Triptych Knowledge—Skills—Payroll and Business Performance: Application of an Operational Model for an Accounting Rating of the Human Capital in the Area of Distribution

Abstract

The human capital’s accounting could allow companies to better manage the acquired knowledge and the skills developed by the employees when they join the firm. An operational model, suitable for a business enterprise’s HR manager and validated by its headboard, needs to include the employees’ expertise and skills relative to their “cost” for the employer—the wage bill—and an assessment of the commercial performance. The human capital’s valuation includes methodological issues. Besides, the notion of human capital seems hardly understandable as a whole: The human capital gathers nevertheless components, such as knowledge—skills for which a first valuation can be proposed to test an accounting evaluation model for the operational human capital. In a perspective of a responsible management and a good HR policy, the method used must be able to better manage the knowledge and the competences employees acquired by accompanying them with the appropriate human resource management practices. This paper aims to show that the accounting valuation of human capital can become a tool in order to manage the knowledge and skills acquired and able to support a company’s human resources policy while being useful to its commercial performance—here in the distribution sector. In a research-intervention frame led in a responsible group, we use a model based on a triptych—wage bill, knowledge, and skills—to evaluate the human capital’s accounting, with an analytical highlight on the components measurement of the used “knowledge” and “skills” indexes in particular. A reflection on the operational model’s enrichment is proposed.