In reviewing material for an upcoming webcast on Measuring Quality of Hire (Thursday, June 22nd, 1:00 pm ET), I came across the following statement in one of Nick Burkholder´s articles with respect to when to measure new hire quality: "We recommend completing the New Hire Quality Evaluation three to six months after hire. It takes at least three months before a new hire performance can be accurately assessed. After 6 months, work place influences become a dominant factor in new employee performance." (Frameworks & Metrics: The Basics, January 2004, www.staffing.org).
I remember being struck by that statement when I read it the first time around. It seemed to me that it was an interesting statement coming from a staffing perspective, given that it suggests that there are real limits to what staffing can do.
Here is how I decode the statement.
There are many factors that drive individual performance. Those factors that staffing can influence are the individual characteristics successful candidates-individual characteristics such as knowledge, abilities, aptitudes, attitudes, and so on. Other drivers of individual performance, the ´work place influences,´ refer to factors such as performance management, relationships with supervisors and co-workers, culture and climate, work processes, employee morale, and so on.
If I read the statement correctly it says that, within six months, these ´work place influences´ account for a greater proportion of variability in individual performance ("dominant") than the individual characteristics of successful candidates.
One conclusion that could be drawn here is that we would do better to invest more resources, effort, and energy in getting those ´work place influences´ right-more OD. Now it doesn´t have to be one or the other. It is probably safe to say that the best approach is to hire the right people and then to put them in the right environment. But it is also the case that staffing or ´talent acquisition´ has probably garnered more attention than it should.
Not that this is a new argument. A great paper along these lines is Jeffrey Pfeffer´s Fighting the War for Talent is Hazardous to your Organization´s Health (Organizational Dynamics, Spring 2001, Vol. 29, 4, pp. 248-259).
To be clear here, Pfeffer´s article does introduce another dimension as well-that organizational performance is not simply the additive sum of individual talent. The other side of the argument is that staffing can also be done from an organizational perspective; that is, selecting the right employee also means selecting for team and cultural fit.
What does this have to do with HR metrics and measurement? Well, HR measurement reflects the dominant HR paradigm in the organization. It is not unusual to find articles on ´human capital measurement´ that focus nearly exclusively on staffing metrics from an individual perspective. If your organization subscribes to the ´war for talent´ perspective, the emphasis on staffing metrics will make sense (at least it will be consistent).
What does your HR metrics strategy say about your organizational performance model?
