The strategic role of HR

- Is your organization and your people ready for the future? What are the vital

challenges you will face? How will they change your approach to HR and work?

What can you do better to prepare? Between 2013 and 2016, a group of 75

influential and accomplished senior executives worked to answer these questions.

They mapped the future of the HR profession and the most pivotal requirements

to meet its future potential. They took the name CHREATE for the Global

Consortium to Reimagine HR, Employment Alternatives, Talent, and the Enterprise.

They identified five forces of change that would define the evolution of work,

human resources, and organizations. Listen to these five forces and see if your

organization is ready. Force number one they called Social and Organizational

Reconfiguration.Organizations will become more transparent, because workers

can easily share their opinions and experiences.Work relationships will evolve to

be diverse and flexible,constantly shifting power between the employer and the

worker. Leadership and authority will be defined less through traditional

hierarchies and more through social networks and collaborations. That will make

leadership more horizontal, shared, and collective. Workers are going to choose

organizations that offer them the clearest opportunity to contribute to success and

social purpose. Force number two they called An All-Inclusive Global Talent

Market. Women and people of color will become the majorities. Greater longevity

will increasethe number of generations working together. A global community of

workers will deliver work from anywhere, to anywhere. Deep data about workers'

careers, social media, and past performance will require employers to offer

workers personalized deals, including work designs, pay, and benefits. Force

number three they called A Truly Connected World. Work is going to become

increasingly virtual and occur anywhere and anytime through mobile personal

devices with global real-time communications. Connected organizations will have

permeable boundaries. So the idea of work, careers, learning, and diversity change,

because workers move easily between organizations. Force number four,

Exponential Technology Change. Work will be more agile, being constantly

changed and upgraded by robots, autonomous vehicles, sensors, and artificial

intelligence. Organizations and workers must get betterat balancing long-term bets

and short-term flexibilityand adapt to frequent changes and rapid skills

obsolescence. Force number five they called Human-Automation Collaboration.

Organizations and workers will collaborate to optimize the combination of human

workers and automation, balancing the benefits against the cost and disruption. Is

your organization ready? You could use these next questions to figure that out. Can

your workers precisely connect their performance to your organization's economic

and social purpose? Can you personalize rewards to motivate the highest impact

contributions? Do you know which worker capabilitiesshould be sourced globally

versus locally, to optimize cost and performance? Do you know how combining

automated and human work will most enhance performance and how that

connects to your strategic success? Can you find the common theme? It is that

workers and leaders must be more precise about how improved worker

performance impacts strategic, economic, and social success. Most organizations

can't answer these questions precisely, so they adopt across the board policies,

such as reward high performers, train everyone to be more innovative, outsource

or automate jobs to minimize cost. That's not going to be good enough in the

future. In fact, improving performance in a few pivotal areas has outsize impact on

organization performance, innovation, and costs. You need a framework to find

and invest in those key pivotal people areas. The five forces of change don't affect

every organization the same way. So to see how it might affect your organization,

pick one of the five forces.Now, with that force in mind, is there one specific job or

group of workers whose performance will be most pivotal in meeting that

challenge?
Help/Fe

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Ask the right questions

- A great strategy is more about asking great questionsthan about giving great

answers. Some great thinkers have said it well. Albert Einstein said, "If I had an

hour to solve a problem, "I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem "and five

minutes thinking about the solution." The management guru Peter Drucker said

there are few things as useless, if not dangerous, as the right answer to the wrong

question. Think about your organization's strategy. Do you spend too much time

finding quick answers and too little asking better questions? When it comes to HR

strategy, most leaders are so eager to find answers that they can miss the vital

questions. Imagine you're trying to increase customer satisfaction. You might

assume the answer is to improve the workers in your call center whose job it is to

talk to customers. The leader of the call center has an answerto improving those

workers: train the representatives on better service. Finally, HR has the answer to

providing training: implement best in class customer service training for the call

center employees. This is not hypothetical. It occurred in several organizations I

worked with. In fact, training call center representativesdid not improve customer

service. Finding the high impact answer required asking better questions. Each

organization started over by asking these questions.What does better service

really mean, and how do we measure it? What call center worker

performanceactually affects those service outcomes? Do any other processes

have a big impact on those service outcomes? When each organization answered

these questions, they realized that customer satisfaction was most strongly

affected by the number of product failures, how fast product failures were fixed,

and whether the customer knew why things failed. Call center representatives had

no way to reduce the failuresand no information to answer these questions. No

wonder more training didn't help. Here's the key question: where would improving

worker performancemake the biggest difference to the processes that have the

biggest impact? This question revealed that the pivotal workers were not in the call

center, but in the field repairing the equipment. Improving the performance of field

repair workers to fix the problem and explain the delay had a much more pivotal

impact on customer satisfaction. Have you encountered this kind of deep

questioning in your organization? It's often called root cause analysis when it's

applied to areas such as manufacturing, operations, and software development.

