The world of HR has been banging on about HR metrics for years, but most HR departments still haven’t got any real measurements or performance indicators….. a survey of 4 questions to a hiring manager is not a key metric to determine if an HR service is performing!

In the HR world there is no standard day, because we are people, looking after people for people. As a result its easy to say “as long as our managers are happy, we are doing a good job”. HR Metrics, Measurements, indicators and statistics help us turn this randomness and unknown into a known. How can we know if we are doing a better job than last quarter if we have no benchmark? With all the projects and programs that we run, how can we ascertain whether there is a benefit and improvement?

Tips:

• Ask what your hiring managers, business and stakeholders want from their HR department and build your process around this
• Once you have your HR Service model/service break it down into measurable chunks and decide on what “good looks like”
• Validate this “good service model” by showing and explaining it to your stakeholders. a weekly 1-1 between an HRBP and a manager, may be the standard way of working, but it might not be what they are actually looking for. “well thats what our managers want”….. is it??? when was the last time you asked them?
• Once you have “good performance” modelled, measure how things stand today, this gives us our baseline and a point that we hope we will improve from
• Check in at agreed points to see how we are tracking, and in the spirit of continuous improvement tweak if necessary.
• Align HR Metrics and indicators to company values; this will ensure that the metric is accepted by the teams and is adhered to (e.g. a “program of company wide measurement” matches the company value of “continuous improvement” or sending out “customer satisfaction surveys” matches the company value of “listening to our customers”.

Issues:

Subjectivity and Bias – Make sure that your measurements are clean and can’t be bias, i.e. sending out customer satisfaction surveys to 5 out of 50 managers, that you know love you, that is not a honest reflection

Sufficient data – We need to ensure that we have enough data. If you only have 5 data points you can’t consider that an honest reflection; if you have 50 data points, and you are still showing the same trend, you have a stronger case, 500 points… you have concrete!

Analysing the data – There is no point having data, HR Metrics and information if someone isn’t going to analyse and report on it. The amount of times Ive created reports within a system, only to find that someone created the same report 12 months ago, and I could have had that info all this whole time!

Match the HR metrics – Analyse the data and trends against other metrics to see if there are relating patterns

For Example:

• Less Face time and more phone time between HRBP and HM = Higher manager productivity for both groups
• More metrics and Performance indicators = higher data input into HCM and data integrity

Change Management – Ensure that the HR Metrics are adhered to and people don’t “cook the books” by taking the relevant stakeholders on the change journey and ensure that they understand the reason for change and measurement. It doesn’t have to be about “keeping an eye on them” it can be about “making US better.”

Get measuring!

What ingredients make up the perfect recipe for a Lean HR process

Onboarding, Orientation and Productivity

Onboarding of employees is a crucial step in any business, but is often overlooked or executed poorly.

Unfortunately this step falls under the management and responsibility of HR, but the issues and problems of execution actually lie with the business. Its a crucial period, as during this phase, business expectations are established and values and conduct are learned. From an EVP and candidate engagement POV, you need to get this right to make sure that your employees don’t start their journey with you on the wrong foot. With services like glass door and social media, a disgruntled employee can cause a lot of noise. We’ve discussed the candidate experience, what about the books…hiring someone can cost at least 30% of the employees salary, thats over £8000 in the UK on an average £27000 salary. We need to make sure these people are not only productive but want to stay, and don’t take our IP with them

Common issues:

• No hardware on day 1
• No logins or access on day 1
• No planned work for the new starter
• No understanding of the business, department or goals
• Hiring Manager doesn’t have enough time for the new starter
• New starter is not introduced to relevant stakeholders

Onboarding and Orientation tips:

• Pre-Onboard – Have your new starters read and complete content before Day 1 to ensure they are prepared and ready for work
• Go Digital – Have a digital/online onboarding process which will free up HR and other resources
• Metrics – Make sure you measure your on boarding process. How many, how long, which departments, during which times, what happened, who didn’t…. all the usual W’s and H. Only you will know which W’s and H work for your process. If you don’t measure and get a baseline, how can you expect to improve it.
• Hiring Manage prep – Make sure the Hiring Manager is prepared for the new starter and has introductions and meetings booked in the diary…. not back to back meetings every day in the first week though, they need to come up for air!
• The hiring manager will also have a lot of work and time to invest; ensure that the manager has booked in enough facetime with the new starter to check in on them. Its important to micro manage a little at the beginning as there will be a lot to learn.
• Evaluate and communicate – with the groups that have tasks before and after your process, ie HR admin and IT. What do they need from the process and what outputs do they need from you. What do IT need to get thelaptop and log ins set up, what do HR admin need from Recruitment to set them up in the system as early as possible. What do the training team need to set up on-boarding modules in the system etc
• Cost – When you measure, make sure you turn this into a cost and monetary value, to ensure that the business understands the importance of this process. Eg, unproductive time X hourly rate, or increased productivity X usual employee output.
• VOC – Speak to your employees or at least survey them to get an understanding of their experience
• Speak to your hiring managers and stakeholders and get their input and experience.
• BIGGEST TIP – Build your process around what your stakeholders want and calculate a cost saving, profit increase figure to win the business over. If you do this, things will improve…. don’t forget to measure it!

You don’t need a new piece of software or an RPO, fix it yourself!

Once we have mapped our current as-is process with the relevant employees or stakeholders, how do we now identify the areas of waste and improvement with sticky dots. Lets ask the people that do the job day in day out. Gather the main stakeholders in a room and give them all 5-10 red sticky dots and ask them to place the dots on the area that they feel is wasted effort/time or is a priority for improvement. This is done without discussion, as we dont want strong and vocal characters to lead the witness. This will ensure that all attendees get an equal vote and say, and you will end up with a fantastic visual showing you where the issues are, democratically decided by the guys who are in the trenches doing the job. There is no point taking direction and solutions from the board or CEO as they often don’t know what is really happening. There main role is to ensure that the project is supported and the outcome and change is implemented and sticks. 

This example shows the idea/process/discussion after voting. You will see that Task 4 and 5 are a priority for focus and improvement, with task 5 the next area of attack. It is important to understand why task 7 and 10 were also highlighted as areas for improvement, unpack these selections by spending some time discussing the tasks that have been identified to ascertain why people voted for them and that all attendees understood the task and what their vote meant.

Once all stakeholders are happy with the outcome, you will need to discuss how are we going to improve/change Task 4 and 5. Congratulations you are on the way to making a real impactful change in your process/way of working.

Sticky dots and posted notes are an easy, flexible, and cheap way of getting data from your employees, don’t overlook the importance of them

Next stop, coming up with the solutions!

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