In yesterday’s Advisor, Noelle Nitz and Linda Duffy helped us break through the metrics language barrier between HR and management. Today, their tips for managing metrics, plus an introduction to the webinar that makes your managers leaders.
Nitz, President of the Institute for Financial Mastery, and Duffy, President of Leadership Habitude, made their remarks at BLR’s recent National Employment Law Update in Las Vegas. They say there’s good news on the metrics front.
The Good News
- Employees are the company’s greatest resource and often largest expense.
- Machines cannot innovate or create.
- People create products, processes, inventions, relationships.
- As the company’s advisor regarding people, HR plays a key role regarding the P&L of the company.
All of that means that there is a lot of room for opportunity. However, Nitz and Duffy say, there’s also the cold hard truth:
- >Companies are in business to make money.
- The most important measure of a CEO’s success is how he or she grows the company’s earnings and value.
- You need to speak the language of business to get your seat at the table.
How do you get that seat at the table?
- Find out which metrics your CEO and CFO talk about all the time.
- Bridge the gap between your metrics and their language.
- Speak your results in the language of the CEO (and that language is finance).
If you don’t speak the language …
Since you can’t communicate if you can’t speak the language of finance, you’ll have to get help. Try these options, Nitz and Duffy say.
- Go back to school
- Find a mentor
- Hire a financial coach
- Get training
Bottom line, employees leave bosses, not companies. Join us March 1 for Leadership: How To Become an Effective, In-Demand Boss and Master Motivator. Click here for details.
6 Steps for Metrics Success
Finally, Nitz and Duffy offer the following suggestions for metrics success:
1. Take the CFO to lunch.
- What are the most expensive pain points?
- How can HR play a role in driving strategy?
- Which department is a critical driver of your market value?
- What thing, if you improved it, would make a significant impact on the business overall?
2. Identify what to measure and how to measure it.
3. Develop process and begin measuring.
4. Research benchmarks.
5. Report your findings and successes.
6. Monitor trends; revise your process as needed.
Metrics. They’re the best way to communicate up the ladder. That’s half of leadership. What about the other half—down the ladder. Are you all you should be as a leader?
The recent recession may have lulled you into thinking that all is well with your workers. After all, you haven’t had a lot of turnover lately. But the true test is coming now, as the economy continues to improve — will your stars continue to stick around, or will they jump ship the first chance they get?
You can slice and dice it any way you want, but the bottom line is that most employees leave because of something their supervisor is doing —or not doing. And losing your best workers means losing not just the substantial time and money involved in replacing them, but also valuable (sometimes irreplaceable) talent and ideas.
Join us on March 1 for an in-depth webinar all about becoming the boss everyone wants to work for—and bring the rest of your supervisors along as well.
You and your colleagues will learn:
- How to set your employees up for success before they even walk in the door
- Interviewing strategies that help you land the talent you want
- Why strong onboarding techniques are crucial, and how to implement them
- How to get the very best ideas, productivity, and motivation from your team
- A new way of thinking about what it means to be a boss
- The importance of being a manager every day
- The best way to delegate tasks, responsibilities, and projects
- How to convey instructions and guidance while keeping your team members accountable for their own work and success
- How to effectively build relationships of trust and confidence with your employees
- The 3 things a great boss never does
“I’m a good boss—but I could be better.” Join us March 1 for Leadership: How To Become an Effective, In-Demand Boss and Master Motivator. Click here for details.
The date is March 1. The time, 1:30 pm to 3 pm (Eastern Time—adjust for your time zone). As with all BLR webinars, one fee trains all the staff you can fit around a conference phone. You can get your (and their) specific phoned-in or emailed questions answered in an extensive Q&A that follows the presentation, and your satisfaction is assured or you get a full refund.
What if you can’t attend on that date? Pre-order the conference CD. For more information on the conference and the experts presenting it, or to register or to pre-order the CD, click here. We’ll be happy to make the arrangements.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (PST)
11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. (MST)
12:30 to 2:00 p.m. (CST)
1:30 to 3:00 p.m. (EST)
More Articles on HR Management