Key Performance Indicators

Accurate and actionable data is the new business standard.  We’ve been talking about this for many years now, but lately we’re seeing a great realization in the possibilities.

HR KPI would then refer to those indicators which look at the employees’ performance. These indicators would encompass the employees’ productivity, job satisfaction, initiative, work quality, teamwork, and so on. Looking at various KPIs would allow management to quickly and accurately gauge how the organization is doing, as a whole, and thus allow for insightful decisions and management choices.

HR KPI could also help the employees themselves to get a quantitative grasp on their performance and what aspects they need to improve upon. The consideration of these key performance indicators is basically just a way to keep track of the important aspects of organizational (as well as personal employee) performance. Employees could use these benchmarks to try and better their personal performance.

Groups and teams would also benefit from being able to look at and quantitatively measure not only individual member performance, but also their performance as a unit. This would enable the group to make adjustments both at the individual level as well as at the group level to further improve their performance (and hence their value to the company).

An awareness and understanding of these key performance indicators thus helps at almost every level of the company or organization. It becomes important to select the proper aspects of the organization to monitor, and the metrics or standards of measurement by which to gauge these aspects.

Some of the most important HR KPI’s are those related to workforce productivity. The exact meaning of productivity is of course dependent on the context of evaluation. Generally, the improvement of employee productivity over previous time periods is what is important to monitor and maintain. There is of course no absolute comparison for productivity, and this is why changes and improvements are what are measured.

Recruitment is another vital HR aspect to be aware of. Indicators here include comparisons between the average appraisal results of newly hired employees with the previous batch of hires. Better recruitment would of course result in hires that are better appraised than previous batches, and so on. An improving quality of new hires would result in better performing employees to fill the positions in the organization.

Employee retention is also another important aspect. Key performance indicators in this regard would consist of a weighted turnover rate. This rate could be weighted based on employee performance, with top performers being the weightiest. Lowering this turnover rate should be of high priority; any organization would want to keep its top performers within its ranks.

These are just some of the HR KPI’s that an organization manager could consider. By keeping track of these and other key performance indicators, management would be able to determine what decisions and adjustments need to be made.