Human Resource Auditing as a tool of Human Resource Valuation

Human Resource Accounting (HRA) is the process of identifying, measuring, and communicating data about human resources. Flamhoitz (1974) defined HRA as ‘Accounting for people as an organizational resource. It involves measuring the costs incurred by business firms and other organizations to recruit, select, hire, train and develop human assets. It also involves measuring the economic value of people to the organization’.

HR valuation tells the potential investors about the human assets of a company. The investors can assess the returns from human assets which infect is the return they get from the people who are managing their investments. It also assures the customers the company that it has the requisite human capital reserves to service their demand. The employees of the company also feel assured when they come to know that they are counted as assets by the company and not expenses. HR valuation also serves as a tool for improved performance appraisal and man power assessment. It also helps the management in realizing the present value of its future commitment of providing employee compensation. It also helps the management in taking appropriate decision regarding the use of human assets. Managers get valuable feedback regarding the effectiveness of their HR policies and practices.

Human resource valuation means the identification and measurement of the value of human resources and then supplying this information to the interesting parties. It is sometimes also defined as a method of assigning value to the employees on the basis of their future economic services to the organization. The employees of value at the present worth of the services they are expected to render during their stay in the organization or a particular period of time.

(1) Monetary measures include:

(a) Historical cost method

It suggests capitalizing the expenditure of the firm incurred on recruitment and selection, training and development of the employees and treats them as the assets of the organization for the purpose of HR accounting. This method suffers from a limitation that the capitalization of costs does not reflect its true value. The total performance has to be judged in relation with the total cost associated with the HR to reflect its value.

(b) Replacement cost method

The cost of replacement of individual and the re-building cost of organization is assessed to reflect the HR asset value of the individuals and the organization. However this method may not reflect either the actual cost or the contribution associated with HR

(c) Opportunity cost method

This model envisages the computation of monetary value and the allocation of people to the most promising activity and thereby assesses the opportunity cost of main employees through competitive bidding among the investment centre.

(d) Economic value method

The value of human resource is evaluated on the basis of contribution they are likely to make in the organization during their stay with the organization. The payments made to the employees in the form of salary, allowances and benefits are estimated and discounted appropriately to arrive at the present economic value of the individual.

(2) Non-Monetary measures:

(a) Expected realizable value method

The elements of expected realizable value like the productivity, transferability and promote-ability are measure using personal research, appraisal techniques or other objective methods. The productivity is measured by objective indices and managerial assessment. The promote-ability and transferability are measured in terms of potential using psychometric tests and subjective evaluations.

(b) Discounted present value of future earnings

This method was use by Rencis Likert who proposed three sets of variables-casual, intermediate, output. These helped in measuring the effectiveness over a period of time. Casual variable include leadership style and behaviour, the intermediate variable are morale, motivation, commitment to goals etc. and these in turn affect the output variables like production, sales, profit etc.