Jan Hoffmeister is vice president of intellectual capital at Swedish financial services group Skandia . He says companies generally don t disclose the true drivers of future value, which are their non-financial assets . Since 1994, Skandia has issued a biannual supplement to its financial reports, in which it highlights its non-financial assets. But Hoffmeister says it is unusual for Skandia to get access to the same information about companies in which it invests. But it surprises me that in a period characterised by a war for talent , we are not seeing wider recognition of the importance of human capital.
Opinions vary on the feasibility of truly evaluating human capital in an organisation.
Typically, this can cost the company the equivalent of six months pay and benefits for a lower level position, to about 18 months worth for a more senior professional job and for some top positions in financial service firms, as much as three years salary. And Keeling of CapCo agrees that an exact valuation of human capital is extremely difficult, describing it as an imprecise science . Like Fitz-enz, he believes the main way of quantifying it is in the cost of replacing someone who leaves, which he expresses as typically being around twice the cost of retention. For a key group of staff leaving for example, when a team of traders moves to a competitor that figure can be closer to four times the total cost of keeping them on board. But quantifying human capital beyond that is much more problematic.