Do you know what your ROI of your decisions are?

Turn to almost any organization in the country and a familiar thread
is going to be heard – What is the ROI (Return on Investment) for this
project? Human Resources is no different. Through the works of Bersin
& Associates, who in their 2011 report “The Best Practices for the High Impact HR Organization
determined that the top challenge for HR Management was the ability to
measure HR programs in financial terms and the work of Jac Fit-Enz and
Wayne Cascio who each showed us how to measure HR management we have an
idea on how to quantify the ROI of HR. The problem is that this view is
concentrated in the metrics of hiring our human capital assets.

However
regardless of how defining the ROI measurements are for the above
efforts, we seem to be missing a whole other metric of HR ROI. I refer
to it as the return of decisions. We complain that our human capital
assets are no longer engaged with our organizations but then either
knowingly or unknowingly allow our organizations to make very dump
mistakes in treating those assets as valuable parts of the organization.
Consider these recent enforcement activities:

  1. On May 1, a
    federal district court handed down a judgement in the case of EEOC vs.
    Hill County Farms a verdict in the case of abuse against human capital
    assets with intellectual disabilities in the amount of $240 million.
  2. May
    10 a federal court handed down a verdict in the case of New Breed
    Logistics on a charge of Sexual Harassment which resulted in a fine of
    $1.5 million.
  3. May 1, a travel agency in Florida was found guilty
    of sexually harassing and retaliating against eight former
    employees.They were fined $20 million.
  4. Several years ago FedEx
    tried to convince the State of Massachusetts that their drivers were
    independent contractors resulting in a $3 million fine form the state.

So
here is my question. It is my understanding that an organization is in
existence reportedly for perpetuity and in doing so they answer to their
stockholders. We know that the management of these organizations and
others constantly review their products and services in order to
determine whether these products and services are worth the effort to
continue in their portfolio.We get that. As an organization we do the
same thing with our portfolio of deliverables. But when do we reach the
point where HR becomes the voice in the desert and tells management that
the decision process on how we treat our human capital assets is
bringing great harm to the future of our organization.

I have had
some tell me that organizations plan for these fines in the name of
running an organization based on their culture. But at what point does
the way we have always  run the organization come into conflict with the
return on investment into talent management by treating them less than
human beings. At what point does our decisions governing behavior within
the organization reach the point where we would not tolerate it if it
was happening to us?

The ROI is a critical success factor within
your organization as you need a profit to ensure continued operations.
The way we normally determine that ROI leaves out the impact of our
decisions of management.We can’t operate our organizations without the contributions of our human capital assets and we can’t ever expect them to be engaged in our organizations
when we tolerate the atmosphere which created these large verdicts.
Understand if we continue the decision process as it is, the fines will
continue and get larger. Where is your tolerance level when you can tell
the stakeholders that you are sorry for the increase drain on the
corporate pocketbook because you have either allowed these decisions to
continue to exist or tell the stakeholders that as the managers of
organizational talent you did not know it was going on.

What is the ROI of your employee related
decisions? Are you the next one we are going to read about who suffered
the consequences of preventable illogical decisions in the name of your
organization?

Daniel Bloom & Associates, Inc. assists organization’s with the creation of empowered change strategies which are customer centric, organizationally aligned and quality based in your organization.

Website: https://dbaiconsulting.com

Leave a Reply