My travel time has increased about fifty percent over the same time last year.  My family seems about fifty percent happier.  Anyone see a correlation?  SIGH.

Here’s a fun discussion I read about recently…

In front of a crowd of 300 financial executives in February, a professor of human resources denounced the corporate HR profession for being mostly unable to provide analytics that are useful in making workforce decisions that build economic value.

Most companies today spend too little effort on attracting and retaining top strategic talent and too much on satisfying the rest of the employee base, asserted Rutgers University’s Richard Beatty, who spoke at a general session during the CFO Rising conference in Orlando. In fact, he claimed that typical human resources activities have no relevance to an organization’s success. “HR people try to perpetuate the idea that job satisfaction is critical,” Beatty said. “But there is no evidence that engaging employees impacts financial returns.”

(YIKES… but Keep Reading)

Beatty based this conclusion on employee surveys done at IBM and other companies that found little relationship between job satisfaction and performance ratings. Not only is employee engagement very expensive, but “how do you know you’re not satisfying a lot of people you really wish weren’t there?”

(OK, one more time.  Employee satisfaction and employee engagement are not the same thing, do not create the same outcomes.  One is simple, one isn’t… sorry Keep Reading)

However, Beatty did suggest that selection is a more powerful predictor of future performance than training. In addition, training may not be the problem - some employees may know what to do, but choose not to do it, opined the professor.

(Selection is finding the right person for the right job at the right time… what we call here at Hold’em “Recruiting”, the first of the 4 R’s of Workforce Engagement… sorry, Keep Reading)

“HR wants to treat most employees the same way, and they spend considerable time trying to defend or fix poor performers, taking on the St. Bernard role,” he said. “Low turnover isn’t necessarily a good thing. Think about where you might want to disinvest.”

(Anyone want to take on that St. Bernard role comment?  Nah, didn’t think so… sorry Keep Reading)

Beatty went on to say “the language of organizations is numbers, HR isn’t very good at data analytics,” Beatty said. “They don’t think like business people. Many of them entered human resources because they wanted to help people, which I’m all for, but I’m also for building winning organizations.”

(OK, I’m in general agreement with this one, it’s one of the reasons I work so hard with my H.R. contacts to define the outcomes they want most to see, and to define them the way the rest of the organization talks.  Whether EBITDA, revenue per headcount, changes in productivity based on engagement, decreases in parts/million defects, etc…, human resource professionals have to talk the language of Business Week, not just H.R. Magazine… sorry Keep Reading)

“The labor market is in a position to provide you with better talent than you have ever had,” said Beatty, co-author of the new book, The Differentiated Workforce. “If you don’t emerge from this market with better talent in the roles that really make a difference, I don’t think you’re trying.”

(Wow)

Today’s Quiz

1)  Do you know what your current turnover is?

2)  Do you know what it costs to replace a worker inside your organization?  Can you break it down by job function or job family (another two-fer)

3)  Do you know the loss of productivity you can expect for each Unengaged employee in your organization?  And, can you quantify those losses into real dollars?

4)  Do you know the extra discretionary effort that each of your HiPo’s (high performers) delivers, and how that impacts your bottom line?

5)  Can you quantify the “engagement surplus/deficit” in your organization based on how engaged your employees are with your organization?

6)  How many human resource metrics are included in your company’s “balanced scorecard”?

Six simple questions.   Contact me at marc@employeeholdem.com and let me know how you did.  Or email me if you didn’t get at least four of these questions answered.  You’ll be glad you did… and it won’t cost you a dime.