The ability to measure the success of your Workforce Plan depends on overcoming one of the 3-Challenges. That challenge is perception. Most businesses in America, even those that refer to their employees as their most valuable asset, see the workforce as a cost to be managed. Measuring the success of your workforce plan means changing that perception to one of seeing the workforce as the primary means of business growth and success. In other words, like any asset, you must care for it in a way that makes it maximize its potential. That is what we are doing here as we Measure the Workforce Plan to Ensure Maximum Potential.
Here is how…
If you are going to invest in your workforce, it is common sense that you are simultaneously investing in your workforce planning process. You want to know how well it is performing. That quite simply means you have to define what you will measure. This requires thought and customization. It means going beyond the measurements of the past.
Business and Human Resources Leaders have most often measured the success of their Recruiting and Retention by measuring:
- Time to Hire
- Cost to Hire
- Longevity (tenure)
- Turnover (retention)
While these are interesting numbers, they say nothing about the value of HR or your recruiting and retention efforts. They are just numbers. For example, if it takes you 100 days to hire someone and you want to improve that you may set a goal of reducing that to 75 days. You achieve the goal of 75 days. What does that mean concerning hiring those who possess the Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, Experience, and Behaviors (KSAEB) necessary to execute your business strategy? If your focus was on reducing time to hire, was it really on q1uality of hire?
You can say the same thing about retention (turnover). If you wish to reduce your turnover, you can do that easily for awhile. Many businesses do this through pay. Competitor A increases the hourly rate by 25 cents. So you match them. All of your competitors match them. You all keep raising your rates. Your best performers see that everyone is getting the same increases. So they wonder why they, as the best performers, aren’t being valued more. Your short term reduction in turnover ultimately creates a myriad of other problems, not the least of which an increase in payroll costs.
So what do you measure?
You start with considering Outcomes. Outcomes or results of actions that the workforce impacts. For example, let’s say that you have begun your workforce Planning efforts with your sales force. What do you want to change in the sales force and how will the people in the sales force impact on that. This is what you measure. Those strategies that you want to be executed that your SalesForce can impact on – hint: it isn’t just sales dollars and sales volume.
Having a Workforce Plan means having a process. You’ve invested in the plan by developing the process. If you measure the plan, you also measure the process. The measurements tell you your successes, where you need improvement as well as what is and is not working as you envisioned. Measuring the right things is more important than simply measuring.
The Series so Far:
FIX YOUR RECRUITING AND RETENTION PROBLEM
WHY DO ORGANIZATIONS NEED WORKFORCE PLANNING
HOW DO YOU DEVELOP A WORKFORCE PLAN