What many leaders don't know is that it is equally powerful when you apply it to

talent and HR.One engineer I worked with said, "This is really powerful."I've applied

root cause analysis "to engineering my whole career, "but never applied it to how

we invest in our people." One question that can often help you avoid jumping too

quickly to the wrong answers: where would improving worker performance make

the biggest difference to the processes that have the biggest impact? Think of an

example where your HR strategy is proposing an HR program as the answer. Could

you find a better solution if you stepped back and asked better questions? What is

one vital question that needs to be asked?

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Strategy is choices and optimization

- Michael Porter, a leading expert on organizational strategy said, "Strategy is about

making choices, trade-offs." A good example of trade-offs is how companies treat

their customers. Airlines allow frequent fliers to board early, access preferred

seats, and check bags for free. Less frequent fliers board last, sit in middle seats,

and pay for checked baggage, but they may also pay very low basic fares. Strategic

customer service requirestreating customer classes differently. Investing more

where the payoff is higher, and less where the payoff is less. Yet, when it comes to

HR strategy and people investments, leaders often forget this logic. They often
treat all employees the same. If some employees earn performance bonuses, then

everyone should. If some employees get innovation training, then everyone should.

Ian Ziskin, the former chief HR officer for Northrop Grumman, says, "This is like

giving all the plants in a garden "the same amount of sun, nutrients, and water, "and

it's just as illogical, and potentially"counterproductive, when it comes to people."

Treating all workers alike is the peanut butter approach to HR strategy. Spread the

peanut butter evenly on the bread.That's a good sandwich recipe, but not a good

people strategy. Why do leaders adopt the peanut butter approach to people, when

they would never do that for customers, money or technology? First, they believe

equal is the same as fair. Everyone created equal is a common principle of human

resources. Second, everyone gets the same treatment is easier for leaders to

explain to their workers. What would your leaders say to a worker who asks why

they don't get a big bonus?The easiest thing to say is often, all our workers are paid

under the same system and HR won't let me treat you differently. Think about your

customers. Different customer segments contribute differently to your sales or

reputation. In the same way, workers in different rolescontribute differently to your

organizational success.Say you want to increase innovation. Rather than train

everyone on innovation, you could target the innovation training to the workers in

research and development.That will produce more impact than innovation training

for the workers in accounting. In fact, innovative accounting could actually be

counterproductive.Remember, this is not saying that one group of workers is more

important than another. The people who work in accounting, and the people who

work in research and development are both important contributors. But a good

people strategy recognizes that they contribute differently. When organizations

treat all workers the same, it usually reduces strategic success. A strong HR

strategy optimizes your investments in people by knowing how different workers

contribute differentlyand investing based on those differences. Think of something

your organization does the same way for all workers. Can you think of a way you
could differentiate,treating some workers differently, that would have a large

strategic impact? How would that change your HR strategy?

Efficiency, effectiveness, and impact

- The HC BRidge framework helps you to find a comprehensive HR strategy by

considering how to balance three value propositions. When your strategy

overemphasizes one of these three elements, you risk producing low value or

waste. The first value proposition is efficiency. In other words, being frugal with

resources, such as money and time. The second value proposition is effectiveness,

the idea of implementing programs that achieve desired effects.And the third value

proposition is impact, targeting your programs and investments where they make

the largest improvement in strategic success. You can see how the three value

propositions of the HC BRidge framework apply to HR strategies by comparing

marketing and HR.Imagine that your marketing department achieved very high

efficiency. They have the lowest cost-per-television advertisement in the industry,

saving your company thousands of dollars. That's like your HR department saving

thousands of dollars by being the lowest cost-per-hire. But what if the marketing

department achieved their low cost by broadcasting their advertisements between

2 a.m. and 6 a.m. on obscure television channels? It would be like HR relying on

low-cost, but obscure job boards to recruit candidates. You'd look deeper and ask

your marketers, do these ads work? For HR, you would ask, do these low-cost job

boards work?Suppose your marketing department answered your question by

showing high effectiveness. 90% of viewers of the ads buy your product. That

would be like your HR department reporting that 90% of those you recruit accepted

your job offers. This is encouraging, but you'd still have additional questions for

your marketing department. You might ask, what sort of customers are making the

purchases? For HR, you'd ask, what sort of candidates are accepting our offers?

