What Is One Type of HR Metric?

The Human Resource profession over the past decade has become more sophisticated.  By utilizing metrics to examine employee trends our profession has become better at anticipating future challenges and opportunities.  When we use HR metrics and evaluate historical patterns we are better able to respond to the challenges we face on the job.

Metrics are a common measurement across all professions and are used as a way to retain, challenge talent and hold people accountable.  One key metric that is being used by thousands of HR professionals is the employee opinion survey.  Over the course of the next couple of months our firm will be evaluating this metric and provide data from our client base to evaluate employee satisfaction and management effectiveness.  With so many people in transition, the retention of a company’s remaining employees is often critical to its survival.  Understanding and responding to these employees’ concerns and questions are important components in ensuring that success.

Using normative data is also important for clients; as this information serves as a benchmark which allows a company to compare their own mean scores with the client base.  Normative scores are updated continuously and, due to the size of our database, we can utilize a 99.9% confidence interval, resulting in a margin of error of + .01.  This means that our clients have a high level of confidence in the data they receive and this metric is validated.  In the past, clients have often requested that we create norms that would provide a benchmark against their industry or region in the country.  Today, however, we have begun to see a shift from benchmarking within one's own industry toward benchmarking against other “best places to work”. This is particularly true with regard to benchmarking in the areas of organizational climate, culture, engagement, management and leadership.

Over the next several months we are going to be examining areas of employee satisfaction and engagement with the expectation that our followers will be able to implement these metrics to better able manage their business.  The topic that will be focus for August will be the relationship between the employee and their manager.  Look to this summary as part of your building a metric surrounding this important value.