Toward Setting Up the Books for an Accounting of Human Capital: Beancounting What They Know

As a first approximation to what an employee knows, take "movies watched." An employee is marked as having knowledge of how to perform a given task if he has watched the movie (the short unadorned digital video sequence accompanied by Quicktime text track) depicting a solid performer performing it.

"Movies watched" is a tally of movies which were viewed accompanied by multiple machine-recorded viewer mouse clicks and keystrokes, as the viewer chose to pause the movie and study the text track.

An employee whose record indicates many movies studiously watched is an asset; an employee who has not watched all of the movies depicting the tasks he performs, is a liability.

Data are collected correlating "movies watched" with productivity in $/manhour. A conversion factor is elucidated between movies watched and productivity, in ($/manhour)/movie, enabling the integration of human capital data with generally accepted accounting data. A dollar of liabilities offsets a dollar of assets, as usual.

The Accountant may update the inventory of what each employee knows, to provide a marked to market portfolio of the firm's human capital.

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This is fresh, new, and devoid of credentialism.

This schematic is terse.

Richard Katz (C) 2005