When marketing answers your question, suppose you find that the viewers are
elderly folks with insomnia watching television in the wee hours of the morning,

but suppose your product is a glitzy cell phone with features for teenagers. It's cool

that grandparents are buying the cell phone for their grandchildren, but

grandparents are not your target customer. Your marketers will realize that they

should direct the advertisements to teenagers who are the customers with greater

impact on your strategic success. For HR, this would be like discovering that those

accepting your job offers actually lack the capability to do the jobs that most effect

your strategy.HR would discover that they need to target their recruiting to the

candidates with more strategic impact.Your leaders instinctively balance

efficiency, effectiveness, and impact when it comes to marketing,but they will

often judge HR strategy solely on budget expenses or whether your recruits accept

the offers.Leaders rarely know whether HR programs are targetedto the worker's

capabilities and organization relationships that have the greatest impact on

strategic success. Here's how the three HC BRidge questions apply to your HR

strategy. Efficiency asks: what pivotal HR investments have the biggest effect on

our HR programs? Effectiveness asks: what pivotal HR programshave the biggest

effect on our talent and organization performance? And impact asks: what pivotal

talent and organization performance has the biggest effect on our sustainable

strategic success? Here's how you can use the three HC BRidge questions: to

create more precise HR strategies, to fill in the blank spots of your current HR

strategy, and to detect when your HR strategy is out of balance because it

overemphasizes one value proposition. Think of an HR program in your

organization, such as rewards, training, or selection. Use the three HC BRidge value

proposition questions to define what makes that program valuable. You'll discover

that some value propositions are much clearer than the others. To make it more

challenging, where can you improve the strategic value of the program by using

one of the less clear value propositions?

What’s important versus what's pivotal

- Leaders often say, "All of our people are important, "so let's improve the

performance "of everyone in our organization." That's like saying, "Let's improve

the performance "of every machine in our manufacturing line," or "Let's strengthen

every link in a chain." The problem is that the decision to improve everyone's

performance leads to HR strategies that simply invest equally in all workers. Even

more important, your managers and workers are confused about their priorities.

This problem is nicely illustrated by the links in a chain. What if we asked the

question which links in a chain are important? The answer is that all the links in a

chain are important. The chain cannot function without any one of its links. But not

all links equally affect the overall strength of the chain. A better question is where

would strengthening a chain linkmake the biggest impact on the chain's overall

strength? Now the answer is not improving the strength of all the links. You would

repair or strengthen the weakest link first. That's because increasing the strength

of the weakest link has much greater effect on the total strength of the chain. The

weakest link in a chain is more pivotal. Think of a fulcrum, where pushing down on

one end raises the other end. This pivot point creates leverage. Something is more

pivotal the greater its leverage on success. Increasing the strength of the weakest

link in a chain is more pivotal than increasing the strength of any other link. Now

you can see that pivotal is different from important. All of the links in a chain are

important, but the weakest link is pivotal. How can this help you improve your

strategies? Strategy requires making choices to optimize resources.Improving

pivot points makes the largest impact on strategic success. So a good strategy

invests more at the pivot points. Pivot points apply to your people and your

organization just like they apply to manufacturing, supply chains, or product

features. A strong human resource strategy requires investing more where the
performance of your people and organization makes the biggest pivotal difference.

Where is the pivotal link in your organization? You might want to avoid this question

because you think it means labeling a role as a weak link, but that's not true.

Everyone is vital to your organization. Finding the pivotal link lets you help your

people make their biggest contribution.

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Pivotal innovation

- Is innovation one of your strategic goals? It is in most strategies. But the word

innovation is so vague that few employees really know how to have their greatest

impact on innovation. Some employees might think that innovation means sharing

lots of wild suggestions for new products. Others might think that innovation

means carefully studying consumer preferences to modify existing products.

These are both valuable, but they are not equally valuable for every strategy. A

kitchen appliance maker may find very little value in generating wild ideas, like zero-

gravity refrigerators, but find great value in generating more ideas about selling the

appliance in new low-infrastructure regions or embedding artificial intelligence to

save energy. In contrast, an auto maker might find great value in ideas for zero-

gravity cars. Pivotal innovation varies with strategy. And so do the pivotal talent

and organization elements that affect innovation. To execute on strategic goals

like innovation, your talent must know preciselyhow improving their performance

affects your pivotal innovation. You can see this clearly by comparing the Disney

theme parks to a rollercoaster theme park, like Cedar Point. Disney and Cedar Point

both innovate, but in a very different way. Disney creates a magical experience by

innovating on stories, characters, and memorable music. Cedar Point creates a

thrilling experience by innovating on adrenaline-inducing action,extreme physical

designs, and throbbing soundtracks.Now, think about the people strategy and

consider the job of a ride engineer. Both Disney and Cedar Point have the job of
ride engineer, and both include innovation in that job. However, if we stop there,

then the strategic goal of innovation is fake. And the job description is generic, like

ride engineer. The ride engineer workers may not know how to innovate in ways

that add pivotal value. What is pivotal innovation at Disney? If I mention the song,

