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No matter how large your organization is, you will certainly wish to hire only qualified personnel that will contribute to its quick and efficient advancement. However, this is exactly where the prevailing number of managers face problems. The fact is that it is nearly impossible to state how experienced and goal-driven this or that applicant is right from the start. In most cases, it will take you up to several hours to understand whether you have made a correct choice or not. Unfortunately, lots of companies cannot afford to put their reputability at stake and this is what makes them search for valuable and helpful systems of workforce assessment.

It is quite understandable that HR personnel cannot figure out if an applicant will perform well in advance. At the same time, they are responsible for the efficient recruitment process. What is the way out for them then? How should they cope with this task? HR metrics is what they can make use of! These indicators will not only help assess the potential candidates for a vacant position, but also evaluate the performance of employees who are already working in your company. As a result, this makes it possible to analyze the current business situation taking into account the personnel factor, which is, by the way, one of the most crucial aspects in the whole process.

To get the most out of the procedure of implementation of HR metrics, you should gather complete information both about your potential hires and people you are currently working with.  This info can be obtained through background checks, for example. Well, this will certainly take some time, but think about the final result you will get! When performing these important checks, try to limit the amount of information you will use when setting up suitable HR metrics. Otherwise, you may be puzzled by useless facts that will prevent you from thorough research, since you will need to establish too many metrics. The recommended number of them, however, is ten. This will be enough to process the data properly and draw proper conclusions.

Even if the above mentioned process seems too time-taking and challenging, it really helps define the potential efficacy of new hires and that of your current personnel. So, take your time to find out more about the essence of this procedure and then proceed to the selection of those HR metrics that seem crucial for your business.

If you work in the human resource department of a large company, then you surely have firsthand knowledge of how challenging and time-taking the process of selecting and hiring new employees proves to be. The fact is that there are no reliable means to differentiate between qualified applicants for a vacant position and those who do not have any experience and desire to learn. As a result, you can never know in advance whether the person you are going to hire will be efficient or not. Experts point out that any definitive system of this type could help avoid high turnover rates if established properly. Therefore, managers of large companies around the world admit that there is a need to come up with HR metrics that are claimed to be a valuable tool when it comes to assessing and enhancing the work of the human resource department.

So, what is the value of HR metrics? Well, they are closely associated with specific measurable guidelines that are applied by companies looking for cost-efficient strategies aimed at ensuring proper workforce performance. With regard to this, it can be concluded that employee evaluation is what proves to be the main concept of these metrics. This is, actually, quite helpful, because it is not easy to assess the qualification and potential efficacy of this or that applicant unless the human resource department can boast years of experience in this sphere. However, even the most qualified HR specialists face problems from time to time when it comes to this time-taking procedure. This is why human resource metrics are needed in your company. They will help you define whether the applicants are worth the money you are going to invest in them or not.

Establishing a reliable system of HR metrics for your organization can be done without any particular effort if you come up with specific guidelines. One of the most significant steps here is to gather trustworthy information about your workforce. Still, not all data may be helpful when developing these metrics. There are pieces of information that will have no serious influence upon the performance of your company at all. How will you know what data to choose then? Well, you just have to keep in mind that the overall amount of metrics to be analyzed should not exceed ten. This is the most optimal number that will allow you to make effective assessment of your employees.

The role of human resources in a company is highly valuable (if not even essential). The way your employees perform their everyday duties affect your business advancement both in short-term and long term perspectives. In this respect, the work of HR departments seems to be really significant, since they are in charge of proper development and accomplishment of all policies and strategies related to personnel management. It is they who are responsible for organizing employees as well as training and managing them adequately with the only purpose – to build strong and productive workforce that will help maximize business performance and generate revenue.

Now as we realize the importance of the HR department, it makes sense to point out what tools they generally apply to gain their objectives. Though there are lots of strategies that make it possible to measure personnel productivity these days, human resource metrics remain the most useful and informative of them. These metrics are typically divided into 5 categories that make it possible to sum up the factors the HR department should measure, analyze and evaluate.

Recruitment response time is the first HR metric we will talk about in this article. The fact is that any company tends to have quick recruitment response time, which requires proper and smart selection of applicants for this or that vacant position. Therefore, such points as pre-employment screenings, identification of qualified candidates and the amount of time needed to post vacancy ads have to be considered here.

It is not a secret that one of the goals of the HR department is to contribute to the profitability of the company. That is why they cannot go without another HR metric known as “compensation value added”. It is used to justify that the revenue percentage is higher than that of employee payroll expenses.

