In our highly competitive business world, companies struggle to find the elusive element, or combination of elements, that differentiates them from their counterparts. Unique selling points, marketers call them. HR professionals know them by another name: people.
“It is a matter of sheer commercial logic that an organisation’s people represent the most crucial weapon in its bid for competitive supremacy,” writes Charles Woodruffe, managing director of the UK consulting firm Human Assets, adding that employees will stay with companies that meet their needs only for “job satisfaction, purpose and sense of self-worth” (Woodruffe, 2005/2006, pp. 28-29).