It's a Small World, you can sing it and it stays in your head. The small world ride

that made the song famous is not very technologically advanced. Riders sit in a

small boat on an obvious artificial river, watching adorable, but rudimentary

puppets. Yet, the ride is memorable because the song and the imagery are

compelling.Disney ride engineers add pivotal value with innovations in iconic

songs, stories, and imagery. What's pivotal innovation at Cedar Point? You

probably can't remember the song from your last rollercoaster ride.You do

remember how you moved through physical space and how it thrilled you, while

keeping you safe.Cedar Point ride engineers add pivotal value with innovations in

materials, clever safety designs, and g-forces. The job descriptions for ride

engineers at both Disney and Cedar Point include songs and physical design. But

a Cedar Point engineer can be moderately good enough on the songs, but should

be great on the physical design. At Disney, it's the opposite. Ride engineers can be

moderately good enough on physical design, but should be great on connecting

rides with songs. Clarifying what's pivotal about innovation, helps your employees

find their most pivotal impact. Consider your organization's strategy. Does it

contain goals like innovation, speed, and digitization? Using the idea of pivotal,

think of one way you could help your workersbetter understand how they contribute

to one of the strategic goals. Where can they be good enough, versus where should

they be great?

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Important is the wrong question

- Do you build your HR strategy by asking what's important? Most organizations

do. Organization leaders ask HR leaders to build an HR strategy that supports our

important strategic goals, focusing on the important human resources that are

vital to those goals. This is a fundamental mistake, which explains why many HR

strategies are weaker than they should be. You can see the effects of this common

mistake by using the example of an HR strategy for a Disney theme park, such as

Disneyland or Disney World. When you search for a strategic goal that's important,

you often look for consensus among your leaders. That produces strategic goals

that are generic, such as increase innovation, make us faster, make our

organization more digital, or improve customer focus. If we did this for a Disney

theme park, everyone would agree that the goal of maximize customer satisfaction

was important. Of course, this is a vital goal for all Disney theme parks. HR

strategists might feel confident, and their leadership partners might applaud a goal

that has such strong consensus. However, let's dig deeper before we congratulate

HR too quickly. Now that you identified the generic strategic goal, you encounter a

second problem that is caused by searching for the important jobs to achieving

the goal. In a Disney theme park, what would you say are the important jobs for

maximizing customer satisfaction? Almost everyone would say the characters,

such as Mickey Mouse, the princesses, et cetera. After some thought, you might

realize that ride operators are also very important. In addition, you would realize

that back office jobs such as park architects, ride designers, retail sales data

analysts, and even HR professionals, are also important. You'd realize that those

who keep the park clean, such as street sweepers are also important. In every case,

you cannot achieve customer satisfaction without these jobs. What happens if you

continue this exercise of identifying the important jobs in a Disney theme park?

Your list will ultimately include every single job in the park. This is absolutely

correct. Every job must be important to customer satisfaction, or else why would

you have the job in the first place? But it's not very strategic to say, "After careful
analysis, "we discovered that all jobs and organization units "are important, so we

will invest in all of them." Yet that is typical of many HR strategies.Strong strategies

make choices. Saying all jobs are strategically important to customer satisfaction,

doesn't help much to choose where to make your people investments. Strong HR

strategies identify where investing in people has the largest effect on strategic

success. That requires correcting the two mistakes, and here's how you do that.

First, you must define strategic success more precisely than broad statements like

customer satisfaction. What does customer satisfaction uniquely mean to Disney?

What things have the biggest impact on customer satisfaction? Second, you must

change the focus from jobs that are important, to jobs that are pivotal, where

improving performance has the biggest impact on strategic success. If you start

with what's pivotal instead of what's important, you'll see more precise ways to

build your people strategy. Try this test on your strategy processes and

documents.Look for examples where your leaders use broad vision statements to

substitute for clear strategic choices. Shift the focus to what's pivotal by asking,

where would improving performance have the largest effect on our strategic

success? When you do, you'll uncover a deeper understanding of what strategic

success means, and what drives it.

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Define sustainable strategic success

- See if your organization fits any of these patterns.Some organizations define

strategy in broad, visionary terms like "Change the world by improving the lives "of

our customers, employees, and society." Others define strategy with products and

services, such as "Be the most innovative, efficient, and high-quality "provider of

our products and services." still others define strategy with economic goals such

as "Achieve double-digit revenue and profit growth "over the next decade."These

are powerful statements that can foster a sense of purpose, establish your brand
among employees and customers, and offer financial benchmarks for

investors.But, they're not precise enough to guide your HR strategy and your

investments in people. Such general statements are really visions, not strategies.