Absenteeism and turnover rates are the next human resource metrics worth consideration. The thing is that tracking of inconsistent employees and absentees may be a painstaking task, which, nonetheless, should be performed correctly. Finally, we have come up to one more important HR metric referred to as “rates of retention”. It is even reported to be of the utmost value to any organization. That is why it should be better measured in categories.

Human resource metrics are actually not quite difficult to measure if you know how to do that accurately and correctly. They make it much easier to analyze, track, and calculate the basic processes that are currently going on in your organization and these results will ideally reflect your business performance with regard to the employee factor.

Human resource management implies the assessment of a company’s workforce. The HR department is primarily responsible for personnel selection, training, attraction, evaluation and rewarding as well as overseeing organizational culture and leadership in the company. This division also ensures compliance with labor and employment laws.

HR managers have one basic objective, which is to hire qualified employees and help them get proper training so that they could use their skills, knowledge and experience for the benefit of the company. Needless to say, this task is not as easy as it may seem at first glance. This is where human resource metrics generally come in handy. The fact is that measurement of business efficiency is that very point, which should be performed regularly and with regard to basic key performance indicators. What are these KPIs? Why should they be measured and how is it possible to define them in each separate business? Let us search for the answers to these questions below.

Key performance indicators are effective tools, which help conduct a timely and quality monitoring and evaluation of all processes that are going on in a company at a particular period of time. The obtained results can further be applied to define the factors that affect the overall company performance. In other words, these results can be used to implement adequate changes in those spheres, where the organization is having problems. However, it is of paramount importance to identify those KPIs that are more critical for your company before proceeding to its evaluation. To do that properly, you need to consider a set of factors, such as turnover rate and expenses, cost per hire, business environment, time to fill, employee satisfaction and knowledgeability etc. Each of these indicators is equally significant. Furthermore, a lot of them are interrelated and affect each other.  Unfortunately, some HR managers believe that business environment (company climate) and level of employee satisfaction are not relevant. Meanwhile, it is not so, because the company’s personnel are dependent upon the overall organization climate. So, if there is something wrong with it, it would prevent the employees from maximizing their performance.

What you should keep in mind is that there is no sense to measure the above mentioned KPIs separately. Instead, you should put them together in order to get a full picture of what is going on in your business. For instance, you will be able to see what investments of the human resource department do not pay off and change the situation for the better.

Current market conditions have made it painstaking for many businesses to withstand tough competition in nearly all industries. As a result, business owners and shareholders are mainly oriented on the improvement of their companies’ performance and human resource management is the first point they generally start with.  Actually, this approach is quite reasonable, since productive employees create value for each organization, while those that lack knowledge and experience may pull the rug out from them if these problems will not be solved on time.

Workforce-related expenses make up the largest part of overall company’s investments. With regard to this, efficacy of human resource function can seriously affect the success and failure of any company. Human resources department is that division, which is primarily focused upon the analysis of current workforce productivity and the prognosis of potential business performance with regard to obtained results. They use only solid comparative information and evidence-based facts when measuring the most influential and effectual human resource metrics and this is what helps them draw proper and timely conclusions.

Human resource metrics are a powerful and extremely valuable performance measurement tool that helps tracks changes going on in the company over time. In most businesses, there is a strong tendency to make use of accountability in order to reveal the functioning of the organization in general and this is primarily done through implementation of HR metrics. Furthermore, stakeholders also expect a substantial return on their human capital investment. As a result, this forces the HR department to work persistently and diligently in this direction.

Human resource metrics can help HR managers make efficient business decisions that will be based on checked figures and facts rather than on simple assumptions. This can notably reduce uncertainties and ambiguities that may be interpreted improperly, thus affecting business performance in general. That is why the main objective of each HR department is to implement relevant human resource metrics that will be linked to the company’s goals. This will eventually ensure that all HR strategies are systematically enhanced and oriented on providing tangible business benefits.

If you wish to reach all your business objectives and improve your business environment, then you will not go without HR metrics. They can enable HR managers to ensure that all the functions of their department are aligned to the company’s strategies and goals. This will inevitably be reflected in the improvement of workforce productivity and business performance.

Any company or organization comprises several departments that are responsible for particular missions. Thus, the human resources department, which is frequently believed to be one of the most essential and significant divisions in a company, is primarily focused on providing efficient policies and strategies that contribute to better personnel productivity. Additionally, this department ensures that all missions, values and principles, which keep a specified organization guided towards success and higher performance, are optimized. However, these are not the only functions the HR department performs. Their task is also to make sure that each and every employee is trained well enough to work for the benefit of the company and this is where HR metrics should be applied.

