In yesterday’s Advisor we heard from Cathy Gray, JD, senior managing editor of HR and Compensation at BLR® about making sure you are measuring the right recruiting metrics and making the most of them.
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Quality of Hire
When we look at quality of hire, we’re getting into metrics that look at the impact of employees on achieving company goals. The HR department may be great at filling jobs quickly, but is it hiring people with the right skills, motivation, and drive to achieve the company’s goals? It is important to define what we mean by “quality of hire.” Organizations are looking at this metric in both objective and subjective terms, including:
- The hiring manager’s satisfaction (even though we are looking at data, there is still room for the observations and opinions of the manager);
- Performance ratings during the first year of performance; and
- Where quality of hire can be quantified, such as production levels or meeting certain performance standards.
For instance, an employee hired as a customer service associate in a call center will likely have fairly specific performance standards, including number of calls, average time per call, customer satisfaction, etc. These standards, also metrics, might be one way to measure the job performance of new hires.
HR Metrics are being used in some very interesting ways by HR departments across the country. Learn what your competitors may be up to with our new research report, HR Metrics Best Practices: How Big Data Drives Big Decisions. Learn More
New Hire Retention
New hire retention is an important metric, as it sheds some light on the effectiveness of hiring practices, onboarding, and training. However, it doesn’t tell the whole story. Equally important is to measure new hire retention among top performers. If you are losing employees who aren’t performing up to standards in the first year of employment, you are doing things right; you want to move those employees out of the organization. If you are losing good and top performers, it warrants more investigation.
Diversity Metrics
Diversity of new hires is an important metric. Another metric that you may want to consider measuring is the diversity of the qualified applicant pool for a job. The ultimate hiring decision is not necessarily in the control of HR, but rather making sure the candidate pool is qualified and diverse—including gender, race, geography, veterans, and individuals with disabilities—is something that HR can impact. The makeup of the applicant pool is critical to increasing the diversity of new hires, as well as to EEO-1 and affirmative action reporting. In addition, a more diverse workforce is critical in this day and age; employers need diversity in thought and perspective.
Employee Engagement and Turnover
here have been many studies looking at employee engagement, and based on those studies there appears to be a strong correlation between high employee engagement and low turnover. It is certainly easier to define and measure “turnover,” although how we define turnover is critical. For instance, are you going to measure total turnover, voluntary turnover, or involuntary turnover? Voluntary turnover, especially among strong performers, is a real concern. Measuring things like turnover by how much the employee was paid—his or her compensation—can provide some insight into why the employee left. Likewise, looking at turnover by department or supervisor might bring to light issues that are affecting employee engagement. Again, it is important to understand the needs of your organization and to develop the appropriate measures.
Six times a year, the HR Daily Advisor Research Team conducts detailed research into contemporary HR challenges to highlight best practices and common policies and procedures. For our latest report, we examined how metrics are being utilized in the field of human resources.
So you have collected a big heap of data. What do you do with it? What do you think your competitors do with it? We polled 604 people across numerous industries and disparate parts of the country to find out. See the results of our national survey as well as demographic breakdowns for each question.
Available in both print and downloadable PDF versions.
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Among the features of this new product:
- Full results of our national survey addressing HR metrics
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- Executive summary and highlights
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HR departments have access to an unparalleled amount of raw data these days. With the information in this report, you will get insight into the many ways HR departments around the country make use of them, perhaps even your competitors’ HR departments.
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