HR Professionals: Know Your Numbers

Measure something! OK, not anything. Measure something that matters even if in the most rudimentary way. You do not need fancy formulas, spread sheets or calculations. Focus in your area on an expense, a utilization, a loss, etc. and find a way to improve it. If it must be something associated with the company picnic, so be it.

What you do not want to do is measure something for the sake of measuring and ultimately demonstrates no value for your efforts. In my human resources life I would periodically stop sending reports of statistics we generated to see if anyone missed them. In most instances no one did. If someone did, it was usually a bean counter somewhere in the dungeon of finance that no one liked anyway.

Occasionally I also found myself asking human resources professionals what they measure. They would respond with pretty spreadsheets showing turnover numbers or similar statistics. Then I asked them two questions. First, what do you with these fancy spreadsheets? The usual response was that they were given to someone else. Then, I asked them what they learn and apply from them. That was usually the question that resulted in a blank stare.

I would often ask human resources departments if they were good at what they did. They most invariably answered with a resounding “yes.” When I then asked them how they knew, the blank stares returned.

What to measure you ask? It all starts with your business and how your role and department fit into it. What statistics matter in your organization? What statistics matter to the performance of your department? I can’t tell you that all of these things are important in your organization or department but they might be. Only you can decide and only you can determine what these measurements tell you. Here are just a few:

  • Cost per hire
  • Time it takes for human resources to screen and forward a qualified job candidate to a department
  • Turnover (in some meaningful way)
  • The extent to which certain benefits you offer are valued in your organization and by whom
  • Retention – who stays and who goes and why

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