Crisis and recession KPIs, Scorecard, Metrics

Recruitment and selection play a huge role when it comes to the success of any company. Thus, recession metrics have to be geared this aspect of the HR department.

It is an unfortunate fact that the world is going through recession right now. But since the problem is already here, then the best thing to do is to handle the effects of recession as professionally as possible. Moreover, recession becomes more difficult to deal with when it comes to recruitment and selection. Much attention should be placed on recruitment and selection because this is the first step towards hiring the right people to work for you, after all. Thus, if you are going to come up with recession metrics, then these should be geared towards recruitment and selection.

Do not make the mistake of assuming that any implemented metric system would be sufficient enough already. Many companies believe that as long as they have implemented metrics, this would mean inevitable improvement despite the effects of the economic downturn. But if you would think about it, wouldn’t your own metrics already be ineffective as a result of the economic downturn? Yes, this could very much be the case already. Thus, you still need to make the necessary modifications of your metric system. This way, your recession metrics would be more geared towards the overall performance of the recruitment process.

Going back to the subject of developing metrics to deal with recession for the HR department, you just might be asking yourself what kind of metrics you should include here. There are a lot of sources that you can find on the web already so if you are not too sure which metrics to use, then you can check out these sources yourself. Here are some metrics that you may want to include in your scorecard.

Cost per Hire

The first thing you need to understand about this metric is that it is quite unstable. This is the reason why not too many HR departments are keen about using cost per hire. At best, you should use this metric to create budget plans or to review corporate performance.

Offer to Hire

This metric refers to all of the offers made by the company in order to fill various job posts. The measurement here should be done according to sub-groups, across groups, as well as departments, divisions,, and requisitions. This way, the hiring process can be carried out according to personalities, needs, as well as the areas that are in need of improvement.

Interview to Offer

This metric refers to the overall number of interviews carried out by sub-groups in order to generate various job offers.

Route to Interest

This is actually a ratio that pertains to the number of router resumes and the number of resumes of interest forwarded to the company’s hiring managers. Resumes of interest here have several variations. Some have been pre-screened by the higher-level hiring managers. Others have just been phone-screened, but would still go through interviews with the hiring managers. Phone-screening is done just to set interview arrangements immediately.

These are just some of the recession metrics that you should include in your scorecard to uphold the performance of your HR department in spite of today’s financial crisis.

Crisis Scorecard Articles about Crisis Metrics, Recession, Recruitment

With the appropriate metrics outlined, any suffering company would definitely be on the right path towards improved performance management through recession metrics implemented.

Recession indeed presents a very difficult time for any existing enterprise in today’s corporate world and no company is exempted from this at all. Thus, it is a must for every company to know how to implement the right metric set for this very trying period. Performance management through recession metrics implemented is indeed a must.

If there is one thing that is hard to maintain in any company during this extremely trying and frustrating period, it would be employee morale. Yes, employee morale would certainly degrade – and at an exponential rate as well – thereby presenting quite the leadership challenge in any existing company or organization. Your metrics should then be geared towards this.

On the surface, companies would expect any employee who survived inevitable retrenchment due to cost-cutting to feel grateful that he or she has been spared. Yes, there would be that grateful feeling still; however, evidence pertaining to past recession periods strongly suggest that it does not take too long for the remaining employees to feel overworked and still vulnerable, even threatened, at the possibility that they could still end up losing their jobs. Thus, even if they surpassed the survival of the fittest stage, their morale would still suffer ultimately. And any company with dwindling employee morale better prepare because things would definitely take a turn for the worse.

Just how worse can things be? Have you heard of recession fatigue? This is actually the scenario wherein companies experience problems happening consecutively. This include deteriorating customer service, falling sales, a significant decline in productivity, higher costs, increased sick days, as well as lower profits. To battle recession fatigue successfully, companies should then take a proactive strategy to the problem at hand.

Communication should definitely be one of the focus points of your recession metrics. Open communication should be administered because without this, the informal grapevine would then be the ultimate source of havoc in the company. Anxiety levels would be raised and the employees themselves would feel detached and angry because they are not being told everything that has been going on under their noses. Eventual resignation is inevitable for the most part here.

The restructuring of the organization should also be included in your metric set. Downsizing is inevitable so there will certainly be a lot of people that the company would have to let go. But the work does not stop there. After downsizing and letting employees go, there should then be a procedure for transition implemented for it is not only the employees let go who are experiencing low morale – the ones left behind are experiencing this, too. More importantly, the employees left behind are the ones who need to do more work with fewer resources so they might need to work longer hours and shorter days – to maximize time and cut costs. Thus, the restructuring of the organization and the workforce should be done systematically so that employee morale would not be made to suffer more.

Recession is really a very unfortunate event that we all have to go through this time. As long as you keep to the idea of implementing the appropriate metrics, then you would certainly be on the path towards better performance management through recession metrics.

Crisis Scorecard Articles about Crisis Metrics, Performance Management, Recession