My imagination kept on rolling and I thought about the first day of being in the role of an HR leader. What would my first actions be? What would help me take the right decisions? And then, after a month – how would I know my work had any impact?
After getting to know the company, my team, talking to my main stakeholders – and of course, finding my way to the nearest coffee machine – I would definitely be interested in looking at the people’s data.
People’s data, you say? Yes, I am sure that data would give me insight into the current state of HR affairs and where my action as a CHRO is needed.
Just to name a few interesting metrics:
- To get insight into the employee structure I would check the basics, such as the headcount, split by location, job, gender, education, and other dimensions
- To get an idea of how many are leaving us and why I would look into the voluntary and involuntary terminations
- To see how good we are in attracting and hiring new talents I would examine the candidates’ pipeline and the hire success rates
- To tell what parts of the workforce are engaged I would look into engagement survey scores
- To know if we reward our best performers sufficiently I would analyze performance scores and their correlation with compensation data
And as I – based on the data and conversations with the organization’s leadership – set the priorities of HR work for the upcoming period, I would make sure to define additional metrics which track the progress of strategic initiatives.
For example:
- If one of our priorities was solving a retention crisis, I would want to see if our interventions lower the turnover in key roles.
- If the engagement survey showed that employees are not satisfied with career opportunities, I would pay close attention to internal promotion rates.
- If we wanted to increase our hiring effectiveness, I could measure the quality of new hires – their performance after a few months of joining the company.
A dashboard with basic and strategic HR metrics would be one of my best friends if I were an HR leader. I don’t know if I would be a successful “CHRO for a month”, but based on my actions on data, it would definitely position me well with the executive team. Addressing relevant talent issues that keep other leaders up at night would be something that they appreciate and expect from the HR.
What about you in your role as an HR leader? Do you have access to relevant HR metrics to guide initiatives in your organization? Do you use HR data in order to advance your company?
