PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

INTRODUCTION
It's kind of a foundation stone that you've got to get this right before you get anything else wrong. And
some people think it's easy you know they would boil performance management down to setting good
objectives and making sure people are delivering those objectives. But in truth it's very easy to get this
wrong. And we're going to go through this in a detailed way step by step so that you can really set up a
structured performance management approach within your team. It can dovetail with what your
organization does around appraisal process and what is often called Performance Management in that
context appraisal meetings et cetera. But here we are really getting down to the nitty gritty of how you
perform as management your performance manage your team on a daily basis and do it in a way that
motivates your people so you can actually set objectives and manage the performance of your team in a
way that demotivate people we're going to talk about that as we work through. But you can really get it
wrong. You can set objectives for example that are outside people's sphere of control. You may think it's
an admirable objective for them to have and might be close to their sort of domain area where they
work. But if it is a wrong level then what we find is that people say well I can't influence that because
you know there are external factors and that would motivate people. So understanding that getting it
right is simple once you know how we're going to work through that process. Even if you are an
experienced manager I'm going to encourage you to really revisit this topic and work through our logic
because you will find it hugely advantageous if you do that. We'll provide a tried and tested step by step
approach for getting this right. And we're going to cover four topics as we do that. The first one is what I
called the golden thread which is all about helping people within your organization your teams
understand the golden thread between organizational vision and strategy at a functional level maybe
down to day to day operations and tasks that people are carried out carrying out there's something
really important about linking those up. We'll explain that and look at that. We'll look at the topic setting
objectives which you know most people will think well I do that all the time and I know how to set an
effective objective. Well we're going to draw out the problems associated with objectives at demotivate
and how to ensure that your objectives motivate somebody and then I'm going to give you a framework
that will bring some real clarity to the way an objective looks or help you to write an objective to share
objective and build objectives with your team and it will have a conciseness that is really helpful as you
move forward. The third area we're going to look at is measuring and monitoring. So how do I measure
performance with my team what should I measure. How do I make sure that we are doing the right
things to deliver the end goal or the vision. And finally in this section the fourth area we're going to look
at I'm calling will versus skilled. So this is actually about managing performance in terms of looking at the
individual situation looking at the individual themselves and asking what ways do I need to best manage
them to get them performing in an effective way and were going to put up a model of four potential
options with conditions on which you apply those options so you instinctively know which mode to go
into when you're dealing with different individuals. So there's a heads up we'll get straight into it with
the next lesson. And we're going to hit the gold for it on India and really spend some time understanding
that.

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LITERATURE REVIEW
why bother the golden thread?
Why bother with the golden thread or staff who cannot see the thread will lack motivation individual
efforts will be pulling in different directions very often. The manager has no idea whether the team is
doing the right things to succeed. You will waste resource and focus will really be lacking. So establishing
this clear visible goldin's Fred will reverse all those potential problems. There are five levels to the
golden thread model. Here they are the top level is organizational vision. Level 2 here is functional
strategy so as I come down I need a golden strayed from my organizational vision down to my functional
strategy functional. What I mean by that is department or division and by strategy I mean plans. What is
the game plan here to deliver the vision of the organization. Then there's another level we're going to
call this the critical success factors critical success factors give us the link between objectives which is
the fourth area and that function or strategy. What we're going to identify the C assess critical success
factors are the things that are mission critical to deliver that vision. If we don't do these things we fail.
Now we understand that that third level we really start to set objectives at the right level too. So
objectives we're going to be thinking about how we write clear concise effective objectives we'll give
you a little structure for that. And then the vith area of the golden thread is. Task level. So these are the
operations the things that people do on a daily basis that elevate the objectives that have been set. And
so we want this golden thread right the way through that organizational vision down to task level need
to be able to trace the links. There has to be a thread running through each area where a small
organization or huge organization that can be established. And that's what we're going to do now.

