There is a school of thought that believes that if something can be measured, it can be improved. This was perhaps best articulated by the management guru, H James Harrington, who said:
“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.”
The challenge for many HR and resourcing functions is two-fold – first; what should I measure? and second; what do I do with the information?
So let’s explore the first element of this – what KPIs to measure?
There was a recent CIPD forum discussion on just this point and there were many worthy KPIs suggestions (time to hire, cost per hire, agency spend, number of offers rejected/accepted). The list is unlikely to be exhaustive as there is so much that can be measured.
The danger is not to measure KPIs just for the sake of it.
It may produce some great reports for the board meeting and some interesting statistics, but that doesn’t in itself make the function any more efficient.
As Herbert Spencer once commented:
“The purpose of Education is not knowledge, but action”.
In other words, simply knowing what you are doing isn’t enough unless you do something to bring about change or improvement. On that basis there are probably a few KPIs that organisations should look at:
Time to hire
If you can reduce this figure then in theory the organisation should function more effectively – if not, then does the organisation really need the people in the first place?
If you can measure how long it takes to hire someone, then you can set realistic targets to reduce this figure. I know that there is a lot of frustration amongst recruiters who have the ‘clock’ started on their hiring activity when the vacancy first appears – yet they can’t to commence advertising, etc until the vacancy has been given approval.
This sign off process can be frustratingly slow and impacts sharply on organisational efficiency and on the reputation of the resourcing team. Highlight where the bottle neck is (by using the robust reporting tools normally seen in an Applicant Tracking System – ATS) and these can be overcome.
Sources of candidates
This is a crucial measure.
- Do you really know where your candidates come from?
- Do you rely on them answering a question on the application form akin to “how did you hear about this vacancy?”
Answers to that particular question are notoriously unreliable with the candidate selecting the first option on the list.
Tracking the analytics
Instead you should seek to have proper tracking analytics inserted in your job adverts or web addresses – again your ATS provider should be able to help you with this.
In terms of using this information – you will be able to take informed decisions about how to spend your advertising budget. Success in this arena should also help reduce your cost per hire – another report you could well focus on.
Cost is often overlooked in favour of expediency
Give some time to looking at how much you spend on advertising, on agencies and on the wider recruitment process. Again, once you start to measure how much you spend, you may surprise yourself on how much you can save. Not only that, but you can actually save money whilst improving the hiring process.
Equality and Diversity
This is a critical area for any organisation to measure, but frankly, many HR and resourcing professionals give this a cursory nod and move on to issues they believe to be more impactful on the business.
Now is not the time to preach about the pros and cons of equality initiatives and what may or may not be right for each organisation.
Playing Russian roulette
However, what is certain is that every company that is not able to accurately measure and provide information on key statistics relating to applicants and appointments (by gender, race, religion, etc) is really playing a form of corporate Russian roulette and hoping that no-one pulls the trigger on a loaded gun on this subject.
The measuring of this data should be automatic in any online recruitment solution these days and this information should be able to be reported on instantly.
If your organisation can do this, then the sort of vexatious claims that you may receive will be quickly headed off at the pass. Even if there are more serious questions to be asked of the organisation, at least the HR/resourcing function will be in possession of the facts and be able to pin-point areas for action – and measure the effectiveness of any changes.
What next?
The list of reports and potential benefits could go on and on, but the aim of each should be simply to know what you are doing, but then to take it further and implement change that will bring about improvements. The more you do the more you achieve. But don’t be put off by the scale of what you can do, simply start somewhere – anywhere – and you may surprise yourself at the impact you can have.
Chris Keeling is the founder/MD of applicant tracking system provider, Jobtrain Solutions, and formerly worked in HR within Land Rover, the NHS, and the Boddington Group.