2. Performetrix monthly
Enhancing the net worth of Human Capital
HR Dashboard not a Crashing Board – A performance management perspective
Most company HR use certain metrics built dashboards containing Key performance indicators to manage the people function.
The critical question that arise is
Were the leaders able to monitor the HR function management during the reporting period, rather than at the end,
and request interventions and corrective actions?
Well the answer from most of them who manage a ‘crashing board’ is obviously ‘of course’! The folly of the whole process is
that whether the metrics are appropriate and does it highlight the corrective time. Many organizations use the dashboard as a
management–by-exception tool. Instead of looking at the story the metrics tell, for taking relevant action, it gets limited to
the silhouette of the dashboard with serenity of the numbers within, which in itself becomes a history to report and history by
its very nature keeps repeating. HR executives speak of investment in people rather a nice word to use (though it is true) and
many of them have spent their careers managing people management function; but not necessarily driving Human Capital for
high performance. Not so far for the fault of HR, but the organizations with varied culture and its ability to see through
different aspects miss out on the dimensions that HR needs to be allowed to work with rather than operate in a silo in a
transactional form, resulting in maintaining the Crash board metrics rather than dashboard which means business;
meaningfully using people.
The other side of the coin is ‘People are complex, ‘ought to live with it’, if people perform, ‘they will’ else nothing could be
done, after all its ‘luck and destiny’, is the mental vocabulary which is the loud silence of Human resources management
function. This chronic situation deserves professional support for re-shaping itself for superior evolution, and it’s worth getting
corrected.
The end of the continuum is that most executives cannot show how their organization’s HR strategy relate to corporate
strategy, and all of these executives have their own boxes of metrics. In turn, Professional executives who have turned to
strategy mapping to resolve these issues learn that the metrics they currently monitor have both leading and lagging
indicators. They learn the impact and relationship between those pertinent factors that drive the people collective for superior
performance.
For example, when companies monitor ‘employee engagement and work passion’ index, they can take corrective actions on
those 11 aspects, which are the only workplace indictors for engagement and work passion. Are these metrics also being part
of the dashboard? Are these and the other metrics also being studied along with the balance sheet?
The action plan suggested is to use the predictive analytics to forecast employee ‘Status quo’ for corrective action with small
investment in specific interventions. As professionals in companies start using the strategy maps and balance scorecards,
such that the causal relationship between the metrics could be established over time and start using statistical methods to
identify correlation between metrics to enhance the dashboards for business intelligence. The end result is better business
governance for desired business results.
issue # 2
February 2011
5. Performetrix monthly
Enhancing the net worth of Human Capital
The findings shows that if company’s focus is on high levels of antecedents along with their Sales and marketing initiatives,
the resultant being high sales effectiveness for the business unit. Companies using behavior-based sales management
strategies, territory design and Sales force organizational commitment will find significant positive results in sales.
Successful practitioners, no doubt, anticipate the relationships identified in the research – as obvious. More importantly, the
findings provide confirmation of what successful managers do things intuitively.
Interestingly, while Sales management control dose not impact all the four dimensions of effectiveness, it has definite
antecedent role concerning profitability and satisfaction with the sales division’s effectiveness. Having grossly impacting
the Sales effectiveness by the 4 antecedents, hence management control is clearly a key link to sales unit effectiveness.
Because of this selection, training and career development of sales unit managers on these aspects is an important sales
management priority.
For more information on how to address your organizations sales development please contact the
editor
The editor thanks the following esteemed consultants who have contributed the above articles and having lead some of the research:
1. Prof. Seshadhri – Our Empanelled consultant and leading management teacher
2. Mr. Sunil Verghese - Our empanelled consultant who is a behavior scientist and leading OD consultant
3. Ms. Heather – CDF Consultant
issue # 2
February 2011
