Human Capital

The term ‘human capital’ sounds rather ambiguous, but it’s simply another way of referring to an area of human resources management. It’s usually a service offered by professional services firms – particularly the Big Four firms!

Roles in human capital are concerned with advising companies of all sizes (but typically the larger ones with multiple offices) on how to best manage their people power – whether that be through different motivation strategies, helping them to adapt to company changes or meet compliance regulations for example.

Where could I work in human capital?

There are a number of specialist areas to take on here. You could work in what’s called global mobility, advising clients who may have expatriate staff working across the world on compliance, any tax regulations to uphold and any other security issues it may raise.

There’s also benefits and rewards, which focuses on helping companies to devise the best rewards strategies for their staff that also fits into their business strategy as a whole. This can also spread out to advisory roles tackling clients’ HR departments and processes to ensure they’re shipshape and working as efficiently and as effectively as possible.

If you fancy yourself as a bit of a jetsetter then human capital roles can offer plenty of opportunity to whizz off across the world and take on client secondments in global offices. You could get to work in all kinds of different industries too!

What kind of skills will I need?

It’s a predominantly client-facing role, so you’ll have to be good at managing those relationships as well as working within a team to devise the right kinds of strategies and advice they require. Tax advisory roles will demand top notch skills with numbers too – human capital graduate schemes in this area will usually involve study for a professional qualification such as the ATT. This will set you up nicely to progress quickly in this area!

You’ll need a degree to work in human capital in most cases, however some School Leaver Programmes or Higher Apprenticeships can still enable you to cross over into this area eventually if you decide that’s what you want to do.  It doesn’t really matter about the degree subject, but a 2:1 is usually the minimum grade requirement.