Tracking Progress

The critical benefit of measurement and metrics comes not at the end of the process, but in tracking progress along the way. Measuring final performance and results can be important, but at that point it is clearly too late to influence what was being done. If you evaluate progress measures at key milestones, you will still have the opportunity to adjust what you are doing—thus increasing the probability that your overall staffing needs will be met efficiently and effectively.

When you are evaluating staffing efficiency and effectiveness, you can measure your progress by tracking the results from period to period or within each period.

Track Results from Period to Period

If the staffing issues that are defined are truly critical, they usually cannot be addressed within a single period. Effort and resources must be expended in every planning period of your planning horizon. The staffing strategies that you develop describe what will be done across planning periods to eliminate key staffing gaps and surpluses. Using these strategies as a long-term context, you then create specific staffing plans that describe what should be done to meet the needs in each planning period. If your plan is well designed and integrated, your final gaps and surpluses will always be addressed if you address the interim staffing needs in each previous period.

Consequently, you should evaluate your progress by measuring the extent to which you have successfully eliminated staffing gaps and surpluses at the end of each planning period. Adjust staffing actions in the subsequent period, if necessary, to ensure that gaps will be addressed. Calculate efficiency measures and compare them to the standards and budgeted levels that you developed initially.

Track Results During Each Period

While measuring results at the end of a planning period is beneficial, such measurement alone is not enough. Progress needs to be measured during each period as well. It is possible to measure the extent to which staffing gaps and surpluses are being eliminated (by implementing staffing plans) as the period progresses. There will be instances, given the short time frame of a single planning period, where it may be better to simply monitor the implementation of your staffing plans rather than the size of your staffing gaps and surpluses. In such cases, ensure that the required staffing actions (as described in your staffing plan for that period) take place as designed and when scheduled. Also, keep track of the resources that are being expended and make sure that these expenditures are in line with budgets and operating plans.