Your business needs to stay on top of many metrics. While a lot of businesses tend to focus on different Sales and Finance related metrics, there are also plenty of Human Resource (HR) metrics that can make a big difference. If you want to ensure your workforce is making the right calls and fostering an environment of great talent, then here are the five key HR metrics you need to keep in mind.
1. Productivity
It goes without saying that measuring productivity is important. In terms of the HR department, productivity metrics can help analyze if workers are performing well. If your productivity is off, then your HR team can take measures to improve it. This could range from things like better talent management to enhanced training.
Measuring productivity can look very different from one organization to another. Therefore, you want to consider what productivity looks and means for your business. You could measure productivity by the hours employees work, the calls or emails they send, or by looking at completed projects. It is important to really focus on the most important elements of productivity. For example, the hours worked might not be as important in your specific business as completed sales.
It is also a good idea to make sure you are using the data you gather to improve the situation. Your HR management could introduce different ways to schedule workdays, look into new technologies or ways of working if you think productivity is not as good as it could be.
2. Employee Satisfaction
You can’t just focus on staring at productivity. Another crucial HR metric to track right alongside it is employee satisfaction. Countless studies have shown that if your employees are satisfied and enjoy their work, then their productivity is likely to go up as a result. If you want to boost productivity, you should often start by making sure your employee satisfaction is high.
It is important to use a range of metrics when measuring employee satisfaction. You should look at performance reviews, both in terms of the employee and management. On top of this, it is important to do a mixture of self-assessment and have some of these done anonymously. Employee satisfaction should be measured in the long- and short-term, ensuring that employees have a chance to look at their enjoyment and satisfaction in regards to all the different aspects of a business.
Furthermore, you can also look at how different team building and corporate culture building activities change employee satisfaction. Including things like team-building exercises to your company culture can be important and show an immediate impact of improved employee satisfaction.
3. Skill Training and Talent Development
HR metrics should also cover things like skill training and talent development. You will introduce training at different parts of the employee experience and monitoring the effectiveness is crucial. You need to test how well your training programs work both at the start of employee introduction and during the later stages.
Skill training and talent development is a metric that requires you to take a closer look at a variety of things. You need to monitor how well employees absorb the different skills but also consider the cost of this. For example, your skill training might be highly impactful in terms of transferring those new skills to your employees. But the training program might not be as efficient if the costs are high in terms of both the time spent learning and the financial cost of the training. Therefore, you need to make sure your training and talent development is effective in terms of the cost and end result.
4. Retention Rate
It’s important to know your employee retention rate. This can tell the HR department a lot in terms of employee satisfaction and recruitment success. If your employees are leaving you, then you might have a problem in your organization. Naturally, there will always be some level of turnover and it’s not always a bad thing. But it’s an important HR metric to focus on because it helps you understand what is happening in the organization.
When it comes to measuring retention rate, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, it’s important to ensure you are looking at retention rates in terms of how long employees stay in the company. The faster the turnover happens, the more you need to look into the reasons. But on top of it, it’s also a good idea to focus on retention rates in specific departments or even under specific managers. If you have managers with very low retention rates, it’s worth looking into what they are doing differently to ensure employees want to remain working at the company.
5. Voluntary Turnover
As mentioned above, you will always lose some of your workforce. Sometimes you might be the one to let them go and sometimes it will be the employee making the call. It is important to focus on the reasons behind people leaving.
When you are measuring the figures, you want to look deeper into the reasons. This is often best done through exit interviews or questionnaires. You should even consider following up on your employees. For example, if employees mention the lack of promotional opportunities, you want to see what organizations or positions they chose. What could you learn from those? Sometimes people might leave for a better family-life balance and you could improve your retention rates by adding better family leave policies.
The Best Ways to Measure HR Metrics
The above five are the key metrics you should be measuring to boost your employee satisfaction, talent acquisition and retention rates. One of the best ways to measure these different metrics is with a good HR management system. The software can help you gather a variety of data and many of today’s software solutions even come with built-in data analysis. It is very important to pick HR software that can do this as it will make your metric-tracking a lot easier.
