In Yesterday’s Advisor we featured three free metrics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics recommended by Compensation.BLR.com®. Today, two more, plus good news—an upcoming metrics webinar that will help you pin down metrics that management wants to see.
Cost-of-Living Index
Each month, the BLS collects data on prices of a “market basket” of food, clothing, shelter, fuel, prescriptions, transportation fares, medical fees, and other goods and services that people buy for day-to-day living. BLS measures changes in these costs and reports them in the form of the consumer price index (CPI). The CPI, as defined by the BLS, is a measure of the average change over time in prices paid by urban consumers for this market basket.
The CPI for urban consumers (CPI-U) is representative of the buying habits of about 87 percent of the U.S. urban population. The BLS bases the CPI-U on the expenditures of almost all residents of urban or metropolitan areas, including professionals, self-employed, poor, unemployed, and retired persons, as well as urban wage workers and clerical workers.
The CPI market basket is developed from detailed expenditure information provided by families and individuals on what they actually bought. For the current CPI, this information was collected from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys for 2007 and 2008. In each of those years, about 7,000 families from around the country provided information each quarter on their spending habits in an interview survey.
To collect information on frequently purchased items, such as food and personal care products, another 7,000 families in each of these years kept diaries listing everything they bought during a 2-week period. Over the 2-year period, expenditure information came from approximately 28,000 weekly diaries and 60,000 quarterly interviews that were used to determine the importance, or weight, of the more than 200 item categories in the CPI structure.
Using the Index
The CPI remains useful for calculating relative changes in costs, using the following formula: New index minus old index, divided by old index, converted to a percentage by rounding to three digits and multiplying by 100. Thus, if the CPI-U stood at 184.2 in December 2012, up from 178.8 the previous December, the rise in the cost of living from December 2011 to December 2012 was (184.2-178.8) ÷ 178.8 = 5.4/178.8 = 0.030, or 3.0 percent.
Need Metrics to feed management? Start with HR by the Numbers: Use HR Metrics to Measure and Maximize Your Workforce’s Strategic Value. Join us August 22 for this informative, interactive webcast. Learn More
Why the CPI Matters
It’s a good idea to keep a close watch on the CPI. Because wages tend to follow changes in the cost of living, it’s a common practice among compensation specialists interested in keeping pay and rate ranges up to date to increase them by at least the percentage increase in the CPI. For additional information on CPI statistics, visit the BLS website (www.bls.gov). Please see the national Consumer Price Index section.
Employment Ads (Help Wanted Online)
The Help Wanted Online Data Series (HWOL) is published monthly by The Conference Board (www.conference-board.org). The HWOL measures the number of new, first-time, online jobs and jobs reposted from the previous month for over 16,000 Internet job boards, corporate boards, and smaller jobsites that serve niche markets and smaller geographic areas.
The HWOL is not a direct measure of job vacancies. The level of ads in print and online can change for reasons not related to overall job demand. The HWOL began in May 2005. With the September 2008 release, the HWOL began providing seasonally adjusted data for the United States, the nine census regions, and the 50 states. Seasonally adjusted data for occupations were provided beginning with the May 2009 release, and seasonally adjusted data for the 52 largest metropolitan areas began with the February 2012 release.
The tough economy is causing management to take a closer look at the numbers to see what’s working at every level. HR professionals are feeling this pressure, and it’s more crucial than ever for you to show how HR programs are improving your organization and contributing to meeting goals.
Yet, if you’re as busy as other HR leaders, you can spend only about 10 percent of your time at the strategic level, and you probably don’t have a way to measure the business performance of employees. And that means HR success is not being measured as well as it should be, which can ultimately keep you from being credited for your contributions to organizational success.
HR needs a straightforward, commonsense way to measure the business impact of HR programs and workforce staffing. The key is solid HR metrics and communicating your discoveries to other executives. But what exactly are the numbers you should be gathering and analyzing? Learn more by participating in BLR’s interactive, advice-rich webinar for HR professionals, HR by the Numbers: Use HR Metrics to Measure and Maximize Your Workforce’s Strategic Value.
In just 90 minutes, you’ll have a better understanding of key HR metrics that can support the overall business strategy, demonstrating value and leadership during uncertain times.
Do metrics make the manager? They can. Join us for an interactive webcast HR by the Numbers: Use HR Metrics to Measure and Maximize Your Workforce’s Strategic Value.Earn 1.5 hours in HRCI recertification credit. Register Now
By participating in this interactive webcast, you’ll learn:
- The most important HR metrics you should measure in your organization—and why
- How to build data gathering into your everyday procedures, so the HR numbers you need will automatically be at your fingertips
- How to successfully benchmark your HR results against other organizations
- Potential liabilities your organization could face if you HR data isn’t available or readily accessible
- Practical pointers to implement today so you can start capturing the most effective HR data
- Metrics that matter to management
- And much more!
Register now for this event risk-free.
Thursday, August 22, 2013
1:30 p.m. (Eastern)
12:30 p.m. (Central)
11:30 a.m. (Mountain)
10:30 a.m. (Pacific)
Approved for Recertification Credit
This program has been approved for 1.5 hours of recertification credit through the Human Resource Certification Institute (HRCI).
Join us on August 22—you’ll get the in-depth HR by the Numbers: Use HR Metrics to Measure and Maximize Your Workforce’s Strategic Value webcast AND you’ll get all of your particular questions answered by our experts.
Train Your Entire Staff
As with all BLR/HRhero webcasts:
- Train all the staff you can fit around a conference phone.
- You can get your (and their) specific phoned-in or emailed questions answered in Q&A sessions that follow each segment of the presentation.
Thanks for the tips. As we all know, metrics and data talk to C-suiters!