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Balanced Scorecard in Human Resource Management

March 6th, 2010

They say that it is impossible to evaluate something without measuring it. In business terms, performance is measured in different values, often by money to time ratio. Thus, to analyze performance of your business, you need to find aspects of the work to be measured. Almost all businesses use IT support. Moreover, many firms use special software to evaluate performance of the company to find out what needs to be improved. Of course, in tiny companies this software is not very popular since it is possible to evaluate everything without automated tools. But why do extra work which can be done by computer?

All business professionals would admit that Human Resource Department is an important part of any business structure. You may have the best technologies, output capacities and equipment but you may be not getting proper profits because you personnel is poorly managed. When HR management works at its best you will immediately see positive results. However, the work of HR department also needs to be evaluated. HR managers should always get better and improve performance.

When it concerns companies and departments with 200+ employees it is not so easy to find out who or what makes the company perform worse than expected. Employee A is responsible for negotiations, employee B does the calculations, employee C goes through paperwork. If one of them fails, the entire chain fails. This influences the company’s overall revenue. Businesses must always get better, otherwise they will be wiped out by smarter competitors. In terms of HRM, one should always get better way of dealing with people and streaming their skills in the right direction.

For the purposes of performance evaluation thousands of companies are using Balanced Scorecard (BSC). What is a BSC? This is a mechanism of making personnel familiar with strategic success factors which are reached through key performance indicators (KPI). Different business and occupations have different KPIs. If we are talking about HR, KPIs mostly concern how efficiently personnel is managed in terms of finance and performance.

These days, many companies are using BSC metrics to evaluate performance of their HR department by key performance factors. So, let’s analyze how BSC metrics can help HR managers and HR departments. In order to perform an overall analysis we need to analyze KPIs, i.e. those factors influencing performance of HR department.

Cost per Hire. By evaluating this factor you will be able to see how expensive the recruiting process is. This process starts from posting job offer to the moment when a new person is officially employed in the company. Logically, the shorter this process is, the least expensive is cost per hire. This is a very important value, especially if the company counts hundreds and thousands of employees. This amount includes expenses related to advertising, agent’s fees, recruiter pay, relocation etc. to lover the average cost, a new person must be employed as quickly as possible.

Turnover Cost. These are the costs related to termination, new hire and learning. In other words, these are expenses related to integrating a new person into the company.

Turnover Rate. This value represents the situation in your company related to leaving and hiring new employees. Many people would agree that it is not good to change personnel too often. If the turnover rate is very high, then maybe you are treating your personnel wrong? Or is it something wrong with your business in general? Find out.

Time to Fill. Basically, this is the time needed to fill a vacant position in the company. Of course, this time depends on how well HR managers are working with recruiters, advertising and people in general. The shorter this time, the better performance of your HR department.

Length of Employment. This indicator is very easy to understand. It is possible to calculate an average value. For instance, in average an employee works 5 years for your company. Of course, everything depends on the position. If you are changing couriers or secretaries, this is not a big problem. But if chief managers work for your company less than a year, this is definitely not good.

Training and Development. Even if you hire the best specialist you need to integrate him into your company and train. Of course, you bear costs, related to training. If you manage to cut this cost without harming quality of training, then your HR department is doing a great job.

Salaries, compensation, bonuses. It is very important to know that you are not overpaying and allocating recourses wisely. This also concerns HR department of any company. With Balanced Scorecard you will be able to see how effectively company’s funds are being used in HR branch.

Cost Effectiveness. It all comes to cost effectiveness after all. All above-mentioned factors influence performance of HR department which has one goal – minimize costs and boost performance. If you HR department manages to cut costs and at the same time increase effectiveness, you can be proud of your HR specialists who know how to keep pace with the modern bsuiness.

Balanced Scoreboard will help you evaluate performance of HR managers and find solutions to problems. Once you enter all data, you will see graphs and values in percents which will indicate how well HR department is performing. Sometimes, it is difficult to find what takes the department down or what causes losses. With Balanced Scorecard you will be able to evaluate all KPI to see what needs to be improved.

Use specialized software to measure your business performance

Use specialized software to measure your business performance

HR metrics is important for large HR deparments

HR metrics is important for large HR deparments

As to psychological aspect, BSC metrics will make managers and employees more enthusiastic. If they know where they need to work harder they will do that to improve overall performance of the company. In other words, they will channel their energy, knowledge and experience in the right direction. It is very important to know own weak points. Using Balanced Scorecard, heads of HR departments will know weaknesses of their employees. It may be not a problem if the department consists of 2 people, but what if we are talking about 200? If people working for you are self-assured and confident, your company will surely benefit.

