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How to conduct a strategic assessment of your
recruitment risks and plan for the best?
“How will the new hire perform after he joins is always a ‘?’
Unanswered it remains till a few months the new hire is in place, but answered in some adjectives like (good, excellent, class)
– RRF provides a greater precision to identify the potential issues in prediction and craft the path for bettering the selection.
HR / recruitment strategist adopt multifaceted approach to recruitment strategy. Had it been mentioned as the best, another
trial would not take place. Trial and error methods are one among the many methods adopted, had it if learning from the
errors are appropriately treated further. With the Recruitment Results Framework (RRF) a continuous approach in recruitment
quality and learning’s from those for implementation framework is the key with precision empiricism of the present and
refining the future method.
May be this RRF solutions is not required if organizations do not have the issues of attrition coupled with low engagement
levels and high cost of recruitment, both amortized and unamortized cost. The value creation using a recruitment consultant is
not much as they sell CV’s and not uses sophisticated selection tools for them, on the contrary using the web pages where the
universe of potential candidate’s access is the same for all.
Why RRF consulting
When faced with a choice among strategies, management should choose the strategy that maximizes the expected utility for
the organization, and to make those choice managers need to be provided with the estimates of success process, which is
where the RRF serves the purpose. Decision of the cost for recruitment is so vivid in the standard accounting systems, but
the cost of errors in selecting is not captured in any of the accounting standards, leading to the drain of ‘Cash’ as well Human
capital with poor performance that can have serious consequences in terms of projects, products and customers. Our
performance specialist would work with the company and analyze in a systematic manner the subjective or expected value of
alternate outcomes associated with a decision.
RRF approach is highly researched from the market data base of organizations and people movement tracked with almost
15,000 candidates, and today resulting in predicting the employee mental mobility (attrition) as well performance prediction at
the selection process. RRF helps your company study the recruitment / selection success in terms of
1. “Recruitment Success Ratio” (RSR)
2. “Refine the present anomalies
3. Train the managers involved in selection with repeat training, so that the implementation is handy within the
company
4. Help you identify how and where to reduce your cost of recruitment
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RRF works with the quality and value creation in the “Talent Flow” and associated “Selection Process”, defining,
measuring and planning the new process and empirics, so to have a continuous improvement in getting better
prediction of the prospective employee. To make the findings vivid and meaningful, this advisory support is also
embedded with monthly exit interviews by CDF Consulting and a yearly EBBOL Study (An instrument for measuring
at a greater precision the Employee engagement and work passion study)
Benefits for your company and company HR:
Incrementally reduce dependency on the CV consultants where a big money is paid per hire.
Tendency to use much of the web portals for skimming the appropriate CV’s , as people would be at their
best in making selection decision supported by CDF analytics
Selection attention matrix changes over a period to high professionalism.
CDF consultants would conduct the base process and analytics study of prediction while company HR only
conducts the selection process and provide the ratings on re-defined process to CDF, in turn CDF provides
success matrix of each candidates for further decision.
All nominated and identified managers involved in the selection process are trained in ‘Mandarin Select’ a
training program on selection skills
Annual EBBOL score for course correction on policy and practices along with the monthly exit interviews on
employee separation to get better insights into the selection process or otherwise as relevant.
Monthly interface electronically or telephonically with the separated employee, hence location not an issue.
Senior consultant who have consulted on major change initiatives only involved in providing findings and its
inferences.
The return on investment worked out that would be worth the returns
A mathematical precision on what should be the RSR
Mathematical precision on how many people should be interviewed and how many shall be rejected.
Deriving the coefficient for success for future mapping
Concern Validation
Phase
RRF PROCESS
Implementation Results Phase
Phase
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SNAPSHOT OF RRF MONTHLY RECRUITMENT RESULTS (IMPLEMENTATION PHASE)
(Other elements of RRF, like Exit interview and EBBOL results are not part of this article)
1. A new process correction based on RRF study at company ABC conducted and competency based
implementation in place , PART OF CONCERN VAIDATION AND IMPLEMENTATION PHASE.
2. Shyam, Ram and Vaidhya are potential candidates who have been interviewed with the company ABC and
the final results sent to RRF solutions, before the letter of appointment is given.
3. The following report of potential performance prediction is mapped and sent to the company ABC HR for
taking a decision
4. Company ABC takes a informed decision.
5. At the end of appraisal period all these calculated predictions are ratified to see the success % and then
again refine the process – A Kaizen in recruitment.
6. Value to the company- Potential prediction of success of person on the job before hiring and continuous
areas of identification for controlling attrition by conducting exit interviews.
Potential Performance Prediction
10 Mr. Shyam is in the
9 Correct acceptance curve,
8 hence select
7
6
5 Potential Performance
4
3
2
1
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
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Potential Performance Prediction
10
9
8
7
6
5 Potential Performance
4
3
Mr. Ram lies in the not
2 successful curve, hence
1 hire with the known risk
or decline offer
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Potential Performance Prediction
10
9
8
7
6
5 Potential Performance
4
3
2 Mr. Vaidhya lies in the
confirmed rejection
1 curve, hence not to
0 proceed with the known
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 risk
Recruitment Results Framework (RRF), the methodology and prediction formulation in India is exclusively owned by
Cerebral Dimensions Learning System.
