By Carol Morrison
While leveraging the power of workforce measurement remains an aspiration for most organizations, i4cp member companies Toyota Financial Services and AIG (American International Group, Inc.) are two industry leaders proving that there are great outcomes waiting when workforce measurement initiatives are well-planned and thoughtfully implemented.
According to i4cp research, few companies are consistently measuring workforce matters, especially the factors that speak to internal movement and the quality of those moves. This, despite the fact that metrics have become the must-do mandate for most all organizational functions in this accountability-challenged and recession-scarred business world.
Insights offered by workforce measures and quality of movement metrics can be invaluable indicators of issues that affect both individual and organizational performance. They can send up red flags long in advance of the arrival of full-blown productivity killers, providing perspectives on such matters as:
* Strategic workforce planning
* Talent management
* Succession planning
* Development and advancement of high-potential talent and other targeted workforce segments
* Retention of specific talent groups
* Recruitment of top talent through demonstration of the employee value proposition
Still, only one in five organizations has a workforce measurement strategy in place to a high or very high extent. Even among higher-performers (based on profitability, revenue growth, customer satisfaction, and market share), it's only 22%. i4cp's Talent Management Measurement Pulse Survey, from which these insights came, defines a workforce measurement strategy as disciplined, cohesive efforts (versus ad hoc efforts) to gather and use employee-related metrics in the organization.
Although most organizations aren't using a wide array of workforce metrics - even higher-performers - they acknowledge that they should. The survey asked about some of the specific workforce measures companies use and the extent to which respondents thought they should be using them. Wide gaps were revealed:
