Common Human Resources (HR) Metrics

One of the most common questions around Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and other metrics for HR is “what should I measure”. This is a common question found on many HR groups and forums.

Increasingly in organisations, Human Capital Measurement and Reporting is rising on the agenda. The UK Government department BIS conducted some interesting research and produced this paper showing a British perspective.

The graphic below depicts some of the critical information from this report.

While collecting this information is “interesting”, I do wonder the extent to which many managers and HR professionals know how to use this on a day to day basis, what is important is to measure and understand in the context of their industry, and the growth or business cycle that the organisation is in at the time.

Knowing that turnover is at x% is one thing, actually taking action to resolve it in a meaningful way is quite another.

Benchmarking and Evaluation
One area that having this base measure is valuable is for evaluation of initiatives resulting from a desire to increase productivity, employee engagement etc.

The challenge is in fully understanding the impact of one activity on such a global measure – direct cause and effect is difficult to justify at the best of times.

A problem of management
Often the problem causing staff turnover and poor productivity is a management skills and behaviour issue, bit its rare that this is actually addressed, indeed if you look at figures for management and leadership training, these have reduced in recent years.

What to measure
For those starting out on the human capital journey, the factors identified from this report and on the graphic below are a useful place to start.

 

Source – HRSeconds
The sample for analysis consisted of top 250 ranked FTSE companies. Please, find more details about survey along the full text here. The paper, written by Foong and Yorston, London Business School, presents British perspective on subject of HR metrics.

**please note the data is dated, however as a set of factors to measure it is still valid