2.7 Monitoring Performance

Often, a great plan is written, taking lots of time, but isn’t put into practice for a variety of reasons, such as the following:

1. The plan wasn’t developed so that it could be helpful.
2. The plan wasn’t communicated with management and others in the HRM department.
3. The plan did not meet the budget guidelines of the organization.
4. The plan did not match the strategic outcomes of the organization.
5. There was a lack of knowledge on how to implement it.
6. There is no point in developing a plan that can’t be used. Developing the plan and making necessary changes are important to making it a valuable asset for the organization. A strategic plan should be a living document that changes as organizational or external factors change. People can get too attached to a specific plan or way of doing things and then find it hard to change. The plan needs to change constantly, or it won’t be of value.

Measure It

An excellent strategic and HR plan should discuss how “success” will be measured. For example, rather than writing, “Meet the hiring needs of the organization,” be more specific: “Based on sales forecasts from our sales department, hire ten people this quarter with the skills to meet our ten job openings.” This is a goal that is specific enough to be measured. These types of quantitative data also make it easier to show the relationship between HR and the organization and, better yet, to show how HR adds value to the bottom line. Likewise, if a company has a strategic objective to be a safe workplace, you might include a goal to “develop training to meet the needs of the organization.” While this is a great goal, how will this be measured? How will you know if you did what you were supposed to do? It might be difficult to measure this with such a general statement. On the other hand, a goal to “develop a safety training workshop and have all employees complete it by the end of the year” is specific and can be measured at the end to determine success.

It can be difficult to base an entire plan on forecasted numbers. As a result, an HRM department willing to change quickly to meet the organization’s needs proves its worthiness. Consider a sales forecast that called for fifteen new hires, but you find out months later the organization is having a hard time making payroll. Upon digging deeper, you find the sales forecasts were exaggerated, and now you have fifteen people you don’t need. By monitoring the changes constantly (usually done by asking lots of questions to other departments), you can be sure you can change your strategic plan as they come.

The next few pages will outline how metrics can be used to measure success.

“2.3 Tips in HRM Planning” from Human Resource Management Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.