I was talking with an HR leader yesterday about analytics, and she asked me what I recommended measuring. I started to rattle off a few metrics that cover talent acquisition, workforce management, etc. and stopped myself. I didn’t know enough about her organization to suggest specific areas they should be measuring. So why didn’t I give her some “standard” ones? Simple—because every organization is different.
Think about it: your strategic objectives aren’t necessarily the same as my organization’s or any other. In fact, ours could be completely the opposite of yours. So please take the title of this post to heart and get your own analytics. Not sure where to start? Here’s a simple process to get you moving in the right direction:
- Figure out your organization’s strategic goals/objectives
- Determine what metrics feed up into those goals
- Start measuring
- Use the data to make better decisions
Okay, so that’s the short version. But the biggest sticking point is usually somewhere around #2 in that list: determining what metrics feed into goals. Here are some examples of how a few winners of Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards are accomplishing that.
How to Select Metrics for Your Business
Example 1: Hilton
Hilton Worldwide was looking for a way to improve profitability across its global operations through a learning initiative. When profitability is the goal, the simplest metric to focus on is revenue. Here’s how they approached the problem.
To help meet this global challenge, Hilton created and developed “Revenue Management at Work,” a highly customized learning program that develops the revenue management skills of both new and experienced revenue-management professionals and gives them the knowledge, skills and familiarity to optimize performance.
This program was aimed at helping those specific individuals manage revenue better, ultimately helping to drive profitability for the business. So, how did it work out?
Through this [post-training] assessment… Hilton found that $3.35 million of the $20 million in market growth could be attributed to the “Revenue Management at Work” program. This was further broken down to $44,700 for each of the trained hotels in the study over a nine-month period — or a $4,970 market shift per hotel per month that was directly attributable to “Revenue Management at Work.”
Click here to get the full Hilton case study.
Example 2: American Express
American Express Travel and Lifestyle Services was facing a common business challenge—after training employee performance would improve, but it would eventually fall to pre-training levels. How could the organization sustain the improved results long-term?
This prompted the idea to create a servicing ethos or organizational culture that would live and breathe the principles of relationship-based servicing to ensure it was built into everything that it does (phone calls, emails, letters and even internal colleague interactions).The organization could not just rely on training programs to achieve results as it needed continuous growth in customer satisfaction to remain competitive in this fiercely competitive world… The company decided to go one step further and create Membership Care® – a servicing ethos to drive customer satisfaction, loyalty and sales, without the need for repetitive training programs.
So with its business goal set, how did it do with regard to meeting the objectives in a measurable way?
- Improved customer satisfaction and favorability
- Increased employee satisfaction
However, one of the most impressive changes in my opinion is this:
A coaching culture was created and sustained with coaching frequency improving by 33% across all International markets.
Why is it important? Because if the goal is a mindset shift with regard to customer service, then the coaching element is going to play a big part in helping to shape attitudes, performance, and the direction of the organization.
Click here to get the full American Express case study.
There you have it. Whether you’re a large company or small, the process is the same for choosing the metrics that matter to your organization. As my fellow analyst Kyle Lagunas would say, measurement is the key to high performance everything.
—Ben Eubanks, Associate HCM Analyst, Brandon Hall Group