Organizational vision
What is your organization seeking to achieve. And this can often be a bar view it can be at a senior level
and could be very well articulated and shared with an organization. But to be really truth a lot of the
time isn't so clearly defined and sometimes is completely missing. So what I'm encouraged to do is
manage you within your organization is find out where that vision is what that vision is. If it's missing
they are even going to suggest that you fill the vacuum because if you don't know what that Golden is
what that organization vision is then you can't create the golden thread and your people won't be able
to understand what you're trying to achieve as an organization. So if it's not there then definitely you
can do some work in building something that is suitable for the organization. If it is there then what you
can do is articulate it in a more simple and clear form for your team. So fill the vacuum if it's not they are
not saying a grand thing to do you know to kind of say okay well this is the vision of the organization
When people but haven't provided that. But you know what you won't be too far off the mark and if you
set something at least it gives a focus to your team and you can say that your manager this is what we're
focussing on. This is our vision for really encouraged that I encourage that back feel when more senior
people aren't doing the job that they should be doing. Now the guidelines when writing this down and
or thinking about the organizational vision are to keep it as simple as possibleWell let me tell you if you
are a manager who doesn't connect then there's no way that you can truly have a phone.

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Functional strategy
The plans that are in place that are going to deliver the vision the goal that the organization are looking
for. We're looking at how we're going to go about delivering the vision was the why this is how so. This
is very functional that's what we call it a functional strategy read department or division or whatever
grouping is relevant for your organization. When you drop from vision you have to go down to a
department level a functional level and ask how are we going to achieve that vision what's our part in
delivering that vision. Now this would be very specific to your domain and we are very different. Our
procurement team and marketing team to a sales team to the finance team to wherever it might be. So
it would be quite personalized to you at this level but it's about how you contribute to the vision. So just
to give you an example and we use I manage again our own functional strategy. So we talked about the
top level of vision being changing people for good. Now this functional strategy level we're a small team
so it's pretty encompassing but we say this we create environments that challenge people to think and
act. So that's our functional strategy and everything we do we're looking to create environments that
challenge people to think and act.

Critical success factors

So the critical success factor idea is a absolutely key one in getting the balance right. Creating motivating
objectives when we get down at level 4 and write new objectives and making the golden thread link
between the vision and strategy that sits up high and the objectives and types of people are involved in.
I think it is really powerful. It does come from two very you know kind of well esteemed academics. how
you you percolate that strategy down into the organization. Let's do the example with me. So visually
we were talking about changing people for good. Within I manage a functional strategy we've got this
idea of creating environments that challenge people to think and act as I dropped down into critical
success. Successfactors One of my critical success factors will be that we use the the ad model in training
solution design. It's a process for learning that goes awareness desire ability duplication and that's the
heartland really of how we design learning development solutions for our clients for the Academy and
that enables us to build environments that challenge people to think and act completely linked are and
model helps us create the challenge make people think and enable them to act so where this desire.
Ability duplication would be one of my critical success factors for the I managed team. Now I say one
because at this level when we break into critical success factors there are likely to be a number of critical

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success factors for any given department. So critical success like that when we get down to that level for
a purchasing department would be coving better deals you know kind of more cost effective efficient
higher quality product all that kind of thing. Better deals add up to that vision of being more profitable.
So that's a purchasing team there. Critical success factor would be all about the cut in the purchasing
deal. But it was a sales team for example still the same vision in your organization to be more profitable.
Then as I come down I might have as a sales individual a part of my goal as being a cruise x factor as
being selling more boxes or selling them at a higher margin. So it's a very different critical success factor
compared to the procurement team and therefore we need to have the team in mind when we're
designing the successfactors for each team there's there's likely to be no more than four or five critical
success factors.

