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To reach profit goals, leading organizations assess the performance of their human resources programs.
If you want to accurately analyze the performance of your HR, at the very least you must research two areas: What employees perceive and what your analytics show about your HR program.
Employee perceptions
Your mission should be to obtain employee feedback. Your options include targeted surveys, interviews or focus groups.
You will get best results by retaining a skilled outside participant, usually a management consultant, to conduct in-person interviews by asking open-ended questions.
Yes or no answers from closed-ended questions don’t yield nearly as much information as strategic open-ended questions.
Plus, it improves employee attitudes about the company because they feel the company is giving them a chance to vent — particularly when the company implements practical solutions.
Pay particular attention to first and second-year employees. You might not have started recouping your investment in them. Start now. You need their feedback.
Your veteran employees might have valuable opinions. However, they aren’t likely to be as analytical and opinionated as recently hired Millennials.
Should each person be guaranteed anonymity for their answers? Yes.
From all employees, you need to know how they feel about the level of support they receive from the company to help them perform well, and whether they feel their bosses use best practices in employee delegation.
Don’t forget the perceptions of your supervisors. For example, what they know and don’t know about minimizing employee absenteeism.
From all employees – managers and staff – learn what works and what doesn’t? Were they motivated to exceed expectations, and why or why not?
Analytics
Thanks to a great employee survey, you now possess a ton of information about your employees’ work experiences and actions.
Use your data to determine the effectiveness of the non-exempt workers as well as the supervisors.
Pay particular attention to first and second-year employees.
You also need to keep in mind that you need to analyze data by distinguishing the differences among the job classifications. That also goes for the differences between line managers and executives.
Learn the story about the interfacing between policies and employee responses.
For instance, consider employee turnover. You need to examine reasons – reasons why employees quit.
As well, learn why employees were terminated. Were the wrong persons hired? Were they on-boarded well? How were they managed?
Don’t surmise anything. Find out what’s working, not working and why.
You should also quantify the results from all your employer actions – from pay practices to training programs.
Examine your communications programs. For example, does HR distribute mundane newsletters that are ignored by employees? Or are the newsletters informative and contain the vision and values employees need to know for strong organization performance?
When HR performance disappoints you
Unfortunately, you will likely have found shortcomings at every level – from the lowest non-exempt position to management.
You might even have an unprofitable culture. Study after study shows a significant percentage of worker morale is mediocre, at best.
That’s often the case even for companies that are able to pay competitive wages and benefits. (Ironically, there are easy ways to boost employee morale.)
Now that you have an accurate picture of the internal issues hurting your organization, it’s time for implementing solutions.
If you have severe problems to solve, you must implement an all-out holistic approach.
— Firstly, start thinking about solutions to the issues, and publish the overall results of your employee survey. Again, don’t divulge any individual opinions.
— Secondly, tell your employees what happens next. Create a list of solutions for HR, management and staff. Create goals, policies and procedures that will lead to efficiency, performance and job satisfaction.
— Thirdly, develop a training program for HR staff and managers. Train them in best management practices. But you must also educate them in what you’ll be training their workers.
In this way, managers will be in a better position to support the training of workers and reinforce the training modules for strong results.
— Fourthly, enhance your internal communication and implement communication training for employees.
— Fifthly, create a mechanism and educate your staff to be alert to future developments so they can adapt for your company’s long-term sustainability.
This also means all employees should be encouraged to provide solutions for growth.
Bottom-line
Employees will likely appreciate your efforts to correct problems. You will lessen absenteeism and turnover. Your HR program will be more aligned with the rest of your organization. And you’re likely to enjoy more profit.
From the Coach’s Corner, here are related tips:
HR Perceptions vs. Reality – There’s a Big Gap, Study — A big schism exists between what human resources professionals think they know about their workforce and what employees actually believe, according to a study. It was conducted by the HR firm, Kenexa. Its white paper is entitled, “Employee Attitudes and Engagement.”
6 Steps to Implement a Cultural Change for Profits — If your company is lacking in teamwork, morale is poor and profits are weak, chances are you need to change your organization’s culture. Be forewarned, changing a culture is a monumental chore because it will take strategic planning and super powers of persuasion.
HR Management: 3 Values to Deliver Top Customer Service — The three values needed to achieve top customer service are easy-to-understand but arduous to achieve. But if your human resources program adopts and implements these values, you’ll achieve enviable organizational effectiveness – a high performance culture – for strong revenue.
5 Critical Fundamentals to Build the Best Sales Staff — Some companies are achieving stellar sales results in complex global situations by adopting best practices. They employ strategies that separate them from the average-performing sales organizations.
Increase Your Business Value with 5 Basic BPO Strategies — For your company to achieve higher performance, you often need to enhance your business processes. In essence, this means turning your attention to business process optimization (BPO), which is a holistic approach. The benefits: With BPO, you’ll be able to evaluate and authenticate your existing practices and create new processes via imagined situations.
“There are incalculable resources in the human spirit, once it has been set free.”
-Hubert H. Humphrey
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