Measuring Staffing Effectiveness

As valuable as they may be, efficiency measures alone tell only part of the story. Most efficiency measures address quantity in some way, but none of them address quality. What good is it to hire people quickly if those people do not have the skills that are needed to implement your business plans, or if they leave to take another job soon after they come to work for you? What if hiring costs are reduced drastically, but turnover among those who are hired actually increases? Is it really helpful to have a high acceptance rate if the people that are being hired end up being poor performers? What if the least expensive agencies supply individuals with obsolete capabilities? Another set of measures is needed to measure the results of your staffing process fully.

Clearly, we need to have some way of measuring whether we are hiring, promoting, redeploying, and retaining not just people in general, but the right people in particular. Many organizations try to define the “right people” (or “good hires”) in terms of skill, tenure, or performance. A good hire might be one who stays at least three years and achieves higher than average performance ratings. But these proxies are difficult to define and even more difficult to measure on an ongoing basis. Other organizations actually survey managers and ask them to rate the quality of the candidates that they see. These measures of quality are certainly better than none, but do they provide sufficient feedback? Do they adequately measure quality?

The strategic staffing/workforce planning process described in this book includes a built-in measure of staffing effectiveness (i.e., “doing the right job”). When you implement the process as described, your staffing model will define specific staffing gaps and surpluses. As stated in Chapter 2, in order to define a gap (or surplus), you must define in very particular terms the staff that you will need (in terms of both required skills and staffing levels), forecast the staff that will be available, and compare demand to supply on a category-by-category basis. The differences you identify will be both specific and measurable. Simply stated, your staffing processes are most effective when they eliminate (or substantially reduce) these critical staffing gaps across all planning periods of your planning horizon. You have hired (or promoted or redeployed) the right people (and thus your staffing processes are effective) when the gaps you defined are filled with an adequate number of individuals who have the appropriate skills and experience. Your training programs are effective when they provide employees with the capabilities that close the critical skills gaps that you have identified. All of these are measures that should be included in the staffing models you build.

This approach to measuring effectiveness obviously places a great premium on defining very specific staffing gaps and surpluses. Your staffing models must provide you with an appropriate level of detail. As described earlier in this book, it is not sufficient to simply say that you do not have enough individuals with a particular skill; to use this measure of effectiveness, you must be able to calculate exactly how large that staffing gap or surplus will be. To do this, you will need to specifically define your needs for staff, forecast staff availability at that same level of detail, and compare demand to supply in a very precise way. You will also need to be able to monitor these gaps and surpluses on an ongoing basis to see if your staffing processes are reducing them as you had planned.

Unlike efficiency measures, which can be applied within a planning period, these measures of effectiveness are most valuable when they are applied across planning periods. If a staffing issue that you have identified is truly strategic, you will be unable to address it fully in just one period. It may take three or more planning periods to completely eliminate a critical staffing gap or surplus. Consequently, while you can certainly measure your progress on a period-by-period basis, overall success should be measured across the entire planning horizon.