Objectives
smart objective and it's a structure that will really assist you now assist you on a number of levels. Firstly
it keeps objectives singular so I really like keeping objectives to one idea. And I'd rather have two
separate objectives than a single objective that morphs into other things. You see a lot of people write
objectives that run into paragraphs and you really need to really encourage it and move away from that
and really think concise and precise about single objectives and writing a number of them rather than
wrapping the objectives up into one big written paragraph. You know the classic example of mentioned
in the earlier post. The objective to reduce teenage pregnancy. Well you know sometimes people say
reduce teenage Pring easy and bring about world peace or whatever you know equally unachievable.
But you know you get my point. As soon as you put a hand into an objective you're probably looking at
two objectives. If you can within your team get everyone thinking this is what an objective looks like
here and even more powerful across an organization people start saying no this is what an objective
looks like it has a defined it codified structure and here it is. It is so simple but it delivers all these good
things. It's smart it's singler it's consistent. So the formula is this is a verb target area measure time four
elements to one sentence a verb a target area a measure and a time. So let me give you an example of
that I might say verb. Reduce. Now that vote can be anything it can be maintained can be a stretching
goal. If conditions of change are budgets being cut and maintain might be a really challenging verb to
use. But it doesn't matter and the increase decrease reduce. Then you put in your target verb target
area songas a stock reduce stock as my target area. My major I'm going to say by 20 percent. Reduce
stock by 20 percent and my time by the end of March. Whatever 20 20 or whatever. So then I have a
really tight objective. It's one sentence it's singular it's smart. Reduce stock by 20 percent by the end of
March. Now what we need to do is to really start thinking about how our objective would fit into that
structure. Some people have challenged me over the years I said but my objective won't fit that kind of
model. Well I've never found one without a bit of effort and a bit of focus that you can't fit into this
model. It does work every time. Verb target measure time you just need to work at it a bit. If you're
struggling but just to help think through the measures can be a number of different things. I used a
percentage that I might example reduce stock by 20 percent by the end of March. It's black and white
there's no shades of grey there's no measuring in between it's done or not done

Gaining commitment
If we start to engage people in the process of coming up with this objective we get acceptance. Now I
would say this is where I might be working with somebody and I might have my objectives and I'm
gonna try and still try and involve them or engage them by saying this is the objective I think we should
have and getting them to talk about it discuss it builds acceptance. The very final rung of this ladder is
you know full on involvement which gives us the commitment. So what I mean by that is the individual
comes up with their objective their self. You know they're completely involved in the production of the

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objective. So this is how I would work. I would take my critical success factors and I would sit on my own
and I think through what are these objectives what are the key objectives that we need to have If they
are off piece the bit then that's your role to pull them back and guide and direct. If they are coming up
with the right objective perhaps the wrong measures and the wrong time period. That's what your role
is of the manager to steer that and say OK well I actually think rather in the six months we should be
taking four months to achieve this objective etc and you can bring that sort of fine tuning to their
objective and the key thing it's their objective. That is a far superior approach compared to dictating
down at the bottom end or even informing or clarifying all those things moving on. But if I've got full
involvement and they have written their objectives and I have help fine tune them then that's the route
to really think through how you occupy the writing of these objects to your people teaching them verb
target major time getting to take the critical success is you're onto a winner.

Task level objectives

This is like being really clear about the objective now it's over to you to work through the tasks required
to deliver that objective. Now there are exceptions. Let's just talk about that for a moment because it
would be silly to suggest they're not but they are exceptions rather than a rule so the exception is this
when the person still needs to develop the skill or the expertise around a particular area then clearly I
do have to support them and help them understand the tasks necessary to bring something about. So
that's a developmental question. Now if somebody hasn't done it before it's new to them. The
delegation module will help us think through how we might do that in a more clear and precise way. But
for now they just say this. I've got to support my team member in upskilling and learning how to do a
particular task. I do that by using the idea of a sequence of events. So you've got an objective to achieve
that objective. There are a sequence of events a sequence of events have to happen I think it's true to
say that nothing happens without a sequence of events. And often people don't deliver objectives or
don't get to what they're trying to get to because they haven't fully understood the sequence of events.
Another true point for people is sometimes they misjudged the amount of time required to meet their
objective case because they haven't got the sequence of events. So let me just give you an example of
that. If I was at home and I said to Sally my wife I'm just dying to test goes I'll be back in 10 minutes. The
problem there is we often estimate a task an objective level task something we try to achieve and
estimate the sequence of events without getting into the sequence of events and then we must judge it.
Going to be 10 minutes takes an hour. And I say 10 minutes ago I haven't thought through actually the
sequence of events. So you can help people if at this task level they need support and understanding
how they deliver the objective. Break it up into a sequence of events. Everything as a sequence of you're
going to have a black belt in judo or something as a sequence of events probably starts with joining a
club or something get a white belt and whatever the colazal that get you to the Black Belt capability. So
think about your objective in those terms and only only when they need it dropped down into the
sequence of events for your people so you can help them learn the skill and capability and know what
it's going to take to bring about the objective that they have agreed to that you've committed to with
them. So do that and your motivate people do the reverse just drop down automatically into task level
with your people and it becomes a massive demote demotivate.