They don't describe your specific strategic choices and priorities.They're too vague

to help workers and leaders precisely find their pivotal role in your organization's

strategic success. The way you can tell when a vision statementneeds to be more

precise is to ask how many other organizations could also make that statement.

What organization doesn't strive to improve customers' livesor provide innovative

and quality products, or achieve strong financial growth? When a goal can apply to

any organization, it's not a strategy. You can uncover a more precise strategy by

getting below the vision statements.We can see this using an example of

competing commercial aircraft manufacturers Boeing and Airbus.Imagine you're

crafting a strategy as a leader at Boeing or Airbus. As a general vision statement,

both Boeing and Airbus would say they provide innovative aircraftfor safe,

economical, fun, and environmentally conscious travel. Yet they approach these

visions differently.Uncovering those differences reveals the true strategy.Airbus

decided to compete with the A380, the largest-capacity aircraft ever built. Boeing

decided to compete with the 787, a smaller and lighter aircraft with a much longer

flight range. Boeing's strategic choice allowed Airbus to win on size, while Airbus'

strategic choice allowed Boeing to win on range. Such strategic clarity provides far

better information to build a human resource strategy. How do you go from generic

vision statements to strategic clarity? Three questions clarify a strategy. Let's

apply them to Boeing and Airbus. The first question is: What unique competitive

position do we want to achieve? Boeing aimed to be unique with longer range and

more economical operation, while Airbus aimed to be unique with larger passenger

capacity. A strong strategy defines the dimensions on which your organization

must win, but also the dimensions where you let your competitors win. The second

question is: What makes our advantages hard to copy? It does little good to have
unique features that your competitors can easily copy. Boeing and Airbus both

protect their advantages with patents. Their competitors' engineers can literally fly

as passengers in their aircraft and see every feature of the plane. So it's vital that

they protect the rights to those features. The third question is: How do we generate

returns from our unique competitive features? Having unique and protectable

features is good, but they must attract customers and revenue and not cost too

much to produce. Boeing and Airbus invested heavily in unique marketing

relationships with airlines, supplier networks, and collaboration with regulators.

That allowed each of them to attract capital and revenue based on their unique

competitive position. When a strategy is only a vision statement, it's too generic to

support a precise HR strategy. Answering these three questions will uncover the

unique and pivotal strategic elements.Those elements are the foundation of

stronger HR strategies, more precise human resource investments,and workers

and leaders who know their pivotal strategic roles. Get a copy of your

organization's annual report or the transcript of a recent investor briefing. Use the

three questions to find examples where your leaders are sharing vision statements

versus where they're being very precise about the answers to the three questions.

You'll come away with a much better understanding about the unique strategy of

your organization.

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Map strategic differentiation

- Every company wants to know, what makes us special?You can use this simple

question to wield a powerful strategic tool, the differentiator map. Let's see if we

can be a little more precise. Start with this question, what is the unique winning

position that you want to achieve?To answer that, you need to describe the

dimensions that are pivotal to your strategic success. Then, map your target

position on those dimensions. That kind of differentiator map is one key to creating
an HR strategythat targets where your people are pivotal. How can you create a

strategic differentiator map? Let's build one for a Disney theme park. Both Disney

and Cedar Point would say, "we're unique". But precisely how and why are they

different? Sometimes, it's as easy as just entering the theme park. Imagine you

enter a Six Flagsor a Cedar Point theme park. What do you see, hear, and feel? You

see towering structures with coaster carshurdling through space at frightening

speed. You hear the terrified screams of the park guests. You feel an earthshaking

rumble. Now imagine you stepped into Disneyland and you saw, heard, and felt

those things.You'd run for the exits, because something would be very wrong. What

should it be like when you enter Disneyland? You should hear magical songs and

the squeals of delight as children encounter their beloved characters. You can use

a differentiator map to capture this in a very useful way. To draw the map, you start

by describing each dimension that defines your strategic success in areas such as

customer experience, market value, or social contribution. For theme parks, you

might list things like characters, storytelling, songs, and thrills.Then, for each

dimension you described, define what it means to be high and low. The dimension

of characters might range from a low of not memorable nor loved to a high of

memorable and well-loved. The dimension of storytelling might range from a low

of not very engaging stories to captivating stories. The dimension of songs might

range from a low of not very catchy to very catchy and engaging. The dimension

of thrills might range from a low of a little adrenaline to lots of adrenaline. Now

that you have your map defined, you place your organization and your competitors

on each dimension. You would map Disney as memorable, lovedon the dimension

of characters, captivating on the dimension of story, and very catchy on the

dimension of songs. However, you would map Disney as little adrenaline on the

dimension of thrills. When you map Cedar Point, their position would be almost the

opposite. Both strategies are correct, because Disney wins by creating fantasy and

Cedar Point wins by creating thrills. Can you see how the differentiator mapmakes
this more precise by showing exactly how each of them competes? You can even

use a differentiator map to explore how your competitive market is changing.

