way to create a lifetime of assignments for their difference-making talent and work hard every day to re-recruit them by creating a working environment that is inspiring and results oriented. When Reid Hoffman founded LinkedIn, he promised that the company would help advance the careers of talented employees who signed on for two to four years and made an important contribution, either offering them another tour of duty at LinkedIn or supporting their efforts if they moved on. This tour-of-duty approach helped attract and retain entrepreneurial employees.

Leaders should be measured and rewarded on their inspiration quotient. They should also be measured and rewarded for building a talent balance sheet: how many high-potential individuals they have recruited, developed, and retained, and what is the trade balance of talent — that is, the net imports of high-potential talent into their group minus exports. A company’s actual values, reads Netflix’s famous HR playbook, “are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go.”

These are only some of the ways that we might begin to bring greater discipline to human capital management. There are likely many more creative solutions out there. Time is finite. Talent is scarce and worth fighting for. Energy can be created and destroyed. The sooner we act on these beliefs, the sooner we will get the return on human capital that we deserve.

Eric Garton is a partner in Bain & Company’s Chicago office and leader of the firm’s Global Organization practice. He is coauthor of Time, Talent, Energy: Overcome Organizational Drag and Unleash Your Team’s Productive Power (HBR Press, March 2017).

10 New Ideas for Making Money on the Side    

1. Join the sharing economy.

It is imperative for brands to consider how to support and participate in collaborative consumption, rather than compete against it."

The sharing economy is ignition and the main demographic in the country, millennial, have embraced it. For 2017, look beyond Uber, Lyft and AirBnb when looking to tap into this market. You can rent out your car on Turo, camera equipment on Cameralends, snowboard or bike on Spinlister and, if you own one, your sailboat on Sailo. Besides renting out the stuff that you already own, you can deliver home-cooked meals with Kitchen.

                            

2. Launch a box delivers service.

If you want to tap your local or niche market then a box delivers service is the place to start. Over the last couple of years we’ve seen an explosion of box delivers  services in niches ranging from beauty to food to gaming to novelty gifts. Since the goods or services are delivered to the customer each month, and it has a recurring billing model, it can quickly become a lucrative and passive source of income. Here’s a list of possible box service ideas to get you started. reached your office and home and picnic point .

3. Take over a mobile food truck services.

More and more people, especially those between the ages of 17 to 35, are patronizing food trucks and that's why the food truck industry is expected to surpass $10,000 million by 2019. For savvy entrepreneurs, food trucks are an appealing business because it’s cheap and fresh  to start, isn’t strapped down to a one location, can be a part-time side gig and you don't have to start from scratch. Every day thousands of baby boomers retire. If you know any baby boomer looking to get out of the food industry, consider purchasing their established business, which should include customers, recipes, and equipment at the very least.

kitchen Crossly was able to purchase several food trucks and recently opened several restaurants. It took him almost four years but over that time he was able to build a thriving business for himself. It all started trying to make money on the side and turned into his full time thriving business. It's possible for you to do the same. His original investment was less than $34,000.

4. Earn cash by downloading apps facilities .

I’ll be honest, you aren’t going to make a fortune downloading the following apps but you can make some extra cash each month by doing very little. Here’s some of my personal favorites:

The Swagbucks app pays you for answering simple survey questions.

Media Insiders pays you for watching television.

Stash gives you $7 to start investing.

Clink will give you $4 to start saving

When you walk, Bitwalking will pay you in a virtual currency called Bitwalking Dollars.

Nielsen Homescan gives you cash for scanning your grocery receipts.

Achievement pays you for completing healthy activities.

MobileXpression will give you cash, gift cards, and merchandise for surfing online.

The Ibotta app pays you for taking pics of your receipts.

Paribus scans your emails for receipts and will issue a refund if there’s a price drop.

Related: The Sharing Economy Isn't a Niche. It's the Future of Market Capitalism

5 Write to Congress.

Writing has long been a favorite side-gig for people. However, with the 2016 presidential election, don’t be surprised to see an influx of letters to Congress. And, you may be able cash-in on this trend. DDC Public Affairs and NextWave are bipartisan advocacy groups that launch grassroots political campaigns on issues ranging from energy, healthcare, taxes, and defense.

All of these hire people to call all constituents or advocates and then transfer their opinions into written letters. You’re assigned campaigns, but you can reject them if you want. They expect you to work 20-25 hours per week and you start-off at $12 to $15 per hour.

6. Invest in real estate.

If you aren’t working full-time or are already strapped for cash, then becoming a landlord probably isn’t the wisest decision. But, if you’re looking to make some extra cash, then you could consider invest in real estate. The reason? The housing market is looking strong for the foreseeable future.

Best of all, sites like Realty Mogul allow you to invest in commercial real estate for as little as $5,000.

7. Become an Instagram consultant.

Instagram had an incredible 2016. And, expect 2017 to be even better. Thanks to the Facebook-owned platform getting serious about attracting businesses, and launching exciting features like live video and Instagram Stories, a lot of brands are going to start promoting themselves on ‘the gram.’ If you’re a frequent Instagram user, have a passion for photography, and are a social media whiz, then you can start your own Instagram consulting business on-the-side.

8. EMV security consultant.

There are now around 300 million chip-card in-use by consumers with 1.2 million merchants accepting chip cards. Even though the transition to EMV is in full-swing, it’s expected that there will be an increase in fraud.

If you have security experience, or are knowledgeable in EMV, then you could start your own EMV security consulting business where you can instruct small business owners and their employees how to properly use EMV readers and inform them on the latest security measures.

Related: 5 Ways to Participate in the Bit coin Revolution

9. Invest in bit coin.

Bitcoin had a very good 2016. That should carry over into 2017 and beyond. In fact, some experts believe that the price for bitcoin will reach $1,000 within the next year, which would be a 40 percent increase. This is because of an increase in usage, more adoption, an increase in investments, and remittance in emerging markets like India.

10. Go green explore .

Millennials are extremely conscious about the environment. For example, 61 percent of millennials want to sign up for a digital application which can allow them to track their energy usage and control their household climate. That means that there’s a huge demand for “green” businesses in the near future.