3 Steps to Measure the Value of HR
Simply Hired Staff
As an HR professional, you’ve probably wanted to roll your eyes more times than you can count over your company’s, fellow employees or even the general public’s perceptions and misperceptions of what exactly you do on a daily basis. From “glorified babysitter” to “professional roadblock”, working in human resources can be a struggle in validation.
What you may not have thought of, however, is that like many sales or revenue generating position, the value, benefits, and contributions of HR can be documented and conveyed to produce solid ROI (return on investment) statistics. If you’re coloring yourself intrigued, read on for three simple steps to measure the value of HR.
-
Pick Activities and Benefits to Measure
Before you can start tracking, you first have to identify the areas within the company where HR contributes. Come up with a solid list of duties, responsibilities and extra areas of support where HR picks up the reins. Onboarding new hires requires numerous tasks and is certainly a value add to the company. Providing advice on difficult employment decisions is equivalent to the company seeking outside expertise and helps reduce liability. Continuing education seminars save your company money when conducted by in-house HR professionals. Don’t forget that these are all “extras”. Quality HR professionals help companies save money by ensuring turnover rates remain low and higher quality candidates perform their own duties more efficiently, both regular, everyday value-adds for a human resources guru.
-
Determine Benchmarks
The second key to showing definite measurements for the value HR brings is to set a benchmark by which to gauge your success. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to tell how much water was added to a pool if you don’t have an accurate starting volume. The same can be said about measuring the value of HR to your company.
If you’re able to gather the information, try to find statistics in your company’s database regarding key HR duties prior to you joining. Use the activities and responsibilities previously identified and gather your data. If you’ve been in your position for a number of years, try collecting stats from your first, second and further years to help show growth over the course of your tenure. If the HR department was tasked with any special projects, be sure to document those as well, including any completed ahead of schedule or those that increased efficiencies or upgraded company systems.
-
Start Measuring
Have your areas of performance and your raw data in hand? Then it’s time to start measuring and reporting. The trick to analyzing your overall value is to make the results easy to read and understand. This will help both yourself and your manager or director understand your value to the greatest extent. Consider keeping several sets of analytics including a separate one for yourself that covers your entire career track.
Wondering when and where to present your findings? Annual reviews, especially if you’re asked for self-reviews, and occasions where you may be up for promotion are good places to start. You can also use the information to help score a job with a prospective employer, just be sure to not disclose any confidential or proprietary information from your former employer.
While HR may be a compliance-based profession, this doesn’t mean your value can’t be calculated in cold, hard numbers. See where you stack up and give your career a boost with data, analytics, and measurements of your successes.
Article Updated from the Original on April 9, 2018
