Nonprofit HR’s Blog

In response to opposition from the business community, the Society for Human Resource Management has withdrawn the proposed human capital metrics standard it was developing for the American National Standards Institute.

Bloomberg has all the details.

The standard, Human Resource Indices for Investors, was intended to help investors evaluate the worth of a company’s human capital. Some human resources professionals contended, however, that the standard would be burdensome to companies and irrelevant to investors.

SHRM’s HR Standards Director Lee S. Webster in a Nov. 29 statement said SHRM’s task force on measures and metrics decided to withdraw the draft standard after receiving negative feedback during the public comment period that ended in November. “It became clear that there wasn’t sufficient support from the business community to proceed with this effort. After seriously considering all relevant views, the task force decided to discontinue work,” Webster said.

The American Staffing Association was one of the groups opposed to the standard. In a Dec. 4 statement, ASA General Counsel Stephen Dwyer told BNA that many business community and staffing industry representatives communicated their objections to the standard at an October U.S. Chamber of Commerce meeting. Dwyer said ASA was “concerned that the proposed standards would have required companies to disclose certain ‘human capital metrics’ regarding companies’ use of and reliance on contingent workers as well as their overall staffing strategies.”