| | MAY 2022MANAGEHRMAGAZINE.COM8In MyOpinionBy Christine Ellinger, SVP, Chief Human Resources Officer, Central BankSIGNIFICANCE OF WORKFORCE METRICS IN STRATEGIC DECISION MAKINGStrong Human Resources professionals understand the need to be strategic by using data to understand workforce trends and presenting data as business justification for decision-making. The degree of how strategic a Human Resources professional can be, depends on the data at their fingertips. It also depends on how fearless an HR professional is to play with data, use data points to tell a story, learn new metrics, pair metrics, and seek more data points. The end game is enhanced credibility, better strategic planning, and precise targeting of financial and human resources. In the past, basic workforce metrics included turnover, retention, and compensation statistics.We could all generate them with a HRIS export and excel. However, today we have access torobust retention, performance, compensation, and human resources metrics that literally provide the data and picturesque graphs to explain and retain key points. My first introduction to work force metrics was a measure called "new hire turnover" which is turnover within the first 12 months of hire.That is too dynamic of a metric to calculate with an export and excel. Yet it can save a lot of money because it reveals if recruitment efforts are yielding high cost recruitment efforts, sign on bonuses, referral bonuses, and training that walks out of the door within months of hire. Reasons for high new hire turnover can be resolved and may include be poor hiring decisions, elevated job qualifications, misunderstanding of job duties, ineffective leadership, misunderstanding of pay or benefits, work group morale, onboarding, and problems with new hire training.
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