Human resource metrics are a great tool for effective and quality human resource management and assessment. Unfortunately, large businesses often lack experience when it comes to proper and accurate establishment of these metrics. More often, they make two basic mistakes that affect their implementation. These errors involve the development of KPIs in a vacuum and usage of a lot of metrics at a time, which makes it not easy to maintain and analyze them correctly.

So, what causes the above mentioned problems? How can they be solved effectively? To start with, these mistakes are frequently observed in those companies that lack the cooperative approach to strengthening the company’s positions and reaching long-term objectives. This frequently happens when managers decide which metrics are strategic for their business without proper analysis. As a result, they select too many KPIs to be developed simultaneously, which complicates the task and leads to vague results.  To prevent this from happening, it is reasonable to establish the minimum number of metrics (8-10 will be enough) in order to analyze each of them profoundly.

Have you already chosen the required HR metrics? If so, then the next step is organizing them into several levels. Thus, the first tier will deal with workforce productivity and implementation of the following HR metrics will be reasonable here: the percentage of personnel improvement, the enhancement of correlation between the expenses and profit with regard to each employee and the financial value of the increased workforce productivity.

The second tier involves measurement of personnel engagement. HR metrics applied here include the overall percentage of employees, who are not satisfied with their managers’ attitudes and the percentage of those that are eager to proceed to performing their everyday duties.

The third tier is analysis of the company’s benefits and compensation, which will help define whether pay fairness is observed in your company or not. Metrics to be applied here comprise the percentage of workers that are satisfied with their salaries and that of employees, whose compensation is above the average because of their performance.

If you still hesitate and cannot decide whether to set up human resource metrics in your company or not, then don’t be! HR metrics make up the most powerful tool of measuring the performance of your human resource department as well as the organization in general. They help define and keep track of the personnel productivity, which, in its turn, affects the way the company is operating at the moment. In this article we will have a closer look at four major HR metrics that are highly valuable and informative for any company and the measurement of which does not take much time and effort.

 

All human resource metrics fall into two basic categories, namely quantitative and qualitative ones. Quantitative indicators deal specifically with hard numbers and matter greatly when it comes to providing strategic support to the company. Qualitative metrics, on the other hand, help provide a reasonable insight into common trends, including motivation, employee attitudes, satisfaction, though these metrics are somewhat inconclusive and quite subjective. Let us focus on quantitative HR metrics, since they are easier to track, observe and analyze. These involve recruitment response time, retention rates, compensation value added and turnover/absenteeism rates.

Recruitment response time is the amount of time an HR department needs to fill a vacant position. Its importance should not be underestimated, since the longer they identify the suitable applicants and complete pre-employment tests, the worse the overall effects upon the company’s current productivity prove to be.

The next HR metrics we are going to discuss here is used to measure retention rates in the company. It is recommended to track them in categories, which will help ensure the metric offers maximum value to a company. Thus, the first step involves the turnover analysis for professional-level and entry-level positions. The next step is to analyze the turnover rate by duration (30, 60, 90 days and one year). The thing is that the more information related to the employment duration and type of position you manage to get, the more valuable this metric will become for a company that needs to increase its retention.

Another metric referred to as compensation value added helps detect whether the growth of payroll expenditures in a company is properly justified. To measure this indicator, you will need to perform the comparison of the annual salary percentage growth and the annual revenue percentage increase. Turnover/absenteeism rates are also meaningful for any organization, since they are interrelated. Thus, the higher the absenteeism level is – the higher the turnover rate will become. This is what you should remember when introducing and measuring HR metrics in your company.

If you a concerned owner of a large company, then you should definitely know that human resource KPIs are a must in your organization. They are required to ensure better productivity of your personnel and they are actually applied to measure the whole range of aspects that affect it, including teamwork, quality of work, ability to solve problems and initiative. What you should also know is that this measurement system should not be implemented secretly, since each employee should be aware of those problems (if any) that prevent him/her from coping with their tasks effectively.  In other words, your workers need motivation to enhance their productivity and key performance indicators can be highly useful in this respect.

KPIs are also claimed to be unsurpassed management tools. The company’s HR department can use the obtained data to define the areas where the workforce performs positively as well as those that require improvement. Apart from this, key performance indicators may help identify whether this or that employee faces stress factors (associated both with the job itself and those outside the workplace) that do not allow him/her to get the most out of his/her position. These stress factors may pertain to the job itself, frustration that results from the increased requirements and even conflicts with colleagues. These aspects should not be ignored and that is why they should be primarily included into the system of KPI measurement. This information will further make up management and individual reports.

