An appreciative perspective is also essential in creating a successful HR Bank. The central purpose of the bank is to gather and use information regarding the distinctive competencies (SKAs) of employees. The bank must be introduced, therefore, as an opportunity for employees to receive recognition for the unique competencies they bring to the organization or have acquired while working in the organization. An employee always controls information that is collected for the bank regarding her skills, knowledge and aptitudes. Nothing is placed in the bank without the employee’s concurrence.
It is imperative that information in the HR Bank be used. There is nothing more demoralizing than to have one’s competencies recognized in a public manner and then to have nothing done with this skill, knowledge or aptitude by the organization. Since the HR Bank is oriented toward strengths, employees rarely object to the inclusion of information about their competencies in the bank. Still, employees have a right to keep information out of the bank. This is particularly important if SKAs acquired by employees come from activities that are being performed outside the organization, for example, church work or work as a community activist. Many employees are understandably anxious about keeping a boundary between the work they do inside the organization and the work they do in their free time.
Acquiring Skills, Knowledge and Aptitudes
As De Soto suggests regarding the leveraging of capital in Third World countries, the major challenge in transforming the invisible to visible concerns the overcoming of resistance from entrenched interests in the system. In tradition-based societies, much of the work is done outside the formal, legal system. Economic exchange often occurs through extra-legal bartering and through the informal recognition of property and boundaries.
Inhabitants of a fishing village, for example, know that a specific fishing boat has exclusive right to fish in a certain locale. Physicians and lawyers informally agree not to compete with one another or speak ill of someone else in their profession. These are invisible forms of capital. Similarly, most organizations operate on the basis of informal and unacknowledged use of the employee’s knowledge, skills and aptitudes. There is an informal “wisdom network:” Who do you talk to when you need help with x, y or z? Where do you go when you need to get something approved by the boss? Who informs new employees about how things really work in this organization?
