In this interview, Human Resources Consultant Shad Raza talks about the importance of incorporating HR metrics throughout an organization’s business plan and how metrics can elevate the department from a cost center to a business driver.

1. Turn Your HR Department Into A Business Driver By Incorporating Metrics
In this interview, Human Resources Consultant Shad Raza talks about the
importance of incorporating HR metrics throughout an organization’s business plan
and how metrics can elevate the department from a cost center to a business driver.
How can an organization integrate HR metrics throughout its entire business plan?
To make a business operation effective, a business plan must be translated
into functional metrics without deviating from the sanctity of business objectives. Similarly, HR metrics
must be aligned with the business plan for the optimum utilization of human capital. For integration
with a business plan, HR professionals should drill down into every aspect of their business objectives
and align those with people performance. The success of integration is elevated when it is clearly spelt
out in “actionable” terms and is understood by the entire workforce. Once it is aligned, an organization
must accelerate its performance level by providing the right support and organizational system.
What are some current or evolving HR metrics that may be unfamiliar to many human resources
professionals? Furthermore, why should they make an effort to learn them?
There are various traditional and new metrics available such as HRIS, benchmarking, data
mining, dashboards, predictive analysis and HR score cards or balanced score cards that are being
prevailed and used by HR professionals based on their business needs. These metrics provide an
advantage to HR professionals to not only align to the strategic goals of the organization but to bridge
the gap by identifying and fulfilling the performance levels in a timely manner. Hence, they must learn,
adapt and contribute.
On a basic level, how can human resources professionals use metrics to prove to upper management
that their department is a business driver and not a cost center?
If used properly, HR metrics cannot only help an HR professional to enhance organizational
performance, but it can also prove that HR is a business driver like other functions, which helps an
organization achieve and sustain high-growth performance. Translating HR’s tactical and strategic
intentions into effective monetary terms is one of the basic tenets of HR metrics. Therefore, extracting
the right data, doing the appropriate data mining, converting them into the monetary term, presenting
it to the right people at the right time and utilizing these metrics in a timely way is the crux of HR
metrics. Hence, HR professionals must learn, deploy and incorporate metrics into an organizational
reporting system, which can drastically change the misconception of HR in the eyes of upper
management. It also improves accuracy of management decisions.
What are some battle-tested metrics that are still relevant today?

2. HR Score Card & Balanced Score Card are two of the most powerful and proven metrics that can
boost organizational performance, but there are some organizations where they have synchronized
these score cards with Six Sigma, too.
Interview Conducted by Hannah Hager