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THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Will-skill matrix
What do you think about these two parameters of will and skill. Because these are the things that are
going to help you determine which approach is best whether you direct somebody encourage support or
delegates to somebody. So it's an easy thing to ascertain you know somebody is new to something
they're likely to have low skill with and if they're well experienced and know how to do it then so skill
then will is the other parameter here. Absolutely any business situation we're going to say you know is it
a wheel issue or is it a skill issue which ones you know low which ones high and you use that to define
whether we take a style to direk to encourage support or to delegate.

Direct
So the conditions we have is low skill that person has not yet developed the capability to carry out the
activity that you require and to carry out. There might be new. That's a possibility or they may be
introduced to a new activity which they haven't done before. But it's also somebody who is low we're
also they're not very motivated to get on with this. They perhaps have interests elsewhere that don't
feel really very committed to make this happen. So we're going to consider our approach to them as
being quite directive. Now ultimately that means more tell than ask. I'm going to give instructions. I'm
going to explain something to people within this segment as we look at their behaviour. They need us to
show them what's required. I would say you know do not do it with them. Take them through it so that
they see the standards that you expect the process that you would like follow the output that you would
consider acceptable and demonstrate that show them that tell them that be really detailed and precise
in the way you articulate the requirement that is needed so that in intent to desire is looking to move
them up towards delegating. Ultimately you know it's we're looking to up skill their capability but also
move their motivation up and their will up. So we need to do both those things we need to encourage
them and give them the skill and the capability. Now I'd say this people in this space are quite time
consuming for managers you know not everyone will be in this space and certainly not all the time but
you will have people that sometimes just are there that low low skill and you have to as a manager
invest a significant amount of time. You have to put that time in to give them the opportunity to shift
from that space to teach them to encourage them. What I would say though that they can't stay there in
the long game you really can't have people who are constantly in that direct space you have to question
the validity of them in that role. Ultimately you might need to go through some special measures once
you really kind of try to work with them to up this girl. And up there will you know you might need to
involve h.r. and go down more of a more formal route to deal with that individual. And we worry about
that we shy away from that but we really shouldn't as managers I think it's an important thing that we
set the expectation. If it's a requirement of the job and people are constant need this level of input
there's something wrong and we need to address that. So bottom left hand corner low will low skill my
style my mode my approach with that individual is much more direct. Do much more tell much more
information giving instructions and seeking to move them in their skill level and motivation with that
level.

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Encourage
The person has the capability. They have the competence. They're just really not using it because well is
low and they're not putting our mind to it and not applying themselves to really use that skill that they
already have. So our approach is encourage as a manager I need to encourage them I need to shift them
up them all because they've got the scale I don't need to teach and how to do that. So we're much more
non directive in this space so we move from tell the directive to ask in a non directive. This is a much
much more coaching approach when we're in this space. We want to ask them you know how's it going.
Was it not working. Well what do the barriers you know you don't seem comfortable with that. Why is
that we need to ask those questions and coach them to a better place. Really we need to try and find a
motivation because you know somebody who's Will is low it's probably because they're not feeling
motivated to get on with us and they're not feeling committed to it. It could be that they are
discouraged because they are too familiar with it you know they have all the skill and they've lost a bit of
interest because it's not challenging enough. So here in this encourage space it could be about upping
the ante a bit you know kind of creates creating some harder higher challenge for them while they do
that task. Maybe they've been doing it for years and that's why their wheel has dropped because
they've just they know inside out and it's no longer really something they enjoy doing. So you find the
motivation. What would stretch them a bit more to make them more engaged and increase that wheel.
You know it might be about providing incentives and I'm not talking about monetary incentives here it
could be about goals and recognition in some way. It could be as simple as you know utilizing praise in
an a in an appropriate manner and thanking people. And highlighting what's working well for them and
what you like that they do. It could be about buddying up you know if you've got somebody who has the
skill and the will it might be useful to put this particular individual to encourage them with that person
to person to Buddy them up. And your behaviour breeds behaviour so you put them with a good person
who has a great attitude and that can start to bounce off and and reflect in the individual. So expect a

