By Helen Luketic, CHRP

Editor’s Note: This is the first of a six-part series.

One of the most frequent questions received by the HR Knowledge and Research department of BC HRMA is “How do you get started measuring HR?”  And rightly so — what is the first step in this endeavour? 

Unfortunately there is no magic bullet.  In other words, you will not automatically fail if you don’t follow a pre-determined process.  However, you are guaranteed to fail if you don’t start or even try.

In this six-part series, the research function of BC HRMA will provide a high-level outline of how to get started measuring HR.  The subsequent articles will delve deeper into each step in the process and explore issues that you should think of as well as tasks that you need to do. Here is a  highlight of information to come:

1. Be your own personal cheerleader
2. Develop your measurement vision
3. What your organization’s strategy is telling you about your choice of metrics
4. Figuring out the gap between where you are and where you want to be
5. Moving from planning to implementation
6. After implementation there is more implementation

As a profession, we are behind other professions in measuring the impact of our activities—Sales, Finance, and Marketing are already doing it.  Let’s not waste any more time and instead get started on our first topic of discussion.

PART ONE:
Be Your Own Personal Cheerleader

If your HR department doesn’t have any measurements, or has the most rudimentary of metrics, then getting started can be overwhelming. There are many directions you can take.  Take a deep breath and remember you are not saving a life here.  Make a commitment to measure and make a commitment to continuously improve at it.  Then just do it.

Recognize that planning and implementing your measures will likely be an organic process.  HR is not a perfect science; it’s a social science where there can be better answers than others but there are rarely 100 per cent correct answers.  Go with some tried and true methods (like the ones that will be outlined in this series) but expect to go back and forth and have some frustrating days.

Do not expect your management team or employees to support you, as after all, you’re about to embark on a mission that will result in measuring the impact of their work.  In some cases you can’t even expect your executive team to be behind you.  The Conference Board of Canada’s Strategic Human Capital Measures report says that 13 per cent of organizations don’t have senior management buy-in for metrics.

The clincher?  You don’t always need to get executive buy-in to get started and getting started could actually get you that buy-in you’re looking for.  Research has shown that once you prove to your executive team that you can pull out data consistently and accurately, they’ll be sold on metrics, ask for more, and hopefully provide you with some resources along the way.  Ever watch the show Dragon’s Den?  (Mondays, 8pm, CBC)  The premise is that 5 multimillionaires (aka Dragons) have money to invest on the next great idea.  Entrepreneurs present their innovations, hoping for some of that venture capital cash.  On occasion these “Dragons” sense a great idea but are unwilling to part with their money until there is proof of revenue or sales.  In other words, do these entrepreneurs have any sales or have they signed any sales contracts?  Not even those that have zillions to spare are willing to give it up unless the idea is proven.

The moral of the story is start small, do it well, and prove you add value; only then can you ask for the people, technology, and time you need.  The other moral is that as you incorporate metrics into operations, you will need to practice all the change management skills in your toolbox.

Cheerlead Others

Believe that you can be successful in implementing your measures and most importantly believe that your staff will figure out how to get your department there.  When you believe in your HR team, it may well become a self-fulfilling prophecy, known as the Pymaglion effect or Rosenthal effect   If senior HR staff make it clear that they believe in their staff to find the solutions, the employees tend to internalize these expectations and perform simply because they are expected to do so.

Refuse to Give in
Ever come across a person who asks you a question and when you present them with an answer, they come back at you with a “yeah but” statement?  Here’s an example:

Person A:  “How do you measure training & development?”

Person B:  “You can start by looking at the total investment per FTE, training satisfaction rates, exam scores, job performance ratings, or even track changes to employee behaviour.  What you measure really depends on why you’re offering the training in the first place.”

Person A:  “Yeah but how do you know whether or not the training made any difference?  You can’t figure that out by calculating total training costs.  And, there are so many factors that could affect the employee’s performance ratings, you can’t always relate it back to training.”

HR metrics are not the ultimate answer to everything.  However, a series of well-chosen measures tell a story, a story based on fact that would otherwise be told on gut or instinct.  The short answer to the “yeah but” folks is that some information is better than none and we will never be right if we do nothing. No-one ever climbed Everest by talking about it.

There you are – just do it, give ‘er, go for it. Cheerlead yourself, cheerlead others, find your data sources and start small.  

Helen Luketic, CHRP brings more than nine years of HR experience to her current role as HRIS Analyst at Vancity, where she’s assisting the organization implement new HR systems and processes. For her innovative achievements at Vancity, Helen was the recipient of BC HRMA’s 2008 Rising Star Award. In her previous role as Manager, HR Metrics & Research at BC HRMA, she combined her CHRP, B.A. in Economics, HR information systems knowledge and experience in HR metrics to develop the HR Metrics Service and related workshops, presentations and webinars to teach HR professionals about HR metrics and benchmarking.