HR metrics is a must have tool for heard of companies and departments. How can you achieve your goals if you are not performing the way you expected to perform? Besides, sometimes it is very difficult to find the problem or the factor which takes the whole department down.

It may happen that your HR department works in dissonance with other department and branches. For example, managerial braches need more employees and HR department cannot find them on time. It is possible that costs for training one employee are so high that the company suffers losses for the first two or three months of his employment. It is very difficult to find the root of the problem. Balanced Scoreboard is the tool which makes it possible to detect the problem and offer solutions. If you neglect problem you will be simply wiped out by competitors. Of course, this is not something you want to happen to your business, is it?

Many managers never think of organization climate. Indeed, why should they? The company seems to be doing OK. The work is being done. So, what else do you need? Well, this is not true. You company would perform better if employees have a loyal attitude towards the company management. Do not disregard emotional state of your colleagues. It is very important to measure organization climate. With the help of anonymous questionnaires you will be able to get basic info on climate in the office and use it in BSC. HR Scorecard metrics is a very useful tool in this sense. What is there is a negative climate in your company? What if something makes people disagree with the company policy? Why not change this little thing and perform better? BSC will surely help you out here.

If the curve of emotional state goes down, then something bothers people. There is only one way to learn it. All indicators can seem perfect but the work is not done the way it should be done. Again, the answer might be found in emotional climate.

Balanced Scorecard is the best tool to improve performance of HR department within a short period of time. You do not need any meetings and seminars to get information. Of course, personal meeting will also let you know what is wrong in the company and what needs to be improved, but with specialized software you will do that faster and more efficiently.

To sum it up, it needs saying that HR metrics tool is a MUST HAVE instrument in a top manager’s toolbox. This software will save you much money as well as let your earn more. This is the ultimate goal in business, isn’t it? So, take advantage of IT progress to become a true leader. As a true leader armed with HR metrics tool you will always know what needs to be improved in your company. Thus, you will have all chances of staying on the business Olympus.

Balanced Scoracard will help evaluate business performance

Balanced Scoracard will help evaluate business performance

Improve performance of your HR deparment with Balanced Scorecard

Improve performance of your HR deparment with Balanced Scorecard

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Balanced Scorecard Best Practices in HR

July 18th, 2009

Improving the HR functions is often a tough ask owing to the degree of myriad complexity and human elements that are built in to the process. A tool like a balance scorecard can go a long way in clearing the picture and introducing clarity and purpose in the HR team. Metrics such as HR hire and Motivation, Training etc serve as clear reference points for HR executives to plan their initiatives.

Implementing a BSC approach for HR functions requires a careful study of the issues at hand and the subsequent planning implementation process. Preliminary research and discussions should be followed up with suitable brain storming sessions to devise a strategy that is tailored to the specific organization.

The BSC strategy also needs to look at building transparency into the processes and remove elements of ambiguity. It should look for devising a performance and compensation system that rewards good performance and presents clear goals that employees can look to achieve. Last but not the least this case study also highlights the need of having a suitable feedback mechanism for addressing the grievances of employees and explores how a BSC approach can achieve the same by learning from their views. Learn more about best practices in HR with Balanced Scorecard.

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The Balanced Scorecard Case Study

November 21st, 2008

The basic approach of the balanced scorecard case study management system is outlined for a hypothetical company. It can help to align bigger-picture goals with individual employee objectives.

Typical performance management focuses on monitoring tasks, and then managing them – or taking action – whenever the tasks diverge from what is expected. For example, if an employee suddenly does not fulfill his quota, then management will be sure to take admonitory action. But it is actually equally important to be able to articulate an organizational strategy, and also communicate this strategy to the entire organization. This is where the balanced scorecard system can help, and here we consider a hypothetical balanced scorecard case study.

Let us consider, for instance, the ACME Company. The director notices that their HR performance management system is not quite up to par, and would like to improve this. Having heard of how the balanced scorecard system has been implemented successfully in other organizations, the director becomes curious and would like to know how the system could help his company.

