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Harley‐Davidson was keen to maintain its continual expansion, but was aware it needed to invest in its people in order to keep momentum high. The Accenture Human Capital Development Framework enabled the company to take stock of its HR activities and create a comprehensive human capital strategy for the future. Here, representatives from both organizations explain how the Framework was used.

Most executives are well aware of the acceleration in the pace of business, and they want to know what to do about it. The authors talked with executives in 40 companies about how they are dealing with this issue and identified five business‐model myths that are holding these firms back. Companies that have dispelled these misconceptions are not only achieving record profitability they are hitting new highs in the tough business environments that have driven their competitors under. This article describes the five myths and outlines how businesses can become more fluid and ready to respond quickly to change.

Over the past three years Accenture developed and applied a new measurement tool that assesses the maturity of an organization's human capital development processes, benchmarks the processes' performance against other organizations, and determines the relationship of each process to bottom line business results. It is designed to help executives make significantly more informed choices about their investments in human capital. This article aims to look at this tool.

The tool, known as the human capital development framework, now has been tested in more than 60 organizations. This case describes how one organization used it to help turn around a struggling division.

Results of the initial implementations of the framework suggest that financial performance improves as a company improves its scoring in those critical human capital processes with strong relationships to financial success. As an organization moves from one benchmarking quartile to the next in these processes within the framework scoring, its capital efficiency – or the ratio of total annual sales to the capital invested in the operations of the business by shareholders and creditors – improves from 10 to 15 percent.

The framework outlined in this article provides a tool that enables company leaders to make clear‐eyed assessments of the payoff from human capital investments. It helps organizations diagnose their strengths and weaknesses in key human capital practices, to set investment priorities and track performance, and to establish an empirical link between human capital investments, business practices, and overall business performance.

Those organizations in the study with more mature human capital processes have better financial performance than those organizations with less mature processes. Specifically, those organizations that focus on processes devoted to three key areas – creating a people strategy aligned with the business strategy, providing supportive work environments, and developing employees by giving them ample opportunities to learn and grow – achieve far greater economic success than those that do not.

Research has shown that the more engaged the workforce, the more innovative, productive and profitable the company. Yet few executives know specifically what they can do to develop a more engaged workforce.

The authors set out to determine which human capital processes and practices were most strongly related to company financial performance.

The authors surveyed more than 3,500 employees and more than 150 HR executives in 26 organizations, all of which had implemented a proprietary tool on human capital development. They used financial data from those organizations to identify 18 human‐capital management activities that are significantly correlated with financial results. They also interviewed more than 80 business and HR leaders.

Analysis of the 18 activities led the authors to derive the five practices described in this article: align people practices with business needs; implement the practices with superior execution; enlist line managers in human capital management; make policies clear, fair, and consistent; and create an information‐sharing environment.

The article eschews a focus of fads – “online cross‐functional team‐based brainstorming” – to realign readers on which talent management practices really lead to financial success. Although most companies will recognize the practices as fundamental, they will learn what may be preventing them from implementing the practices, and how some companies are leading the way.

This paper aims to form a best practice guide on how to successfully customize employees' work experience to engage the workforce and boost talent retention, as well as employee performance and productivity to the benefit of the organization and its workforce.

For the new book Workforce of One: Revolutionizing Talent Management through Customization, research was carried out involving in‐depth interviews with more than two dozen employees, 70 executives, over 100 top organizations and a survey of 557 US employees. Using this information, as well as extensive focus on Best Buy as a case study organization that has successfully implemented customization approaches, this paper aims to demonstrate that addressing the needs of the individual and tailoring the work experience ultimately fosters a high‐performing motivated workforce.

Many organizations are now working to create a customizable work experience for their employees, utilizing customization experiences familiar to those aimed at consumers by the marketing function. Through the interviews, Accenture was able to identify four main approaches to workforce customization, which are manageable, scalable, reliable and just.

Just like employees, companies are all different, with unique strategies, histories, type of employees, values and cultures. As such, their best approach in creating a customization strategy is to use those customization approaches that best suit their unique needs. By using one or more of the workforce‐of‐one customization approaches, organizations can enjoy a substantial impact across the board.

The customization approaches identified by Accenture – segmentation of the workforce, offering modular choices, defining broad and simple rules, and fostering employee‐defined personalization – avoids the usual pitfalls associated with workforce customization, such as a plethora of one‐off individual side deals, which can foster a negative workplace dynamic. Instead they offer an opportunity to establish more flexible systems, radically redefining the way HR supports its employees, yet ultimately creating a strong competitive advantage for the organization.

Enterprise systems packages have long been associated with process change. However, it was assumed that most organizations would simultaneously design and implement process change while implementing the systems. A survey of 163 organizations and detailed interviews with 28 more suggests that enterprise systems were still being implemented even among early adopters of the technology, and that process change was being undertaken on an ongoing basis. After the prerequisites of time, critical mass of functionality, and significant expenditures were taken care of, the factors most associated with achieving value from enterprise systems were integration, process optimization, and use of enterprise‐systems data in decision making.

This paper seeks to describe what makes an outsourcer/client relationship successful and what outsourcers can do to ensure the longetivity of their client relationship.

The authors discuss several important aspects of a successful relationship.

The outsourcing services market has exploded in recent years as more and more companies recognize the benefits of outsourcing to qualified firms. Competition among the many outsourcing firms that presently exist is fierce, and will get even more competitive in the coming years. Outsourcing is an emotional decision, especially for the first time outsourcer, and the success of an outsourcing arrangement depends greatly on the success of the client/vendor relationship.

Shows that it is how the client feels – whether or not an outsourcer is taking care of them – that will decide whether the outsourcing relationship continues or whether the engagement is handed over to an outsourcer's competitor.

Purpose: This chapter aims to identify and evaluate the various components of business model disclosures in an Integrated Report and ascertain how the notion of business model is perceived among practitioners.

Need for the Study: According to previous research, the International Integrated Reporting Council’s (IIRC) objective of improving corporate reporting by encouraging organisations to disclose their business model has not found the desired recognition. Therefore, the study elaborates on the various components of business model reporting and their implications on corporate reporting in general.

Methodology: A review of literature was conducted to identify and analyse research based on business models and their disclosures in integrated reporting. A narrative review was undertaken for selected literature.

Findings: The findings suggest that most large-sized organisations use integrated reporting for impression management and are not inclined to disclose too much about their business models for fear of competition. There is still a lack of clear understanding of what a business model should entail.

Practical Implication: This study adds to the research on business model disclosures in integrated reporting. Voluntary disclosure and a better understanding of such disclosures will prepare organisations of all sizes and industries for an event when Integrated Reporting becomes statutory.