Low-Risk Human Capital Investment Options:
In this final blog series about human capital investment, this week’s topic covers the lowest-risk human capital investment, its role in hedging your other riskier human capital investments, and the role it plays within the entire portfolio. With all of the time and effort training, coaching and educating high and medium risk human capital, how can you continue to elevate and challenge your employees and attract new ones? Answer: respecting employee’s skill-sets and focusing them on company goals and their personal growth path within the organization by supporting them with low-risk human capital.
Creating an infrastructure which includes incorporating a low-risk outsourcing partner who shows up to work everyday and completes repetitive tasks timely will have an instant return on investment in dollars, production and client satisfaction. The return on investment from hedging low-risk human capital comes in multiple forms such as; 1) providing key employees with more time to engage with clients, 2) freeing up time for medium-risk employees to spend more time focused on analytical/problem solving work and 3) daily operating tasks being completed timely. How can this not be a recipe for success? 
The path to creating a successful outsourcing relationship is to start by creating workflows and developing solid procedure documentation supporting each step in a “process workflow”. With the Boomer generation focused on task completion, the GenX generation focused on getting results and the Millennial generation technology savvy, what is the most advantageous way to bring out the best in all of these employee types? Bringing in the right outsourcing partner focused on keeping the daily operations flowing smoothly and leveraging technology will allow employees to maintain their focus on the company results and high-level customer service.
With any type of outsourcing model, there are positives and negatives. On the positive side, the decision to outsource forces a company to create workflows in order to decide which functions can be worked on from a remote location. An acceptable workflow displays a top down view of the following:
- an entire process from start to finish
- the timing of each process
- who is responsible for each step in the process.
Everyone in the organization must understand each step of an organization’s business workflow and how their role is a part of the company’s success. When there is a breakdown in a process, all you need to do is follow the workflow and find out where the issue occurred. By doing this, management has a clear understanding of how an incident occurred and immediately follow-up with necessary coaching or additional training if necessary. Secondly, each step in a workflow must have a documented process. A well-documented process will ensure control and consistency in a final work product.
Negative aspects for a business owner regarding outsourcing are typically situations involving unrealistic expectations and work product results from an outsourcing relationship, inadequate industry knowledge on the part of the outsourcing firm or misalignment with the values and goals of your organization. The prospect of outsourcing may also cause internal employee fears such as feelings of their position being eliminated or possibly being exposed for their lack of knowledge about their current job responsibilities.
As with launching any new marketing plan or internal reorganization plan, success will rely on messaging and support of the Executive and Key Management Personnel. By strategically beginning the process of creating internal workflows and procedures will play a pivotal role in the decision-making process of incorporating an outsourcing, low-risk human capital investment for your organization. This is not a new concept but running the numbers, having a vision for growth and wanting to raise your employees to a higher level of competency and accountability in the organization can be accomplished by hedging your high and medium risk human capital with a low-risk solution.
If you are interested in evaluating your organizations business and human risk and looking for a partner to work with you through this process, subscribe to the GDP Advisors blog and read about our story at www.gdpadvisors.com. Our firm specializes in risk management advisory services and is one of the fastest growing, premier independent consulting firms within the United States.
