Workplace of Choice

Do employers have a pulse on what their employees are thinking or doing in the midst of this changing and unpredictable economy? Are employees staying put and excited to be rewarded for their allegiance? Maybe they've been holding on, just glad to have a job, and as the economy turns around will run to the next new opportunity.

Now is a excellent time to do an Employee Survey - conducting an Employee Survey is a great tool to get a pulse on your employees, understand employee morale and employee motivation,  but there are a few tips for making sure it's useful.

• Be prepared to do SOMETHING with the results - asking employees to go through the exercise and then doing NOTHING is guaranteed to reduce participation next time and disgruntle employees!
• Be honest about why the survey is being conducted and equally honest that, although the data will be carefully assessed, it's an unfortunate fact that not every issue will be addressed. Confirm that the company is committed to hearing employee concerns and acknowledging them even if they all can't be addressed.
• Make sure employees know that all the data is confidential - if employees think that their answers are going ‘into their files' - their responses are likely to be less than honest.
• Conduct the survey onsite or online with access at work. If a survey (or even a focus group) is held off-site, it conveys a message that ‘it's not safe to be honest or critical at work'. That message would clearly undermine any value from the results.
• Employees should either all be included or randomly selected - it's unwise to allow employees to self-select for participation. When you allow self-selection, you'll generally find that less satisfied or very satisfied employees sign up for the group. Or, your more communicative employees are more comfortable expressing their opinions in a group. Your less communicative staff is guaranteed to be unrepresented.

Now that the worst recession since the Great Depression is over - officially, at least - the "new normal" has arrived for employees and employers alike. In the past year nearly every organization has been forced to re-examine each cost to justify its contribution to the bottom line or to decide to reduce or eliminate it altogether. Human capital costs are no exception, yet many companies find it hard to measure the precise value each worker provides for the cost it requires to employ him or her.  Having this information could be highly useful in determining HR best practices and for HR planning. At the start of a new year, and with the lessons of the past year fresh in mind, this may be the ideal time to refine those measurements using HR metrics.

But where to start? What are the "right" Human Capital metrics for a given organization? Can a clear connection be made between a metric and organization-wide performance? Can the data to drive the use of a metric be accurately and readily collected? Is top management committed to an analytics-based business strategy? Is the organization suited for such an approach? So many questions and so few easy answers. Take heart, and start simply.

Step 1: Know your workforce - by more than name and job title.  Really analyze who is working for you, how long, what positions, career paths, etc.

 

Step 2: Profile the ideal employee for each job - think about hard and soft skills, organizational fit and who are your "A" players.

Step 3: Review your HRIS (Human Resources Information System) capabilities. Computer technology can greatly facilitate the collection, maintenance, and analysis of the HR-related data needed to compete on analytics.

Step 4: Identify validated assessment tools for use in hiring, promoting, and retaining employees in critical jobs. With the results of steps 1, 2, and 3 in hand you can begin to apply what you know to what you need and what you are trying to measure.

These four steps can start your company down the road to better hires and longer retention by reducing the guess work and increasing the exactitude with your workforce is selected, engaged, and motivated to stay. As Thomas Davenport has noted in Competing on Analytics, "People may be ‘our most important asset‘, and even our most expensive asset, but they are rarely our most measured asset." Separate your organization from the crowd. Put HR analytics to work for you today!