HR measurement has to have meaning

When it comes to hard numbers, how does HR measure up? Not very well, it seems. One HR director of a major UK company recently muttered to me, in tones bordering on despair, that the profession is still some distance from developing rigorous ways to measure the impact of people on business. In order to move up the corporate clout league, she argued, HR must find better methods of gauging this most intangible of assets and quickly.

This directors view is shared by many others in HR. Yet when faced with such a challenge, too many still shy away from adopting even the most basic of measures. Others are even hostile to the notion: one reader recently wrote to Human Resources complaining bitterly over repeated requests by fellow board members to prove that investment in people would have an impact on the bottom line. It was intuitively obvious, he argued, so why the need for numbers?

In one way, such frustration is understandable. Most would agree with the readers intuition and there is more than a whiff of madness surrounding the measurement debate, with a small but noisy rabble of what one can only describe as measurement nazis urging us to run a slide rule over everything that moves. As Stefan Stern points out, measurement has a growing cult following, but within most cults lurks the odd deeply misguided disciple.

One must be careful about what is measured. Once measurement begins, the next step is to set targets. Set the right targets and ones organisation can only benefit. But too much arbitrary measurement will turn life into a bureaucratic nightmare. Ask any hospital administrator or school headmaster sweating over the latest league table results if you doubt the truth of this.

That said, the HR director was right. The profession still suffers far more from under-measurement than the reverse. What is therefore needed is a common-sense drive for measurement with meaning. With this in mind, Sterns article provides three successful examples of companies that have meaningfully applied hard numbers to HR in the areas of employee engagement, competency profiling and diversity.

Measuring the impact of people is difficult, but it is not impossible. There is no doubt that measurement, when sensibly applied, brings enormous good to both the credibility and effective delivery of great HR services. If the profession is to stand a few inches taller in the

eyes of its peers, this is an issue that needs to be tackled sooner rather than later.

Trevor Merriden, editor