ISO Issues Calculations for Key Human Capital Metrics

While the Value Reporting Foundation has just begun to create unified human capital reporting standards, and the Securities & Exchange Commission weighs development of clearer human capital disclosure regulations, ISO continues to lead the way in developing a framework for clear and specific reporting standards that help organizations optimize performance through people. These new ISO standards provide specific, public calculations for key human capital metrics as part of ISO 30414 Human Capital standards, so that organizations can use comparable metrics in internal and external reporting for people management. These calculations can be used to provide metrics for each of the categories in the Enterprise Engagement Alliance's Human Capital framework, as outlined in ESM: The Perfect Company--Anatomy of an Ideal Practitioner of Stakeholder Capitalism as Seen Through its Human Capital Report.

Most companies are run on the assumption that human capital cannot be objectively measured, at least in a way that enables management to make more effective decisions. The volunteers at the International Organization for Standardization involved with ISO 30414 Human Capital reporting standards continue their quest to prove them wrong. They have just completed a series of technical specifications for the individual metrics covered in the ISO 30414 reporting standards. 

 

The comprehensive 13-part series is designed to provide organizations “a wide range of comparable measures related to human resource management, applicable for internal and external reporting.” They include everything from occupational health and safety to turnover, retention, and organizational culture. Here is a list of the new metrics as published by ISO. Each is available on the ISO store for about $90. 

 

Between these new standards and those in ISO 10018 People Engagement and ISO 30415 Diversity Inclusion standards, management now has all the tools at their disposal to objectively track human capital metrics across all stakeholders—employees, customers, distribution and supply chain partners, and communities and to address issues of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

 

ISO/TS 24178. Organizational culture metrics look at the drivers of a good company culture with a committed and engaged workforce, and ways to measure it. It includes elements such as a clear organizational purpose and values, hiring practices and more.

 

ISO/TS 24179. Occupational health and safety metrics, specifically relates to occupational health and safety data and highlights any issues that should be considered when interpreting it.

 

ISO/TS 30407. Cost per hire, describes actions to be taken when calculating cost per hire to maintain quality and transparency.

 

ISO/TS 30410. Impact-of-hire metric identifies principles for determining critical positions and ways to measure their impact.

 

ISO/TS 30411. Quality-of-hire metric provides a range of options to measure the quality of hire that can be aligned to various business and organizational conditions.

 

ISO/TS 30421. Turnover and retention metrics describe the elements of workforce turnover and highlights issues that need to be considered when interpreting the data.

 

ISO/TS 30423. Compliance and ethics metrics provide the formula for comparable measures and highlights issues that need to be considered when interpreting the compliance data.

 

ISO/TS 30425. Workforce availability metrics describe the formula for calculating the number of employees available at any point in time.

 

ISO/TS 30427. Costs metrics detail a formula for calculating costs and highlights issues that need to be considered when interpreting the data.

 

ISO/TS 30430. Recruitment metrics describe the elements of recruitment, mobility and turnover, with a formula for comparable measures.

 

ISO/TS 30431. Leadership metrics provide a method for measuring the value of leadership in an organization, including trust, span of control and leadership development.

 

ISO/TS 30432. Workforce productivity metrics cover not only the output of employees and contractors, but any issues that may influence it. This includes current industry employment levels and skills supply, levels of training and experience, the quality of the leadership and more. It also enables competitor benchmarking within and across sectors.

 

ISO/TS 30433. Succession planning metrics describe the elements of succession planning metrics and provides comparable measures to report on them. It also covers succession effectiveness rate, successor coverage rate and succession readiness rate.

 

The series of technical specifications, as well as ISO 30414, were developed by ISO technical committee ISO/TC 260, Human resource management, whose secretariat is held by ANSI, ISO’s member for the US. 

 

Note: For further guidance, on human capital metrics and reporting, see:

ISO 10018 for People Engagement including employees, customers, supply and distribution chain partners and communities, including recommended metrics.

ISO 30415 for Diversity and Inclusion, including recommended metrics.

 

For More Information

1. Go to the ISO store

2. Search for the standard by number

PDFs are available immediately upon payment of about $90 for each standard. 

 

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