Metrics

pamelah · October 2015

Our HR organization has specialists instead of generalist. I was recently promoted to Employee Relations Manager. The company is working on developing metrics and I was asked to come up with three to five. Employee Relations is also responsible for the Affirmative Action Plan, Diversity Plan, and Diversity Council.

I have some basic metrics like how many cases we handle, how many corrective actions are issued, and then breaking things into types of issues. I do not have anything on the Diversity side.

I am looking for any suggestions on metrics for the Diversity piece and other Employee Relations metrics. I am also curious if there are any Benchmarks for Employee Relations. I know the goals for Diversity.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Pam

Holly Jones · October 2015

Pam, thank you for your great question and for breaking the ice in our brand new Strategic HR forum!

Just thinking out loud a bit, here are a few ideas that may either work as suggested or may give you some similar/adjacent ideas for comparable measurements.

First, we can consider whether we want to focus on quantitative metrics (these are our pure-numbers metrics that measure things like headcount, percentages, ratios, etc), whether we want to look at qualitative metrics (these are our quality based metrics that may rely on surveys of employees, managers, customers, clients, etc.), or both.

For diversity metrics, the most basic quantitative metrics may simply look at the number and/or percentage of individuals who have identified (or who we have reasonably identified) as members of a diversity demographic (age, gender, persons with disabilities, veterans, or any other minority group we're hoping to better represent in the organization).

We can then take these metrics to the next level by looking at some of our other strategic metrics for the organization as a whole -- then seeing how those metrics compare and contrast to our diversity demographics. For example, say we have measured turnover and retention for the organization as a whole. We may also want to look at turnover and retention for our diversity demographics, then compare the two. Are members of our diversity demographics leaving the organization at a higher rate? Are they leaving after fewer years? If we find we have higher turnover rates among individuals with disabilities, does this signal a problem with accommodations? Have diversity programs and initiatives reduced turnover among these demographics from one year to the next?

Another way to approach diversity metrics is to look at them based on various levels in the organization. For example, how is diversity among our executive team? Among management? Among new hires? Among applicants? Are some departments, locations, and roles more diverse than others? You may also consider how well diversity populations fare in the application/hiring process or after performance improvement initiatives.

For qualitative metrics, we may measure the effectiveness of our various diversity programs and initiatives (or the need for additional programs, training, etc.) This may involve surveying all employees, all new hires, all employees during exit interviews, all managerial staff, etc. -- or it may involve surveying outside sources such as clients and customers.

For employee relations metrics, you may find something useful among the following ideas:

Quantitative measurements such as turnover, retention, average tenure, turnover among new hires. These may be useful alone or you may wish to look at them as a function of the other metrics you have, such as "turnover after a corrective action has been taken."
Qualitative measurements of employee satisfaction, employee satisfaction with immediate supervisors, employee satisfaction with executive leadership, managerial satisfaction with executive leadership, managerial satisfaction with HR, employee satisfaction with HR, satisfaction with employee relations, etc.
Measurements of the availability of HR resources to the workforce as a whole -- for example, HR dollars spent per employee, revenue returned per HR dollar spent, average length of vacancy of open positions, average time to resolve complaints/investigations, average dollar cost of each corrective action, etc.
Qualitative measurements of organizational communication -- communication from HR, from executives, between departments, between peers, etc.
Average performance review score.
Efficacy of performance improvement plans (number of employees who have performance management improvement within one year of a plan, number of employees who leave the organization after an improvement plan, etc.)
Efficacy of corrective actions for preventing recurrence of issues.

Again, these are just a few suggestions, but perhaps something here will either be useful or will give you some additional ideas!

Finally, I also found an on-demand webinar on HRLaws that you may find helpful: Maturing Your Diversity & Inclusion Metrics: Measure What Matters.

pamelah · October 2015

Holly -

Thank you very much. This is a great jumping off point. I appreciate the information provided and will look at the webinar.

Pam

Metrics

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