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balanced view from the person because sometimes people in this space can be a bit negative about stuff
I can get into as sort of a spiral of decay a little bit and negativity you know everything's against them. It
can be that you know my boss is against me the company is against me the Government's against me my
dogs against me you know kind of Covey talks of that. So expect a balanced view if they putting forward
a negative position all the time. Well challenge that you know just ask simple questions again coaching
asking say that. That's one perspective. What would another perspective be what my other people how
other people view that. So encourage high skill low we know we really need to put some good effort in
to shifting that person to a better space so that they're more motivated to have a better tend to have a
higher level of will.

Support
They don't yet have the competence but they do have the attitude the will they have got the desire and
the drive to get involved and throw their lot in with this task with the vision with everything that's going
on. So this is a good square if you ask me. I prefer we'll over scale in many many situations. And this is a
good thing to bear in mind when you're recruiting Actually I would much rather have somebody with a
higher level of will and a lower level of skill and train them up over the coming weeks and months and
bring their skill level up than how somebody who has all the skill yet wrong will you know kind of
somebody who's really going to be quite difficult to work with. So I think this is a really positive place.
You've got a great person with the right attitude. Right approach. They just need help to grow
themselves and learn the skills and capabilities of the task in hand so support is the watchword. What
we're going to do as a manager if we're managing these people effectively is provide loads of support
because these really are great people worth investing in. So how do we do that. Well we could buddy
with somebody who has the skill that's an obvious thing to do. Put them along some bond some
alongside somebody who is already competent in that area and they can learn off them and see how
things are done. Obviously it might be a training requirement it could be about putting them on courses
or giving them books to read or you know subscribing them to online learning or whatever it might be
that's going to up skill their competence and capability. I would say within this space mentoring is really
useful. Now let me just differentiate that from coaching because we talked about coaching just a little
bit in the previous post coaching I would say is non directive it's asking. You're asking somebody their
opinion and you are seeking their thoughts on how something should be accomplished. Mentoring is
more tell because what mentoring is doing is saying I'm the expert. I've got the experience I've been
here and done it before So maybe more of that in a future module about coaching and mentoring and
how they differ but here. And that support space. Be willing to be a mentor to that person and be willing
to share your experience how it's gone what you found when you did it this way and how you found
another way was more effective because you give them your life experience. Share that with them and
gradually you can move that mentoring that hell into coaching which is ask as their experience starts to
grow and they start to learn and pick up that skill. You can you can shift from tail to us from mentoring
to coaching across that continuum and really you are then moving people much more toward that
delegates Square which you talk about in the next post. So gradually build this up with people gradually
build responsibility start small and build the logic build the pieces and the responsibility as they gain
capable capability. If you've got people in your team as a manager at this place then brilliant work with
them support them like crazy and you'll soon be able to shift across delegating style which we'll talk
about in the next post.

