Alright, I know, the title has nothing to do with HR, but it was from an actual article in the Detroit Free Press and it made me laugh out loud. I mean seriously, who got up in the morning and started to write this article as real news? It did get me thinking though about other worthless metrics, we might measure in our everyday professional life, that are meaningless. It’s a classic argument that HR Pros and every organization seems to have different metrics they use to measure the health of their people business. So, here’s my list of measures you don’t really need in HR:
1. Turnover and Retention- notice I didn’t say “or” – companies that use both make me laugh,
especially when they haven’t differentiated between the two (ie., we have 3% turnover, but 97% retention – really, thanks for doing the basic math for me!). Now, if you measure the retention of your top performers, and have a performance management system that identifies that group – more power to you – you are now in the Top 10% of HR Pros.
2. Days to Fill- When measured as an aggregate. The majority of organizations in the world hire many different types and levels of talent. To say our HR/Recruiting Dept. has a 43 days to fill ratio is again meaningless. This should be broken down by hiring segment – 14 Days for Admin level, 35 for Professional, 67 for Management – or something like that. Also, have at least some knowledge of industry days to fill for those segments you are hiring for and give your Operations Partners the comparison – even if yours is worse, because you’ll then be able to show them improvement!
3. Diversity- when measured as a percentage of the whole. So, we have 45% diversity within our employee population. So what? Again, this is meaningless. What is the goal and why is that the goal? If you can show operations that at 63% diversification our business units run 15% more productive – now you are in the Top 1% of all HR Pros in the world – make it happen – you might have to work past 5pm, but it will be worth it! I beg of you, please stop measuring Diversity if you aren’t going to have a goal and reason – otherwise all you’re doing is telling every white male on staff that until we get 100% diverse we aren’t done – so if you are a white male HR Mgr. – you will have to replace yourself to reach your final goal!
4. Employee Engagement – I can’t think of a more worthless metric! Once a year we, the HR Dept., are going to justify our jobs for a month as we roll out our annual Employee Engagement Survey and then act like Nazis and throw pizza parties in the attempt to get everyone to fill one out. Then send the next month collecting all the data and making the largest PowerPoint presentation on the planet, so we can show our senior executive team the good, bad and ugly. Finally, we add fat free pudding to the cafeteria menu as a response to our two month project. Really!? Is this adding value? Lou Holtz said it best “Motivation is simple. You eliminate those who are not motivated.”
5. Training and Development Class Surveys- This probably should be #1, if this wasn’t a completely tongue in cheek post. Has anyone really ever filled one of these out, for in-house training – I mean unless you were made to or didn’t get paid! That is the new standard for Organization Development folks, “you must fill out this survey of the class to show that you were here and get paid for the time spent” – if you’re in Org. Development and doing this – Stop It! It sucks, and you suck if you do this. If you have great training, you’ll know it, people will talk about it, and other people will track you down to be a part of it.
What measure would you like to see go away?
Great post, Tim…and props for the Caddyshack pic!
But you know – 78.63% of all statistics are made up.
Great post – also – regardless of the numbers their existence isn’t important – what you do with them is.
Couple of comments. #2,4, and 5 are absolute BS metrics.
Re. #3.Diversity, as a metric, is absolutely ridiculous. Forced diversity is no better than no diversity in your teams. It is not like we go out there to the “candy store” of prospects and pick us out some different colors of proverbial M&Ms.
Do we need diversity? ABSOLUTELY! But metrics and forced diversity is not the way to achieve it.
Not sure how I would go about measuring it yet, but there ought to be a metric for how recruiting is stepping outside of the usual box of conventional thinking (poaching over scouting, looking for prospects in usual places, looking for same traits, etc.).
Another point to ponder on:
If women, people of color, or different nationalities are not beating down your door, that means you need to work on the culture of the company, not on how you recruit.
I think you can add another metric to the time to fill one, and that would be the performance rating of the new hires after 90 days. I think that gets to both quantity and quality.
I have to disagree with employee engagement though. Like your other metrics when done right (minus pudding and pizza parties) it can be a predictive measure of things to come, like customer disatisfaction and revenue.
In response to Paul Hebert’s comment that if diverse candidates aren’t beating down your door, you need to work on corporate culture, not recruiting:
Paul’s made some huge assumptions there. Namely, that the lack of diverse staff is a corporate image problem. Consider the possibility that diverse candidates are knocking on the door but the recruiting process is keeping them out.
If you track diversity rates at each stage the of recruitment process (% diverse candidate applications, % diverse candidate phone screen, 2nd interview, etc.) you might be able to figure out if these candidates are opting not to apply at the company (therefore, employer branding problem) or are being filtered out at some stage (therefore recruitment process problem).
Alternately, if diverse candidates aren’t applying for a job at the company, it could point to other issues… perhaps your region doesn’t have a diverse candidate pool on tap. In Canada, we can find out the diversity rates for any region by looking at the Statistics Canada website. Does the U.S. have access to any data like this?
I agree – Employee Engagement is a worthless metric. I challenge anyone who disagrees to find research that proves that employee engagement is actually a predictor of anything. Though, I do appreciate having the opportunity to tell management that I want more fat-free pudding.
On the flip side, academic research shows that employee commitment is a predictor of revenue, while employee embededness is a predictor of turnover. Perhaps measure these two things instead? I’m just stayin’….
FYI Helen – I think you’re referring to Apollo’s comments – I have enough problems
Hittin’ hard with your callin’ card, Tim. Great post and I look forward to more from you!
Sung Kim
Managing Partner
Servane Cross, Inc.
Thanks, I was referring to Apollo’s comments. Sorry for the mix up, Paul!
What I want to know is “How Do They Know?” – who’s peeing in the pool and who is not?
My issue with many of the useless metrics being recorded is not as specific as Tim’s. My issue is that there is an entire portfolio of “warm and fuzzy” metrics that are tracked and promoted as representing critical issues for the enterprise when in reality there are many critical metrics that are not being tracked at all.
Tim touches on some of the broader issues in his specific items. The link between diversity and business productivity is an important discussion – one for which there is little research. Currently, diversity is advocated as an end itself – a social and ethical priority that I support, but the equally valid question to be asked is how diversity impacts performance. I would suggest that the real value of Tim’s Pee in the Pool comment is raising the very valid issue that linking diversity to performance is a perfectly appropriate discussion to be having in the first place.
As to the training and development class surveys, the broader issue is the link between training and learning interventions and business outcomes. Smiley sheets may feel good, but the link between learner satisfaction and performance is yet to be established. The real challenge in learning is to move beyond learner satisfaction to metrics that provide rigorous measurement of outcomes resulting from learning interventions. The critical factors we focus on at the Human Capital Lab are:
1. What business outcomes do the operating managers (not HR) want the learning to impact?
2. How do we know that the measured outcomes are the result of the learning and not something else?
3. How much will it cost to do the measurement?
With that, I need to go get my suit on and get into the pool.
Michael E. Echols, Ph.D.
Bellevue University’s Human Capital Lab
http://www.HumanCapitalLab.org