Suppose you were a Disney leader and you felt that the dimension of digital

experience was important because theme parks are starting to compete with video

games. You would add the dimension of digital experience. What's its range? It

would range from a low of fully analog to a high of fully-integrated with the Cloud

and personal devices. Then, you would add augmented reality games as a

competitor. You map augmented reality games on the map using all of the

dimensions. Now, you and other Disney leaders can see more precisely how

improving the digital experience is pivotal to strategic success. Your leaders will

often describe strategy by listing only their strategic advantages, the dimensions

where they're ahead of competitors. That's a mistake, because strategy also

requires deciding where you allow competitors to win,as well as where you will win.

If you consider only your strengths, you can miss where your competitors are

catching up or moving ahead. A good question to help you avoid listing only

strengths is to ask, how would our competitors draw the differentiator map to show

how they will win against us? A good differentiator map describes strategic

success more precisely and that lets you be clearer about where investments in

people, talent, and the organization have the greatest impact on the most pivotal

strategic differentiators. Here's how you can draw your own differentiator map.

Choose one competitor of your organization. Identify two features where there's a

pivotal difference between you and them. Map yourself and your competitor on

those two features. Be careful. It'll be tempting to draw the map to show how

strong you are. If you do, you'll overlookimportant threats and opportunities. You'll

gain some powerful insights into what it means for you to be special.

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The bottleneck is pivotal

- You use strategy to make choices so you can invest your resources where they

have the greatest impact: at the pivot points. Pivot points are where an

improvementmakes the largest difference in strategic success. How do you find

strategic pivot points? One way is to look for the bottlenecks. You know what a

bottleneck is. It's the shape of a beverage bottle with a wide bottom area and a

thinner, tapered neck at the top. Why is the neck thinner? The thin, tapered neck

allows you to more easily drink from the bottle because it's a constraint on the flow

of liquid from the bottom to the top. This bottleneck idea has helped humans

identify pivot points for thousands of years. Imagine you're in Ancient Rome and

you need to move water from one place to another for irrigation and drinking. They

invented aqueducts with water flowing through a series of ditches, canals, and

tunnels. Each segment of the aqueduct has its own width, depth, and flow capacity.

First aqueducts were simply tile-covered ditches around 1900 years B.C., but by

the year 700 B.C., water flowed in a canal that could cross a 280-foot bridge. What

if you wanted to increase by 10% the amount of water that flows from the end of

the aqueduct? You might walk the entire length of the aqueduct system and

painstakingly increase the flow capacity of every segment by 10%. That would

certainly work, but it's a very wasteful approach. The wider and deeper segments

already had sufficient capacity to carry 10% more. They were not limiting the flow.

It was the slower, shallower, and thinner segments that are like the bottleneck.

They constrain the flow. What's the most efficient way to increase the flow by 10%?

Increase the capacity only at the bottlenecks. In other words, the bottlenecks are

pivotal to increasing the water flow even though every segment of the aqueduct is

necessary and important. You can apply this idea of bottlenecks and constraints

to all your processes. Think of each of your processes as a set of steps or elements

that work together to change something, like the aqueduct changes water from

being available far away to being available in a more useful location. Another

example is a manufacturing process that changes raw materials into finished

goods, or an innovation process that changes creative ideas into marketable

products and services, or finally, a sales process that changes people who didn't

buy a product into buyers. The goal of the aqueduct is measured as the flow of

water. The goal of other processes might be the flow and quality of ideas,

customers, or finished goods. Or it might be the quality or reliability of ideas or

finished goods. You can describe every process in terms of its goal and then divide

into separate steps or segments. You'll find that some segments are bottlenecks

and some are not. Think of a process in your organization that you know

well.Describe the process by drawing a process map that shows the individual

process steps or segments. Now find the bottleneck by asking: What is the process

step or segment where improvement would make the largest difference in the goal

of this process?

Find the bottleneck in a process

- A strong HR strategy, helps you make better investments in people. That means,

you can target your people investments to the strategic pivot points, where those

investments have the largest impact on your strategic success. How do you find

those strategic pivot points? One way is to look for the bottlenecks or constraints

in your organizational processes. Once you find a bottleneck in your processes,

you can figure out how people can improve the bottleneck. Imagine you're a leader

in the division that runs Disney theme parks,such as Disneyland and Disney World.

