The Corporate Register :: The focus - PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPERS HUMAN RESOURCE SERVICES

The link between businesses’ people policies and their ability to sustain superior performance was recently examined by PricewaterhouseCoopers in a review of leading European businesses and stakeholder groups. In ‘Sustaining value through people’, PricewaterhouseCoopers highlighted the importance for business of engaging effectively with stakeholders and integrating people policies with business strategy. The review found that people policies can affect business value in many different ways, for
example by:

• Enhancing revenues through better customer service leading to increased sales;

• Driving down costs through better staff retention and lower recruitment costs; and

• Lessening risk through reduced litigation. Our findings also revealed that perceptions, attitudes and behaviours of diverse stakeholder groups can significantly influence businesses performance. However, many businesses struggle to understand and measure these relationships as clearly as they need to, if people policies are to form an integral part of a sustainable, long-term business strategy. PricewaterhouseCoopers believe that for businesses to succeed in the future, their people policies and processes should be integral to business strategy. This means that businesses should do more to understand, assess and measure the impact of their people policies (whether implicit or explicit) on their key value drivers and their overall business performance, by identifying the critical people-related success issues that businesses need to embrace. In tackling these issues, shareholders’ interests will converge further over time with other stakeholder interests as businesses engender greater trust through enhanced transparency.

Kevin Delany

“PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPERS BELIEVE THAT FOR BUSINESSES TO SUCCEED IN THE FUTURE, THEIR PEOPLE POLICIES AND PROCESSES SHOULD BE INTEGRAL TO BUSINESS STRATEGY.”