The first and crucial step is, as mentioned above, to be able to articulate an organizational strategy. That is, senior management should be able to agree upon a corporate destination, or in other words, where they want the organization to eventually be. In this case, the director, and the board, and senior managers should be asked to come up with a well-defined picture of the future of the ACME Company. This usually takes the form of a few pages of meaningful, specific statements. This step is necessary in order to build a consensus, and this agreed-upon destination will also be used in succeeding steps.

The next step would be to decide upon the organization’s priorities. In what is called a Strategic Linkage Model or SLM, the objectives that have been agreed upon, as well as the causal relationships between these objectives, are documented. This step identifies the few strategic activities to be focused upon, and the key strategic outcomes that the organization desires. In effect, this step localizes the broader strategic objectives outlined in the first step.

The next step is then the communication of these strategies to the organization, or what can be called cascading the corporate organizational strategy. In this step, the objectives are further refined and specified to become applicable to individual departments within the organization. For instance, the specific strategic objectives for the manufacturing arm of ACME would be quite different from those for the marketing arm, or the research and development arm.

And finally, the last step is selecting personal objectives. This step is the most specific of all, and involves working with individual employees in order to help them draw up their own objectives in line with the organization’s objectives. Questions that may help employees come up with specific objectives include: is this a business or development objective? Is this an activity or outcome objective? What corporate objective is being supported here? How can this objective be measured?

In this short balanced scorecard case study, the basic philosophy of the approach is already illustrated. From the most general and fundamental organizational goals, the process goes through successively smaller and more specific parts of the organization, until it reaches the individual employees themselves.

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An example of Balanced Scorecard

August 6th, 2008

They say, that it is better one time to see, so here is the Balanced Scorecard Example, this is an “Overview” report type which was generated with Balanced Scorecard Designer. The report contains information about top-level indicators and categories from the HR Hire scorecard.

This balanced scorecard report is for presentation purposes, if one need to have more detailed report the “Advanced Balanced Scorecard Report” is available.

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Pertinent Facts about Balanced Scorecard

June 22nd, 2008

The Balanced Scorecard is a tool businesses should know how to use. By applying key concepts here, growth in terms of performance and productivity should not be hard to achieve.

There are many theories and such that have emerged in the world of business over the years. And this is far from coming to an end because at this very point in time, there is surely another emerging business theory being put into practice at just about any area of the world today. However, amongst all these theories and concepts, a select few just might be effective as to the results that they bring for their respective companies and organizations. One of these is sure to be the Balanced Scorecard. Yes, you may have heard about the tool in theory, but you just might not know everything there is to know about the tool itself. Here are some facts about Balanced Scorecard that you should be aware of.

Just like any other tool that is being used in the world of business, the Balanced Scorecard has adjustable properties; all of which are made adjustable and modifiable to suit the individual and collective needs of businesses worldwide. In spite of this, though, the Balanced Scorecard operates in the same way in terms of its application. Even if you run just a small business or a fairly huge one, the same concept underlies the application of the tool itself.

Firstly, the Balanced Scorecard begins with the mission statement. This mission statement has to be stated exactly, concretely, and precisely. What’s more, the mission statement should be shared by every single member in the organization. Thus, you have to make sure your mission statement is well-worded because everything else in the process depends on this.

The second thing you should pay attention to is your financial balance or your cash flow. This is one of the first things that the financial stakeholders of your company would look for in your Balanced Scorecard. Thus, the figures here should also be as accurate as possible. Think of this as your company’s financial target, so to speak.

Thirdly, you also have to pay attention to the reputation of your company or organization itself. Just how do you want to appear in the eyes of customers and clients? Or perhaps, in the eyes of your beneficiaries? Image is very important here because you just cannot deny the fact that first impressions do count, even if they do not really last. Thus, prepare a brief but concise description of your organization, in the very image you want to appear in your customers’ eyes.

The fourth thing to look into pertains to methods and processes the company must undertake to keep the stakeholders happy and content. Brainstorming is very important during this stage because you have to take into consideration all processes needed to satisfy your stakeholders here. From the bottom of the chain of command all the way up to management tasks, all of these aspects will have to be taken into thorough consideration.

The fifth aspect involves planning. Planning takes place in the form of figuring out the courses of action to be undertaken to achieve the vision of the company itself. What would it take for all employees from all divisions to work productively together?

Lastly, you need to elaborate as much on the specific KPIs that are used on the Balanced Scorecard. In this way, the system is actually made more open to critical appraisal from all members of the organization. And since this is a continuous process, the application of this final step would indeed help in developing an efficient system. Just focus on these facts about Balanced Scorecard to get there.

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