Resumo de Hr Metrics For Hr Strategists

HR Metrics for HR Strategists

The zeal to accumulate data that can be used to help executives manage their
businesses is at an all time high. Technological progress, corporate
governance needs, relationship management endeavors, enhanced
competitiveness, and more have led investors, managers, and employees to
seek more data about their organizations. As a result, HR professionals have
been intimately involved in the growth of these data depositories. Large
software system implementations are providing corporate level data
immediately to the desktops of multiple users. Corporate dashboards, and
other forms of data sharing and reporting to senior executives and line
managers, are appearing in many organizations, both large and small. Thus,
access to important metrics about people is receiving more attention than
ever.

But what is HR data? And are we delivering HR data to managers in a way that
helps them do their jobs? Even more important, to what degree are the data
we provide to executives making a real difference in the way that they do
business?

What is HR Data?

There are a number of books on human capital and HR scorecards. In these
books you can read about types of HR data that are being used to understand
the quality of HR services (e.g. efficiency of selection processes,
compensation ratios compared to market, etc.) and basic people issues (e.g.
are they absent, leaving, or using various HR services?). Overall, I think
you could conclude that the most frequently used HR metrics are data ABOUT
employees. We collect data about their turnover, salaries, benefits,
absenteeism rates, decisions to start working for us, and more. We collect
the data, and we sometimes develop ratios based on the data (e.g. hires per
applicants, turnover rates, etc.).

We often supplement our archival data with employee survey data. Thus,
instead of inferring things ABOUT our people from information technology
(IT) sources, we ask employees to tell us about themselves. We ask if they
are satisfied, engaged, how they feel about benefits, what they think about
the culture, and more.

But when we reach out to employees and start asking them for data via
employee surveys, there is a huge opportunity for more information that is
not being seized upon by HR executives. As you develop systems to collect
data ABOUT people that are FROM people (e.g. surveys), you also can ask
those same people questions ABOUT your business.
The Golden Opportunity: Collect Data From People ABOUT The Business

I am advocating taking the simple path to improving firm performance - get
more information. And why can't HR be the group that gets information ABOUT
the business from the people who are doing business every single day? Why
not ask your employees what's going on out there? They are in the front line
working with customers; they see processes working and not working; they
know if something unethical is occurring; your employees in many cases ARE
your customers. Why not supplement your talking TO employees by asking your
employees to talk TO YOU?

When HR collects data ABOUT the business that is FROM employees, and then
delivers that information to people who can act upon it, then HR is in the
business of reducing the information asymmetry problem, and HR helps the
firm maximize its performance. What happens when HR walks into a board
meeting or the senior executive meeting with new insights about customers,
strategy, new business opportunities, problems that need to be solved and
more? Executives listen.

In fact, executives listen much more intently than they do when HR comes in
with only the latest satisfaction, engagement, or culture scores. Management
listens because the additional data HR is providing obtained through
employee surveys is meaningful, actionable, and about something in which
they care deeply. I'm not saying that data ABOUT people is not valuable.
Data about satisfaction, absenteeisturnover, and more are critical
metrics, but they do not always grab the attention of executives in the same
way that information about their business problems and new opportunities for
growth can engage managers. Even better, when you collect data from people
about the business, you quickly will find out that many things are working
well. You can learn from your strengths as well as from your weaknesses.

The Key to HR Being Strategic?

We meet with a lot of HR executives who have said the following: "We just
finished outsourcing much of our HR work; our employees are effectively
using self service; we have all our HR data in our centralized data base,
and now we're ready to be strategic. But we don't know what to do." We've
looked at their dashboards, reviewed their pages of reports, and we worry
that if these HR executives are having a tough time figuring out what to do
with their own HR metrics, then what do we expect managers to do with the
reports they receive?

As HR strategists, we are in a position to help senior executives make their
companies more successful. Humans are the targets of HR, and if we utilize
what we know about humans, and engage them in our businesses to share
information with management, then we can be truly strategic business
partners with our leadership teams

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