Human Resources Metrics

Human Resources is a company’s biggest asset, but it can also be its biggest liability. Businesses can be made or broken by the quality of its employees. Success, therefore, is often a matter of attracting the best new recruits while also ensuring the happiness of current employees in order to retain the strongest personnel.

Human resources professionals are placing a large emphasis on reducing administrative costs while increasing productivity and job satisfaction. Not surprisingly, retention and cost control are at the top of the list of employer objectives, according to the Study of Employee Benefits Trends.

With fewer resources and more pressure to produce, human resources professionals are tasked with identifying what their employees are most concerned about in their work life in an effort to ensure their loyalty. Beyond salary and wages, the most important factor in employee loyalty is health, retirement and insurance benefits. Advancement opportunities and company culture also play a large part in employee loyalty, according to the survey.

So, how can human resources professionals align their employer’s objectives of making and saving money with their employee’s priorities? One way is by the use of human resources metrics.

In order to streamline your company’s goals, human resources should focus on four focus areas; recruiting, retention, staffing and training, and development.

Recruiting metrics quantify new hire performance, the impact of a poor new hire as well as turnover rates and return on investment. Retention metrics quantify turnover rates in addition to average tenure and the worth of veteran workers.

Training and development metrics measure training process time and costs and how professional development processes help businesses achieve their business goals. Staffing metrics measure cost per hire, recruiting efficiency ratio and the cost to replace an employee.

List of the most important human resources metrics your company

Absence Rate – Shows how many days your workers are missing, which could be an indication of their satisfaction.
The number of days absent per month / (average number of employees during a month x the number of workdays)

Benefit Cost – Determine the cost of benefits packages per employee.
(Total cost of employee benefit / total number of employees)

Benefit as a Percent of Salary – Determine the cost of benefits as the percentage of an employee’s salary.
(Annual benefits cost / Annual salary)

Cost Per Hire – How much does your organization really spend per new hire?
(Recruitment costs / (compensation cost + benefit cost)

Performance Goals – The percentage of performance goals met or exceeded
(The number of performance goals met or exceeded / Total number of performance goals)

Return on Investment – What is the organization’s ROI per employee?
(Total benefit – total costs) x 100

Revenue Per Employee – Measure how much each employee earns for the company.
(Revenue / Total number of employees)

Satisfaction – Tracking employee satisfaction is difficult, but surveys can help you gauge this metric.

Ten

ure – Determine the average amount of time an employee has been with the company.
(Average number of years of service at the organization across all employees)

Time to Fill – What is the cost of the time it takes to fill open positions?
(Total days taken to fill a job / Number hired)

Training Development Hours – Streamline your professional development costs.
(Sum of t

otal training hours / total number of employees)

Turnover – Spells out how many employees depart your organization per year
(The number of employees exiting the job during a one year period / Average actual number of employees during the same pe

riod)

Turnover Costs – How much money are you losing when an employee leaves? Vacancy, new hiring and new training costs can add up.
(Total costs of separation + vacancy + replacement + training)