Nothing distinguishes one company from another more acutely than the quality of its hires. That’s because quality of hire affects the quality of everything else, including products and services, customer care, co-worker and managerial interpersonal relationships, and work processes. Surprisingly, however, many employers never take the time to thoroughly evaluate the efficacy of their hiring practices. That’s too bad, because the benefits are well worth the effort. If consistently collected and carefully analyzed, post-hire metrics can reveal much about what’s working and what isn’t in the never-ending search for the best and brightest.
Here are 9 post-hire metrics no organization should ignore:
Note: Click here for a sample of metric calculators assembled by the Society for Human Resource Management.
1. Average Time to Fill
On average, how long does it take your organization to find good talent? If the answer places you squarely behind your peers, you’ll want to find out why and what you can do about it.
2. Cost of Hire
What does it cost to fill positions, and can your company afford it? Even better, are you getting good value for your money?
3. Sourcing Channels
Are your best employees found through job boards or personal referrals? If job boards, what job boards? If personal references, what kind tend to lead to the highest caliber of talent? Former co-workers? Neighbors? Friends of friends? Relatives?
4. Offer to Acceptance Ratio
How often do candidates refuse your job offers? A higher-than-average ratio could indicate a lackluster compensation package or a bad reputation. Hard to believe, but when surveyed by researchers at Corporate Responsibility Magazine, 76 percent of unemployed people said they’d be unlikely to accept an offer from a company with a bad reputation.
5. Turnover
Who’s leaving and why? Is retention more challenging for specific positions? Is it concentrated in specific departments or divisions? Keep in mind that both voluntary and involuntary turnover can provide useful data.
6. Retention
How long do workers tend to stay with your company? Do workers in certain positions stay longer than workers in other positions? Do particular managers seem to enjoy greater worker loyalty? Does retention appear to be influenced by gender, wage level, shift/schedule, or specific benefits?
7. Quality of Hire
Recruiting is a multi-level task, beginning with a carefully crafted job description and ending with an enthusiastic acceptance of a fair offer. In between are several other activities, such as posting jobs, screening resumes, interviewing, administering pre-hire assessments, and checking references. All of those will influence your quality of hire. Performing a Quality of Hire Assessment on your organization can help identify gaps in your current processes.
8. Diversity Hire Ratio
By now everyone should have gotten the memo: Diverse teams are more innovative, more creative, and better at solving problems. While diversity in the modern age goes beyond race, age, ethnicity, and gender you’ll still want to track these protected characteristics even as you’re mindful of being inclusive and not merely diverse for diversity’s sake.
9. Employee Engagement
The costs of low employee engagement have been well documented. If you aren’t tracking your employees’ happiness quotient on a regular basis, you may not discover a problem until you’re experiencing it in the form of sluggish performance, increased absenteeism, and increased conflict. Survey your employees with a good old fashioned online questionnaire.
The Bottom Line
Smart employers know the importance of continuously refining processes to meet business needs. Part of that refinement is gathering data about what works well, what needs improvement, and what needs to go.
When it comes to talent, post-HR metrics such as quality of hire, sourcing channel, time to fill, cost of hire, retention, and so on can be an invaluable source of information that consistently drives good business decisions.
What other metrics do you utilize post-hire in your organization?
