Let the Data Drive the Decisions

By now, we’ve all heard about how the wave of baby boomers exiting the workforce adds to the challenge of recruitment. In addition, the scarcity of certain skill sets needed for the future is lengthening the time it takes to hire specialized personnel. So, what is a recruiting professional supposed to do other than sit back and watch the time-to-hire get longer and longer?

Perhaps you’ve streamlined your internal job requisition process to gain efficiencies by eliminating paper processes. Perhaps you’ve automated as much of the hiring process as you could. What else can recruitment professionals look at in order to increase the value they add to the business?

Here’s one idea which crosses the lines between HR analytics, workforce planning and recruitment solutions.

One job role that almost every business contains is the sales representative and it would not be uncommon for a company to track the sales brought in by each rep. Let’s take a look at a company that has 48 sales reps and generates $42.3 M in sales. If we examine the amount of sales generated by each rep and sort them from highest sales to lowest sales, we get a chart which looks like the image below. We can quickly see that the top 12 sales reps are outperforming the rest of the sales force.

Let’s call them the A players. The remainder of people in this role seem to generate sales within a fairly similar range. We can call the remainder of these employees the B players.

Our A players represent 25% of the workforce but are producing far more than 25% of the total sales. Wouldn’t it be great to now assess the characteristics of the top 25% to see what they have in common? Do they have similar personality traits? Do they excel in certain job competencies more than the bottom 25%? This is where HR analytics techniques can provide you with insight. Once you know what is driving the higher levels of performance, you can tailor your candidate selection criteria to those drivers.

The same concept can be used for other job roles. Recently reported in Talent Management magazine, a home health care company, the Visiting Nurse Association of Northern New Jersey used this concept to determine the behavioural traits of their top performing nurses. Among other traits, their top performers had a preference for working collaboratively and had a strong desire for structure. New applicants to the company are required to take an assessment which allows the company to compare the candidate’s behavioural traits to the desired traits for the job. Hiring those candidates best qualified and best aligned to the desired traits, the company has managed to decrease their turnover from 17 percent to 5.3 percent.

You may be thinking that it is far too much work to perform this assessment on all of the job roles in the company. You are correct. This is where strategic workforce planning comes into play. In the first step of strategic workforce planning, an assessment of the business strategy determines which roles in your company most significantly impact business success.

These roles would be your priority for this type of assessment. Still too many roles? Narrow the list by discussing which roles would have the greatest opportunity for improvement, i.e., would yield your “biggest bang for the buck.”

Are you still recruiting the same way for all jobs roles? Are you not receiving demand projections for recruitment needs? Then it might be time to start using HR analytics to adjust your recruitment strategy.

Tracey is the author of “HR Analytics: The What, Why and How” and "Strategic Workforce Planning: Guidance & Back-up Plans." She often speaks at conferences, seminars and corporate functions on the topics of workforce planning and HR analytics.

Tracey holds degrees in Mathematics, Engineering and Business from universities in Canada and the U.S. She has over 20 years of experience in the areas of Human Resources, Supply Chain and Engineering. She was born in the U.K. and has worked in both Canada and the U.S. Her company, Numerical Insights LLC, helps clients make better business decisions by utilizing strategic, data-driven techniques to assess value and reduce risk.

You can find Tracey on the web at:

Web Site: www.numericalinsights.com

Email: publications@numericalinsights.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/numericalinsights
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/tracey-smith/0/523/77a
Twitter: @ninsights

Newsletter sign-up: http://numericalinsights.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=4b9c13ec75eda27e7e91e8ad7&id=8f20484126