Last month, I blogged about Edward E. Lawler’s article in Forbes about HR taking on a larger role in organizational effectiveness ( HR’s Role as a Strategic Partner ). Here is another take on how to do it in a way that gets the attention of top executives.
John Pensom’s article, “HR metrics – measuring back office activities or insightfully understanding how your employees create value?” discusses the importance of making HR metrics and analytics actionable by tying them to business objectives and outcomes. “Long gone are the days where HR leaders focused on processes or activities alone—today, innovative HR leaders are more focused on value—and that comes in many forms,” writes Pensom.
He outlines these 5 steps:
- Articulate Objectives and Goals - articulate your business objectives, goals and desired outcomes.
- Identify Value Metrics - identify metrics that align to these objectives and best represent value versus activities (you don’t need to stick to traditional metrics, get creative and design your own which have optimal meaning for your organization’s situation).
- Segmentation - segment these metrics by key demographics (job category, location, tenure, performance, etc.).
- Generate Insight - identify meaningful patterns, areas of opportunity, hotspots, rationalize the outliers (positive and negative) or anomalies, understand where the most value gets created and by whom.
- Take Action - take action to drive continuous improvement in your program areas such as learning, onboarding, recruitment, and manager capabilities so that you can accelerate delivery of your business outcomes.
Source: First Reference Talks, Feb. 25/14 by John Pensom