How To Measure the Effectiveness, Impact and Efficiency of Your Human Resources Strategies
A company can invest money in technology, real estate, and other expenses, but the people within an organization are still the most important asset. Your employees represent the entire organization whenever they interact with community, clients and vendors, which is why it’s important to hire the best employees and keep them happy. Employees want to know how they are performing, therefore; it is important to conduct periodic reviews of your effectiveness strategies. Here are a few human resources measures of effectiveness your company can use during your review process.
Establish Metrics
Before you start analyzing the effectiveness of your human resources efforts, you must first identify a set of metrics. Think of them like the statistics used by a baseball team to measure hitting or pitching abilities, only create them with your company’s priorities in mind. While your business might have its own specific points of emphasis, there are a few common values used by most companies:
- Cost per hire, which measures efficiency by taking the entire amount spent during the hiring process and dividing by the number of employees it yielded.
- Time to hire, which also measures efficiency by calculating the average number of days it takes to fill positions.
- Early turnover, which is simply a tally of new employees who leave the company during the first year.
Conduct Analysis Using Your Values
Once you’ve established your human resources development measures, the next step is to analyze the data you’ve collected and take action. This isn’t always a clear cut procedure, as you need to take your company’s needs into account before making a decision. A high cost-per-hire value could indicate an expensive hiring process, but the solution might not be as simple as spending less money on your hiring efforts. There are times when it’s necessary to conduct an exhaustive search for the ideal candidate, especially when you’re bringing in an executive-level employee, and this could throw off your cost and time averages.
Analyze Impact of Strategies
You must consistently strive to analyze the effectiveness of your new strategies. Using a call center as an example, if you’re fielding most of your customer contacts through internet chats or email, you might want to prioritize employees who are better at that skill set. Conversely, if your customers prefer to interact over the phone, it would be a good idea to avoid taking your operations online simply for the sake of modernizing.
Don’t Be Afraid To Experiment
Finding the best human resources development measures is not an exact science, which is why experimentation is worthwhile. Every company is unique, which means there’s no guaranteed way to get the results you desire. When you design an experiment for your business, you can ensure accurate results by employing the scientific method:
- Observe
- Hypothesize
- Conduct experiments
- Collect data
- Analyze results
These are just a few ways to get the most of your human resources department, but don’t hesitate to work with a consultant to tailor a solution for your company’s specific needs. By maximizing the efficiency of your personnel staff, you’ll be able to get maximum value out of your organization’s most important asset.