EEA Accepted to Serve ISO Effort on Human Capital Standards

The Enterprise Engagement Alliance was formally accepted to serve on the U.S. Technical Advisory Group (TAG) which represents the interests of the United States on the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committee that is developing standards on human capital management, known as ISO/TC 260. The EEA’s recommendation to create standards on employee engagement were approved by the U.S. TAG but may be incorporated into a worldwide effort to update ISO quality management standards on employee empowerment and engagement.

 

ISO Technical Committee 260, which now has 24 participating countries, seeks to “assist organizations in aligning and streamlining their human resource management (HRM) practices,” according to the committee’s business plan. “The member companies are chartered with the task of developing a collection of human resource management standards that will offer broad, coordinating guidance to human resources practitioners to the benefit of organizations and their stakeholders,” explained Lee Webster, Director of Employee Relations of the University of Texas Medical Branch, in a recent ESM article.

 

The EEA joins over 30 other U.S. organizations, including associations, academic institutions, private organizations and even a bank, participating in an ambitious worldwide effort to create formal standards on all elements of human capital management. The first ISO standards related to HR will be published later this year and will include workforce planning, recruitment, a glossary of HR terminology and the role of the board directors in human capital and workforce matters. Other standards to come include diversity and inclusion, as well as specifications for measuring turnover, cost per hire, time and attendance, and other key areas. These specifications will be incorporated into other standards related to the reporting of human capital information to organizational stakeholders, including the financial committee.

 

According to Webster, the EEA’s proposal for a subcommittee on creating standards for employee engagement were accepted by the U.S. TAG, but the EEA’s proposal on employee engagement may be coordinated with the group working on employee empowerment and engagement for ISO quality standards widely adopted throughout the world.

 

Bruce Bolger, President and co-founder of the Enterprise Engagement Alliance, notes that “The fact that employee engagement standards will one way or another become baked into standards for the management of quality throughout the world is an enormous advance for this field. The worldwide acceptance of the connection between engagement and organizational results will invariably lead to tremendous growth of innovative strategies to help organizations succeed through people, which can have significant benefits for employees, companies, investors, and society.”