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Is your company efficacious – beyond the core
competency?
Businesses face increasing pressures from competition, stock market anomalies, loss of key leaders, on- going organizational
change and competitive innovation. It is more to be realized, people in business are not working to support a social ‘cause’,
but are working for the mission and stated purpose of the business, and although they may choose the organization for its
reputation and its market prowess. The organization in turn selects the mission and goals for the employee to pursue. It is
the business, not the cause that provides impetus to daily operations.
CDF; company wide research and their consultants related observation is that, to build company level efficacy, at times some
of the company’s view the following as contributors of business success such as
‘Employee engagement’
‘Product prowess’
‘Brand identity’
Longevity in the trade and some ‘customer opportunities’
And utilization of all in exclusion.
Having said that in reality most organizations get into measuring all of the aspects religiously but do not have any concerted
total plan with conviction to build efficacy, as company’s are misguided or prefer to be ignorant of the collective inter -
linkages of the above processes.
On the contrary company’s focusing on any one of the aspect is also probably doing a mistake or rather a blunder.
To enumerate this aspect of Efficacy- let’s illustrate the research based findings. Many business surveys and questionnaires
tend to focus on how individuals view their unique circumstances in an organization, to the exclusion of understanding how
individuals perceive the broader capabilities of the organization.
Organizational Efficacy as measured by Cerebral Dimensions and Formations is a global reality measure that would take all of
those elements (Organizational self esteem, commitment, climate and organizational citizenship) into account in evaluating
organizational capacity to achieve outcomes.
The most important distinction to be reminded to HR and business leaders is that organizational efficacy is not employee
efficacy. To illustrate:– In a highly efficacious organizations, people should think differently, work differently, and act
differently and the outcomes should be different from organization where organizational efficacy is low.
Employee’ are the best respondents for measuring your company’s Efficacy, which is measured by the 3 major factors as
measured by the survey instrument of Cerebral Dimensions Learning System. The instrument is simple yet having a very high
validity and reliability of 0.9
This is to be conducted when the CEO feels that everything is right yet something is not right. To measure your company’s
Efficacy, please connect with one of the lead consultants of Cerebral Dimensions Learning System or National Coordinator
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It’s time for performance evaluation – The Holy Grail
Performance Management system, the buzzword yesterday, today and tomorrow among the corporate, has been more or less
a plagiarism rather than a reality mapped to the said organization. The existing survey of the PMS, more reveal the ‘people
salary increment’ and ‘promotion decision’ component only attached to the PMS.
Performance management system has become a widespread formal organizational procedure with managers measuring and
evaluating subordinates performance using formal rating instruments. It has been estimated that over 92% of all big
organizations use some form of this process, and 34% of SME’s use some form of this process.
The issue that still revolves around is that whether the PMS designed are really representative of the measure of the
organizations competitiveness in slices or they are exclusively for rating only the individuals contributions. Or is there a linking
score (here we refer to Balanced scorecard) for the individuals contribution to the organization.
Revolutions begin long before they are officially declared. For several years senior executives in a broad range of industries
have been rethinking how to measure the performance of their business. At the heart of this revolution lies a radical decision;
to shift from treating financial figures as the foundation for performance measurement to treating them as one among a
broader set of measures. Treating the measure is one thing, but giving them equal status in determining strategy,
promotions; and other rewards is another
Hence studying performance management System for better business results and people development
could be looked from two defined aspects that can allow a holistic approach to performance management
system and appraisal.
1. A tool of the organization aligned to the organization design – Design of PMS
2. The impact of performance measurement.
Design of PMS
In the past, performance appraisal were an independent system to ensure role clarity, performance planning, job-related
competency identification and development, development of critical attributes required by the job as well as those valued by
the organization and identification if training needs. In the last few years this system is slowly being re-placed by not a better
– a utilitarian approach, which included:
Its time to place people in their space
Fixation of increment
Individuals performance analysis
Performance rewards and recognition.
Of the above some of those are mere judgmental aspects of the process and some developmental. The missing aspects are
the holism of the appraisal. Holism here is referred to how to link the performance of the individual to the organization, not
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just a mere linking but a causal reflection of the same. It would do good for organization to study their causal impact of all the
measures before embarking on the ‘target setting’ for the new performance period. This would require not just a ‘process’
and related ‘appraisal form’ like many attempt to; instead study of the strategy of the organization and preparing the score
card.