The company will use the management report to work out strategies and approaches on how to train and stimulate the workforce to help them achieve the desired improvement. The individual report, in its turn, is highly informative for each employee, since it helps define the areas he/she should improve on.  These areas may be related either to the position and duties a worker performs or his/her personal characteristics, such as teamwork, leadership skills, experience, cooperation etc.

The process of KPI scoring is not really painstaking, but it is quite expensive. This is especially true when it concerns large corporations that employ hundreds of people. In most cases you will have to enter the information you have obtained into your computer and the system will automatically generate the results.

The conclusion is as follows: human resource KPIs are a necessity in your company mainly because they may positively contribute to its general success and performance. Employee relations, team spirit, cooperation incentives, customer service… these are only a few aspects, which may be substantially enhanced through proper implementation of key performance indicators in your company.

It is highly desirable for all companies to learn the basics of human resource KPIs nowadays, since this is the most effective way for them to make sure they feature the expected productivity level. At the same time, key performance indicators make it possible to identify those problems the HR department currently faces – the ones that prevent these businesses from maximizing their potential.

Human resource KPIs represent a special measurement system that helps evaluate each employee, who is an indispensable part of the overall company workforce. Obviously, the more qualified and productive each worker is – the better the performance and profitability of the whole organization becomes. Though the process of KPI implementation is definitely not a cheap one it makes sense to invest into it in order to define and eliminate those problems that prevent your business from generating more profits in future.  With that said, it becomes clear that key performance indicators are important for any reputable company that has long-term goals and the managers of which wish to motivate their employees properly.

So, what are these KPIs and how is it better to pick them out? Well, there are lots of indicators that may seem important at first sight. Still, when you analyze them better, you will realize that not all of them match your business needs and objectives. Most companies consider it important to evaluate the value of each worker with regard to the following areas: quality of work, initiative, productivity, teamwork, cooperation as well as the ability to solve problems.  As soon as you define those indicators that seem the most crucial for your organization at the moment, you can notify your employees about them in order to motivate them to work better.  As a result, this can help improve the productivity of the organization in general.

What you should remember is that gathering information about each employee only is not enough to draw any conclusions. You first need to analyze the data you have obtained in order to define what exactly has to be improved in the performance of each employee. You may require special diagrams and graphics that will show you strong and weak points of your personnel. Do not hesitate to make each worker aware of the obtained results, since it will stimulate him/her to further improvement. The company managers, in their turn, should also work out strategies that can contribute to the enhanced workforce productivity.

It is extremely important for all large businesses to choose right strategies and approaches when it comes to the process of hiring new employees. Why? Simply because the overall productivity and profitability of your company will primarily depend upon the level of knowledge ability and experience your personnel may boast. Consequently, the functioning of the HR department proves to be highly significant and responsible, since this is exactly that very place where the recruitment process starts.

As a matter of fact, it is not easy to define how experienced and competent this or that job applicant really is. Likewise, it is quite difficult to differentiate between weak and strong employees that already work for your company. So, what is the way out then? Are there any solutions that can help perform better assessment of applicants right from the start?  If you are concerned with these questions, then you should certainly learn more about HR metrics and their role in the personnel evaluation. These indicators (if worked out and processed correctly) can be highly valuable in building a profitable and successful company, the foundation of which will be well-trained and productive workforce.

Human resource metrics are a set of assessable guidelines, which can effectively help company managers work out the most reasonable strategies that pertain to the improvement of workforce performance. They are claimed to be really valuable, because they can point out all the problems that prevent your employees from getting the most out of their abilities. At the same time, they help business owners define whether this or that employee is worth further investing or not.

Now as you know the essence and importance of human resource metrics, it is high time to identify the most effective and simple ways of their implementation. What you will need in detailed information about your current personnel. This data should be as reliable and sound as possible. The major aspects you should focus on when assessing your employees is their qualifications, personal characteristics, dedication to your company and the working process in general etc. As you see, there are lots of factors that should be considered when building HR metrics, but actually you do not need too many of them. Otherwise, you may be somewhat puzzled by the amount of data you need to process and face the risk of overlooking important details. Therefore, choose not more than 10 metrics that seem critical for your organization and analyze them regularly. Thus, the most popular and effective human resource metrics generally involve recruiting and retention, level of employee engagement, manager satisfaction and, finally, overall personnel productivity. This is what you should primarily focus on when implementing the HR metrics system in your company.