Love or loathe, Katy Perry is pretty remarkable. Not for her unconventional dress sense. For the songs or the videos. For recently becoming the first artist in history to spend a whole year - 52 consecutive weeks - in the top 10 of Billboard Hot 100. For being the first artist in digital history to have six songs sell over 3 million copies. Not for her romance with Russell Brand. Or that she’s now got her own perfume – called, wait for it - Purr.

Human Capital can be a difficult subject for HR. It speaks in a foreign pseudo-scientific language of KPIs and metrics and finance and psychology. Like those children’s breakfast cereals, it now comes in many new varieties – social capital, moral capital, creative capital, aspirational capital, emotional capital...

With the launch of Accounting for People 2.0, we’ve been busy scouring the web for the best articles, essays and ideas on human resource accounting. So far, so good. Human resource accounting; human asset reporting; human capital reporting;  extended narrative reporting; intangible asset reporting; people reporting – you can pick your term.

Accounting for People 2.0: The Business Case for Human Capital Reporting

Thursday 21st October 2010, the Soho Hotel, London, a successor to the 2003 Task Force on Human Capital Management was launched.

We're delighted to welcome Philip Whiteley, Chair of the Human Capital Forum (HCF), as our guest blogger. Philip is the author or co-author of eight books and major reports: "Making it Count" (2009) shows the huge returns from human capital analysis and "Strategic Risk & Reward" (2008) is a critique of people management and reward in the banking sector, in the context of the credit crisis. HCF will shortly host a one-day conference on the future of management, with HubCap Founder Dr Michael Reddy featuring as a keynote speaker.

‘One of the most critical issues facing investors and corporate stakeholders is the challenge of ensuring the relevance, timeliness, reliability, consistency and comparability of information and its impact on the ability to truly measure the value of an enterprise in the New Economy.’

So begins Ryan Offutt's Crystalline that goes on to explore in some depth the theoretical underpinnings of human capital management, as well as current and future challenges in this emerging area. Newly published on HubCap Digital, you can access the full works (and download for free) by clicking here.

Ryan's Crystalline marks the second in a new series of thought pieces written by the Human Potential Accounting (HPA) Business Intelligence team and selected guest writers. The expertly crafted documents are designed to keep you abreast of the latest thinking in human capital and sample the quality of our research output. As well as our own publishing schedule, HPA also invites organisations to commission their own bespoke Crystalline for targeted business intelligence - learn more about our services here.

About the Author
Ryan Offutt is currently studying towards an MSc in Occupational Psychology at Sheffield University. Before making a career change to occupational psychology, Ryan worked as a professional editor and writer for AGCAS, producing online and print content for the Prospects graduate careers site (www.prospects.ac.uk). He has a BA (2002) from the University of Maryland (USA) and an MA (2004) in English Literature from Sheffield University, and has also worked as a graduate tax consultant at PriceWaterhouse Coopers LLP. You can reach him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

HubCap's Director, Michael Reddy, will give a talk about the powerful role of human capital analysis at “Human Capital: 2010 and beyond”, a one-day conference on 30th Sept 2010 run by The Human Capital Forum in Central London.

The Human Capital Handbook is a free quarterly ebook series published by HubCap’s chief sponsor, Human Potential Accounting, a UK leader in HCM analysis and research that helps business leaders and financial analysts assess the sophistication and maturity of their human capital or talent management strategy and practices.

Launched February 2011, the series was inspired by HPA’s Dr Michael Reddy, who after launching HubCap to aggregate the latest human capital management, measurement and reporting articles, wanted to select, package up and present the latest international HCM thinking in a regular, neatly designed, portable format.

Handbooks blend heavyweight articles, some specially commissioned, some republished or extracted by permission, with cartoons, illustrations, soundbites and linked snippets designed to enrich the collection, encourage further reading, or just have some fun along the way. They deliberately avoid repeating received wisdom, preferring to lead and bolster calls for change, debunk prevailing assumptions, and shine lights into areas of often much needed future enquiry. But they are also designed to accelerate the exchange and application of practical HCM insights between business and academia: they are Handbooks after all.

The series is published on the HubCap library as well as made available for download on the dedicated Handbook microsite.

If you would like to contribute, please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Human Potential Accounting (HubCap's founder) sponsored Accounting for People 2.0 picks up the threads from its 2005 predecessor, but is a very different animal in a much changed context.

The first meeting of the Taskforce took place on Oct 21st 2010 in London’s Soho Hotel. Accounting for People 2.0: The Business Case for Human Capital Reporting drew together over 25 business leaders and comprised interactive discussions led by HPA and HubCap's CEO Dr Michael Reddy, with Tim Hoad and Richard Phelps on Financial Reporting; Raj Thamotheram and Ali Gil on Investing; and Morgan Witzel and Ann Graham on Alternative Business Models.

Participants were invited to collaborate on HubCap, where a series of expert papers have been uploaded to aid deliberations (papers included in the forthcoming Human Capital Handbook 2011).  The aim is to coalesce thinking into a far-reaching proposal for legislative change: an AfP 2.0 People Reporting Framework, which will be submitted to the Government by December 2011.

To join or to find out more about AfP 2.0, visit the website – www.accountingforpeople.org – or email Michael directly on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

‘Can human capital depreciate?’ a student on the Harvard Business Review asked last week. Not can human capital go up or down. It can, and does. With an aging workforce, at what point (age) is our ability to enhance knowledge and skills subject to the Law of Diminishing Return?