Study across some of the Indian organizations reveals the heresy of this high potent system and people development tool to a
mere religious ritual. Financial figures reflection on some of the functions of organization is good but it is indiscriminately
used based on the mere perception instead of professionally being consulted. The result being measuring the consequences
of business ‘decision for yesterday’ very meticulously for appraising people and rewarding those and prepare for yesterday
success mantra for tomorrows uncertain dynamic business canvas. One of the simple example was that in one of our clients
PMS planning consulting it was observed that the company had fixed the sales executives KPI in terms of the sales figures,
but the strategy study revealed that creation of the cash flow and market share was the real success metric. With the changes
incorporated in the KPI the bleak issue of the company turned around.
The further challenges observed are “ How a company generates the performance data it needs is the second piece of its
information architecture.” In the refined architecture the Impact of KPI’s are narrated in terms such that organizations can
start looking at their business data, its usage and appraisal from these. This is very relevant even for the board level appraisal
of the CEO. Interestingly not many CEO are being measured by these principle based metrics.
Performance Indicator system and impact
The notion of impact of performance measurement and its indicators is pivotal for the design to be successful. It has been
postulated that excessive use of the outcome – related performance indicators (ORPI’s) might influence managerial behavior.
Here these illustrations may not be as relevant for all the work and positions, but to be comprehended in context and be
adopted. Here the author illustrates the impacts with a metaphor, which is the basis of true professional consulting.
Tunnel vision KPI: Concentration on areas included in the KPI scheme, to the exclusion of other important
areas. Most of the KPI lacks the measure of effectiveness of intervention of work, such as measures of quality of
outcome. As a result many measures of outcomes used in KPI schemas of company are likely to be highly imperfect
indicators of effectiveness, the relevance of which is easily challenged given the strategic priorities not being
achieved. If managers are encouraged to pay excessive attention to KPI schemas, they may be tempted to focus on
the more easily managed aspects of activity, such as input and procedures, rather than enhancement of
effectiveness in terms of outcome.
Suboptimization KPI: Is the pursuit by managers of their own narrow objectives, at the expense of strategic
consideration. More relevant to large organization, especially in service where the effectiveness of the organization is
on a wider spread of society as customers, and not just those addressed by a manager, hence the KPI is no
guarantee that the individual managers will take account of their responsibility as reflected in the targets in the
appraisal. This lack of congruence between personal targets and global objectives give rise to the phenomenon,
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which has become known as sub optimization of the Performance indicators and their impact on the appraisal
process.
Myopic KPI: Many of the PMS designers and administrators are unaware of the Myopia effect that leads to the
ineffectiveness of the process and system. Myopia is concentration on short-term issues, to the exclusion of the
long-term criteria, which may only show up in the performance in many years time. Therefore managerial Myopia
arises because of lack of congruence between the time horizon of the projects for which he / she is responsible,
hence if long term issues are considered important, the KPI scheme of the PMS must focus on process dedicated to
long term objectives rather than just outcomes.
Convergence KPI: An emphasis on not being exposed as an outliner on any KPI, rather than a desire to be
outstanding. This arises more from the human process of ‘self centeredness’ and lack of specialist support sought by
the HR. This is more often reflected in many organizations when the HR seeks to get the data from the functional
heads for their completing the appraisal process and not really being bothered of the Strategic objectives.
Ossification KPI: Research indicates that excessively rigid performance measurement schemas can stifle
innovation and suppress potentially healthy experimentation. If outcomes are enhanced by the innovation there is no
guarantee that the current KPI will capture the improvement. Any organization delivering exceptional performance
will raise expectations, and the managers looking for a quite life may instead spurn the short-lived plaudit arising,
instead of the beneficial innovation and apt for chronic mediocrity.
However, as with most formal control systems, the most profound danger is that the system itself becomes ossified,
and fails to react to new challenges and opportunities. This has been the observation of the author in many
organization.
Gaming KPI: The dynamic incentives implicit in a performance management schema are potentially very
important for two reasons; firstly, most KPI’s in practice are intermediate measures of performance, measuring
process of service delivery rather than outcomes. As a result the numbers reported are readily changed by the
behavior of managers.
Misrepresented KPI: Fraudulent practices with the selfish motives by the managers in measuring their
subordinates and the designers selfishness for their own gains always leads to the inappropriate data and ineffective
use of the PMS.
It would be worth to note that the natural process of life always comes coupled with some or many of the
KPI’s, but it also doesn’t mean that it should be lived with. It would do good for progressive or intending
to be progressive companies to evaluate their business strategy, Vision Mission and create the score card
which would address most of the issues rendering the business results embedded in the employee
appraisal.
The editorial thanks the following esteemed consultants who have contributed the above articles and having lead some of the research:
1. Prof. Vinu Kuruvilla – Our Empanelled consultant and leading management teacher
2. Dr. Hardik & Mr. Sunil Verghese - CDF Principal Consultants and Management Trainer, who are one among our consultants
trained on RRF. We thank them for sharing on RRF, as there were many enquiries for the same.
3. Ms. Latha Sushindhran – CDF Consultant, who has contributed the article on Organizational Efficacy
4. Mr.Sunl Verghese – Contributed the article on PMS and KPI
issue # 3
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