My company is setting up a dashboard of measures for the HR group. They will be linked to our company business metrics, however, I was curious what metrics and wording others have used with regards to:

- Training
- OD
- Employee Communications

These are fairly new positions within our company so most programs associated with them are not well established yet. Thanks in advance for any responses.

SusanR,

I'd argue that practically all HR/Training/OD measures should be related to business goals. You can argue that there are some support goals (cycle time to fill job openings, turnover of new hires, some kind of metric for on-boarding employees) that are relatively generic and apply regardless of the goals--that would be a reasonable position. Depending upon the workforce and nature of the job, certification results or numbers (which might be required by the Feds or State Govt) can be useful metrics.

However, much of what is commonly measured for HR/Training/OD is measured because people CAN collect it, not because it has value. Some typical examples:
--annual average score of level 1 evaluations (say....a 4.5 on a 5.0 Likert scale). Almost worthless data and no strategic value whatsoever.
--internal customer service ratings of HR (of limited value at best--these are often "happy meters" that don't really evaluate service quality, besides, it's not as if internal customers have an option, a 2nd or 3rd HR alternative they can go to).
--number of interventions (or even interventions related to a major goal) such as "3 teambuilding activities for the Dept. focused on the company's major goal". Doesn't tell if you if the teambuilding was successful AND if it furthered progress to the goal (it might have hindered it by pulling people off the job).

Ultimately though, those functions you just named (HR, Training, OD) exist not in and of themselves but to support other functions. If HR said "last year we hired 1000 new employees" that is worthless if the company didn't need them. HR, Training and OD provide value to the extent they facilitate other units to achieve their goals. So their metrics are likely to vary from year to year. For instance, if training provides job aids that reduce cycle time 20% one year, then that's a substantial value. Near year they provide training in the field that reduces customer turnover.

You can look at ROI for major or expensive interventions but that's a pretty generic metric.

Here is what I track on a quarterly basis.
-Number of new hires
-Cost per hire
-Days to hire (req to start date)
-Source of Hire

-Voluntary Turnover
-Involuntary Turnover
-Turnover within the first year
-Average Tenure of Turnover

-Employee Satisfaction
-Employee Recognition awards awarded
-Training hours per employee
-Cost of training per employee
-Training sat

-Promotions and Progressions

To Joe's point, some are collected because of their current attachment to business goals and some are collected because they can potentially be connected. We don't know what will be most relevant so we collect it all and then see what we need. The advantage of not waiting until you need it is that when you do eventually need it you already have a good data set.

It would appear that your specific situation
has not been fully defined with regards to roles tasks, responsibilities etc. The responsibility for this activity is the individual managers leading these areas. It is their job to do this and not yours. They are supposed to know this, if they don't leaving it to you won't help.

In short what do THEY want out of these positions that achieve organizational goals. Then you can begin to structure the metric dashboard (with their assistance and agreement)

Nero