How could you find the vital constraint that would make the biggest impact on your

strategy? You would start by imagining the guest experience as a series of process

steps that lead to a key strategic outcome. The strategic outcome at a Disney

theme park is to create a magical guest experience. You can think of the park

experience as a limited number of minutes during which Disney's strategic goal is

to create maximum magic, surprise, and delight for the park guests. You would
start by imagining the guest experience as a series of process steps that lead to a

key strategic outcome. The strategic outcome at a Disney theme park is to create

a magical guest experience. You can think of the park experienceas a limited

number of minutes during which Disney's strategy goal is to create maximum

magic, surprise, and delight for the park guests. The steps in that process might

look like this. Step one, arrive at the Disney resort.Step two, check in and go to your

room at the hotel.Step three, ride the transport to the park. Step four, wait in line

for the rides and attractions. Step five, experience the rides and attractions. And

step six, experience the characters. Step seven, dine at the restaurants. Now that

you've identified the process steps, you need to decide which step is the strategic

bottleneck? A common mistake is to try to find the strategic bottleneck by asking

which steps in this process are important to creating a magical guest experience?

Of course the answer would be, all the steps are important. That isn't much help,

you'd end up making equal people investments across all the process steps, which

isn't very strategic. A better way to identify the pivot points or bottlenecks is to ask

this question. Where would improving a process step make the largest impact on

the guest experience? Let's see why that question, gives you a better answer. The

fact is, that many of the steps are already very strong contributors to a magical

guest experience. Disney has world-class hotels, transportation, rides, characters,

and restaurants. They are important but when you ask whether improving them

would make a big difference, you realize that it wouldn't. They're already good

enough. Look again at the process steps. What is the one that if you improved it,

would most enhance the magical experience? Waiting in line. Reducing waiting in

line or making it more magical will impact guest experience more than improving

other process steps. That's why the process step of waiting in line, is the bottleneck

or constraint.Now you know where to look for your pivotal talent,work, people, and

organization elements. They'll be the ones that reduce or improve waiting in line.

Does focusing on the bottleneck mean that you stop investing in non-pivotal
process steps? Not at all. You must continue to maintain those non-pivotal

elementsso they don't get worse and become bottlenecks themselves. When you

understand the differencebetween constrained and unconstrained process

steps,you can tailor your people investments more precisely.You're not trapped in

the idea that everything is important so we'll just invest equally across the

board.You may have guessed that analyzing bottlenecks also helps you shift your

strategic investments when your strategy or market conditions change. In the

example of Disney, once you improve waiting in line to high standard, then other

parts of the process may become bottlenecks. You can then shift your investments

to improving those new bottlenecks. Though it's a simple idea, finding the

bottlenecks is a powerful way to make your HR strategy more precise and to

increase its impact. Let's draw a process map for one of your strategic outcomes.

What are the steps that lead to that outcome? Which of those steps is a

bottleneck? You'll find that the bottleneck is where improving quality and

performance would make the largest strategic impact.

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What makes sweepers pivotal?

- What if I asked your leaders to name the most strategic talent in your

organization? Most leaders would answer the question using very simple

associations. If they're trying to increase sales, they would say the strategic talent

must be the salesforce. If they're trying to increase product innovation, they would

say the strategic talent must be the product developers. Salespeople and product

developers are certainly important, but is it always true that improving their

performance has the most impact? Usually the true strategic roles are not so

obvious. What if you made strategic talent investments with the same rigor as you

invest money? How do you and your leaders decidewhere to invest money in the

business? Do you automatically invest more money in the largest division or the
one with the most sales? No, you consider the return on investment. A small

division with a fast-growing product should get a larger investment than a big

established division if the return is higher. When you invest money you ask this

question. Where would increasing our investment have the largest impact on our

organizational goals? That way you focus on what's pivotal. What if you analyzed

strategic talent like that?Let's use the example of a Disney theme park. The vital

organizational goal at Disney is to create a magical experience for guests. Let's

invest in talent like we'd invest money. Start with the question of what's

pivotal.What has the largest impact on the park guest experience? The hassle of

waiting in line detracts from all of the other park experiences. Improving waiting in

line by reducing lines or making waiting more magicalwould have the largest

pivotal impact on guest experience. Now, what jobs are pivotal to improving

waiting in line? It's the jobs that reduce lines or make waiting more fun. The obvious

answer might seem to be the Disney characters, but if you analyze what's

pivotalyou get a different answer. So who is it? In one year I heard the same story

from five different friends after they visited Disneyland. They said, "I can't believe

the amazing "and unique park sweeper we met. "We were waiting for the Disney

parade "in the middle of the day."It was a hot day, and our young child "was sitting

on the curb "near the hot asphalt of Main Street. "Our child was throwing a tantrum,

embarrassing us, "and disturbing everyone around us. "A park sweeper came

along, "cleaning the street before the parade. "The sweeper stopped, noticed our

screaming child, "and said, 'Your child seems a little uncomfortable. "'Please follow

me and I can help.' "The sweeper led our family to a shady spot "and made our child

laugh. "We got to watch the parade more comfortably, "and those other park guests

"got relief from our screaming child." Each of my friends said this was a one-in-a-

million experience, and the experience they would most remember and talk about.

