Monitoring people performance is not sufficient

August 12, 2009

Reporting on non-financial indicators is becoming a common activity for listed Dutch companies. In the past few years, the qualitative information is more and more combined with measurable data. And of course climate change related subjects are now in the spotlight. But what about the people side? Recently, we conducted a study that focused on Dutch, AEX listed companies and their transparency on quantitative HR subjects. An element of the research was an evaluation of quantitative goal setting. We concluded that AEX listed companies report measurable data on social indicators, but some subjects are under exposed and there is almost no goal setting.

Of the 25 AEX listed companies, almost 70% gives quantitative information on absenteeism and more than 50% reports on the number of accidents that occurred in the organisation. Also 76% reports on male/female diversity and 56% reports on the days or costs spent on training and development. However, few companies report data on employee satisfaction (44%), employee turnover (32%) and performance management (16%). These results are not perfect, but they do show companies report on one or more quantitative HR indicators. It is more worrisome that there is a great lack of measurable goals on these subjects. They seem to be nonexistent or are not communicated to the outside world. The few goals that are reported, are related to health and safety subjects.

What does this say about the position of people subjects within organizations? It looks like companies feel it is sufficient to monitor HR data. But without concrete quantitative goals, it is hard to make HR improvements. Goal setting means a commitment to reach a certain outcome. It means a company takes HR seriously and is managing progress. When for example a company wants a lower employee turnover, they have to do their best to retain talent. This means having programs in place to reach this, and thus investing time and money. If HR is as important as other disciplines, setting goals is the next step for organisations. And if organisations are already setting goals, they need to be transparent about it. Because without transparency on specific goals, HR data that are provided cannot be put in perspective and have less meaning.


Share this article with :

---

Comments on this blog

---

There are no comments on this blog

---

Your comment

---

Name * :
E-mail :
	Show my e-mail on the website
Message * :