Measuring What Matters

In the December 2008 edition of Talent Management, Jac Fitz-enz continues his line of thinking about transforming the analytics used in HR. He quotes Jeanne Harris co-author of Competing on Analytics:

“The key for CIOs is to think long term and enterprise-wide about how they are going to capture, cleanse, manipulate, analyse and present data across the enterprise, to ensure there’s a common version of the truth. Then business managers can focus on the insights they’ve gained from the data, rather than arguing over whose data and analysis is correct.”

Dr. Jac goes on “Reread that statement and substitute CHRO for CIO. What if HR started thinking like that about the wealth of data that passes through its processes to hire, pay, develop and support the enterprise’s human capital? Wouldn’t that go a long way toward winning HR a seat at the proverbial table? Isn’t it about time that HR graduated from the kindergarten metrics of numbers of people hired, trained and retained to something more useful to the C-level?”

We are fans of Dr. Jac… and we are also fans of helping organizations measure what matters. Measures like quality, captured and applied at each step of the employee lifecycle from attraction to termination. And hard data like core learning and behavioural attributes that allow us to determine which are most predictive of retention, productivity, engagement and success.

It is possible for HR to reliably inventory individual attributes and capabilities to evaluate organizational capacity, and then manage the relationship between human capital and the achievement of strategic objectives in a way that few have done until now. We just have to stop wasting our time with kindergarten metrics and start measuring what matters.