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Delegate
This is where I really want our whole team to be you know a higher level of will a high level of skill and
that's really achievable in our working with individuals working through direct encourage support. It's
very possible to get your whole team working in that delegates space where the behaviours can really
be growth orientated and you can really start to create high performing teams. So we're going to have a
separate module on delegations So look out for that. That's that's ahead of us here in step by step
approach because delegation done properly really have some specific characteristics about it. And I
want to spend a significant amount of time thinking about how we delegate effectively as often
managers haven't learned how to dislocate effectively. But here let's open up the topic and recognize
some of the characteristics you know if we are in this top right hand corner high skill high will. What we
need to do is really see our delegation as a developmental thing really look I would say to yourself out of
a job. Now that sounds counterintuitive but it will not cause you a problem. You'll never be in a situation
where you will lose your job. What you will be is put in a position where you will be moved on to the
next bigger and better thing because you are somebody who really creates high performing teams. So
ultimately with these individuals we ought to be looking to prepare them to take our own jobs. I really
mean that because that's the way we'll create great people and really buzzing teams that are achieving
our accomplishing loads within your function and your organization. So this will be non directive. This
will be coaching and that sense of not tale not mentoring but asking questions and helping the person
explore things themselves. We the last thing we want here is people to come to us and say Bob how
would you do this. And you go do it like this. That's the wrong approach we should be saying. How
would you do it. Pushing it back to them and getting their thoughts. And then we can guide and direct
that if they're off paced but the likelihood that is that they won't be there will be really coming up with
ideas and thoughts and owning the solution in a better way then potentially you can because they're the
ones with the information. They're the ones who are delivering. They're the ones on the coal face so
they know what outcomes and what things will work best. So really really switch this to a coaching non
directive approach. Increase their responsibility to find opportunities to give them things that you would
ordinarily do put them in positions of experience. You know if you aren't around for a meeting with your
manager or senior people within an organization then then why not have this person deputized for
week because that would be great for them to gain extra experience give them those responsibilities
give them those opportunities provide new experiences for these people all the time. And then I'd say
have the courage to trust them. You know these are people who really are investing in your team and
your vision so trust them and rely on them and stand by them so that they feel really supported and feel
like they have a boss who really understands them and gets them and gives them these wonderful
opportunities and you have a career enhancing opportunities and also something that keeps them
motivated and energized. So top right hand corner delegation there's a lot more we can say about
delegation but are focussing on the model here really rather than really bursting out that topic. But for
approaches now we have covered that really are bound nations to thinking what is the condition of the
situation individual. What style do I need to pull out of the bag here when I'm approaching them to get
the best out of them to get the best outcome.

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DISCUSSION
Measuring the right thing
There are obviously a lot of management benefits from getting your measurement system wrong. And
there's truth in that saying you get what you measure if you highlight and measure of people focus on it
and you tend to get results around that measure. But therefore if that's the case measuring the wrong
thing is really disastrous in many case studies and scenarios past and present may be that highlight that.
So getting this right is critical. And that's what we're going to focus on in the next couple of visit videos
particularly this you know everyone has heard of kpi or key performance indicators a really common
phrase is something that is often used when we talk about what are we measuring here our kpi is well
interesting.

Understanding key performance factors

Rather the finance accountants focus on the balance sheet profit and loss cash flow . So they were into
management data and they wanted to measure strategy so they started to think that through and
actually with the people who coined the phrase key performance indicator kpi and a kpi was a measure
that for them was able to indicate whether or not the organization was achieving the strategy that it set
out to achieve. They also coined the phrase critical success factors which we mentioned in the previous
lesson and that's a really important piece of logic too to know as we get into this. And so having done
that they created something called a balance scorecard which again is a phrase that people have used a
lot in business people talk about having a scorecard or a balance scorecard without really knowing the
origins the origins of that and what a real good balance scorecard must include.The key performance
indicators those things that must happen to deliver the outcome of the function or the organization. So
key performance indicators are simply a measure of your critical success factors. If you've already
created your critical success factors or you're working on them and you're developing them from the
previous lessons then you are almost there in answering the question What is it that I should measure.
There is a build on this. It's the balance piece that we've been touching on. So the critical success fact
that becomes a kpi but we also need balance. A balance set of measures across your organization then
you'll really see the benefit of this because it stops you making the mistake of overfocusing in any
particular area and damaging another.

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Financial measures
Well it could be any number of things but it might be staffing costs for example where you have a team
that team might be quite static it might be quite fluid changing month by month with flexing depending
on demand and you will have to keep within budget with those staffing costs. It could be other kinds of
expenditure all sorts of expenditure expenditure from expenses for people's travels through training or
even the stationary cost within your function. So you know all of these things will add up to and give a
view as to what's really critical in making sure you meet your budget requirements so you might have
already determined financial or a critical success factors. And therefore they become things that you
need to measure as you progress through your career and you find yourself in more significant roles
maybe you move away from just budget responsibilities maybe into other critical success factors as well
around finance. Who knows what they might be. They could be sales revenues you know you could be
involved in in the income of an organization and being concerned about measuring and making sure that
we bring in revenues into the organization. It could be a piano a profit and loss thing a bank you know
costs and and income and and understanding what the current profit ratio is. And working with that it
could be cash flows certainly if you're in a small business. Any business actually cash flows are absolutely
mission critical. So you know if that becomes your responsibility then it would definitely be a critical
success factor area. So these things go and balance sheet. Who knows what it might be as your career
progresses. They're likely have been more and more financial measures that you are responsible for and
they're going to be really vital in the balance.

