Business success is about bringing the right people to the right place at the right time. So what is the problem? In reality, if you need to manage not one, but five employees or better yet five groups of employees, then you are faced with the problem of measurement and control. It’s hard to tell if a group is performing better or not, it becomes hard to compare one employee’s success to another’s, it’s hard to see the unique characteristics of people. So what is the solution? The key metrics and key indicators, which will tell you how to manage your stuff properly.
There are two approaches I suggest you consider when thinking about human resources (HR) in your company. First, you can think in terms of process, second, you can think in terms of how employees affect the entire business.
Work processes with employees include: hiring, education, management, retirement. All stages must be processed carefully as they could completely change your business. For example, if you’re going to have the best system for hiring things, but it’s going to be slow, then you’re going to fail. If your educational system allows you to train everyone, but does not allow you to verify the real performance generated by the training processed, then you will fail. If your best people fold, then you will lose.
So, that is why it is very important to measure and control all the processes involved in the employee relationship. The people you work with need to understand what your goals are and how they will help achieve them. This is the key idea of managing and controlling in employee management processes.
Another approach focuses on how someone’s job affects the company. It is obvious that even if someone works in Sales, he will affect not only the financial part of the business by generating sales, but also all other parts.
For example, the vendor will be involved in all company processes, such as education and knowledge sharing. This person will also be working directly with customers, so he may not only be selling, but also gaining valuable feedback from end users of your product. These people will also help your company grow not only in terms of sales, but also in terms of better business processes and business efficiency.
So how to measure and control the human resources department in your company. The answer is very simple: you need to develop some key indicators that represent the business of the company and then pay attention to what works well and what needs to be changed. There are many names for this system, for example KPI (Key Performance Indicators) or Balanced Scorecard. The result is having a clear vision of what will happen in the company and how it will drive your business forward.
What should be the first step? Actually, I think you already have important information for the dashboard. For example, you have a document called “mission”, this is a general definition of your principles, you can set some business goals, you have described and formalized business processes. What you need now is to collect all this important information in an easy-to-manage system, which will take into account the importance of each metric. This system (Balanced Scorecard or KPI) will help you manage and control the performance of your HR department.