Customer measures
Well of course customer measures but maybe it's a bit less obvious if you are an intern or you know you
are a back office function or you're responsible for services or operations within an organization that
isn't externally customer facing but you still have customers and they are equally as important. They're
just internal customers and whilst and when it's external people often get this you know a few managers
really give them sufficient thought if they are doing with internal customers.

Process measures
So we want to measure some of those things to make sure that we are keeping them sharp and looking
to build the inefficiencies. You know we have to do that keep competitive. So examples here could be
the measurement of process times or back or units completed or some levels of efficiencies you'll know
what's appropriate for you but these measures are vital within this balance but also provide a healthy
challenge for your team you know they keep your teams sharp and keep the team looking for more and
looking for the aging keep developing and honing your processes and procedures.

Learning measures
It's kind of a in measure you know how ready is our environment our team our business to meet the
challenges of the current day. Are we falling behind what's happening out there in the big wide world
and are we are learning organizations So examples might include market trends you know what are the
market trends within our sector. What are the advances that are happening. Are there changes in an
industry or are there substitutions for what we're doing now is the market shifting is our service likely to
be altering. Are we on top of that. Are we learning so that we are making sure we're ahead of the curve
and certainly not left trailing behind. If you take a product like a company like Kodak who you know had
invested so much into film that they really just fell unwilling to accept the learning that the world was
moving on and digital recording was the was the art of the future. And that completely decimated that

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organization because they hadn't learned what was going on in the marketplace and haven't kept
abreast of those things you know department level we might be talking about technique or domain
expertise you know. What is your industry sector doing. What are the professionals within your domain
your sphere doing in terms of practice and capability. And as individuals if you're not keeping abreast of
your own specialism. So the fourth area to keep balanced in all of this is this idea of learning measures is
really important because it's one of the things that can get missed off as being unimportant or can be
put off. So we always put it off and we never get round to it. We focus more on maybe financial
outcomes customer service outcomes maybe. And really we start to fall behind because we're not
learning as an organization.

CONCLUSION
Assert yourself as your business partner or evolve your H.R. department deliverables workforce analytics
also referred to as talent. Analytics is a great focus area. First as discussed in a previous it will be helpful
to have the right human resources information system. However you can still gather data from paper
documentation but you'll need to spend a great deal of time placing it into a usable electronic format.
Inc. A leading information technology research and advisory company to workforce analytics as an
advanced set of data analysis tools and metrics for a comprehensive workforce performance
measurement and improvement. It analyzes recruitment staffing training and development personnel
and compensation and benefits. It also provides the standard ratios consisting of time to fill costs for
higher retention rates. Replacement rates just to name a few. The bottom line is we're talking about
data how to get it and what to do with it. This is why having a strong race from which to track and poll
information is so important. The latest technology can help H.R. provide compelling metrics to
leadership for a lighning workforce initiatives with business objectives. Still a little confusing right. Let's
look at an example. I worked at an organization that wanted to assess the skills of all its employees and
a certain function after partnering with a vendor to develop an assessment tool. Employees and their
supervisors were asked to rate themselves on how proficient they are in a list of competencies like
financial management and budgeting and decision making. We gathered the inputs summarize the data
and found a gap in our employee population skills. This particular skill set was imperative to doing
business in a global environment. We were then able to create a training program and devise a plan for
continuous improvement targeting the right audience with the right information. If you aspire to be an
H or business partner This is especially key since your role is to guide coach and align the organizations
human resources with its mission and objectives. Remember it isn't about buying a new job and building
a report. H.R. professionals need to take it a step further and provide interpretation of the data along
with recommendations on what actions to take as a result. But first take the time to build a plan for
investing in this area.

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