Was this a random and unique experience? No, Disney knows that waiting in line is

pivotal, so they invest to make sweepers capable, motivated, and available to

create just such experiences.Who are the sweepers in your organization? The trick

is not to jump to the most obvious jobs like the Disney characters. Like sweepers,

the pivotal jobs are often less obvious, but investing in them creates a bigger

return.

Return on improved performance

- What is the most pivotal job in a Disney theme park?Most people think of

characters like Mickey Mouse and the Disney Princesses. These characters are

certainly important to the magical Disney experience. So if you were a Disney

leader, should you identify the best Mickey and give that person a big bonus?

Should you encourage your Mickeys to be as creative as possible in customer

service? It turns out that's actually not the best talent strategy. That's because

important jobs, like Mickey Mouse, are not always the most pivotal jobs.Pivotal

jobs are the ones where investing in improved performance has the greatest

impact. Do you remember the story about the Disney sweepers who create pivotal

impact when they stop sweeping and help park guests find shady spots to view the

parade? If Disney park sweepers are more pivotal, maybe Disney should invest

more in sweeper performance improvement. Does it really pay off to invest in

making Mickey Mouse more customer-friendly? Their work is in a costume, never

seen. They never speak to guests and follow a rigid schedule. Why is the Mickey

job so rigidly controlled?It's not that Mickey isn't important. In fact, the job of

Mickey Mouse is too important to take risks. Mickey Mouse must be exactly where

scheduled, doing exactly what is expected every minute of the day. If the Mickeys

were allowed to spontaneously stop and help guests with screaming children,

Mickey would be late to the Meet Mickey Photo Opportunity. Or guests might see

two Mickeys in the same place, violating the illusion of just one Mickey. The job of
Mickey Mouse is very important, but performance is carefully controlled to meet a

very high standard, like a pilot on a commercial airline. So there's actually zero

difference in valuebetween good performance, meeting the standard, and great

performance, being very creative. Mistakes by Mickey are very costly, so the pivotal

value of performance is to prevent mistakes. The last thing Disney wants is for

Mickeys to compete to show who is best by innovating. A good way to apply this

idea to the jobs in your organization is to draw a return on improved performance,

or ROIP, curve, like you see in this diagram. An ROIP curve shows low to high

performance on the horizontal axis and low to high value on the vertical axis. If you

drew this for the Mickey Mouse job, the curve slopes downward steeply on the left.

That's because very low performance, such as making mistakes, is very costly. In

the middle, is standard performance. That's very valuable. Moving to the right, the

curve levels off because higher-than-standard performance is not more valuable

than standard performance. Now, if you drew the sweeper ROIP curve, it looks very

different. It's a straight line sloping upward. That's because higher performance for

sweepers has increasing value. In our example, the sweepers who have good

performance, in the middle, produce moderate value. However, the sweepers that

go beyond standard performance by helping guests produce greater value. In the

graph, notice that the value of even the best-performing sweeper is not as high as

the moderate-performing Mickey. That's because the Mickey Mouse job is so

important.However, improving sweeper performance from good to great has

greater impact. Try drawing an ROIP curvefor some jobs in your organization. Can

you find some jobs with a flatter curve, like Mickey Mouse? Jobs like accountants

and airline pilots are like this, important but not pivotal to improve performance.

Can you find some jobs like sweeper that are often overlooked but where the ROIP

curve slopes upward because improving performance has a very large impact?

Pivotal talent attributes

- What if I asked your leaders, where should you improve employee capability?

Often they say, "I need the most capable workers "in every position." Such generic

goals lead to generic investments, such as increase worker competencies or

create a high-performance culture. But, is every increase in competencies or

culture improvement equally pivotal?How do you build the ones that are most

pivotal? A Disney theme park's pivotal strategic goal is creating magical guest

experiences. A pivotal talent pool are the park sweepers, not for their cleaning, but

for their guest interactions. Sweepers create magic when they stop sweeping and

help guests navigate the park, or even when they entertain by using a mop to draw

the face of Mickey Mouse on a sidewalk. If you know that this is the pivotal thing

that sweepers do, you can better focus on the characteristics of the sweepers that

are pivotal to those particular actions. There are four questions that can help you

in identifying key categories of talent characteristics. First is culture. What are the

guiding principles, such as values, beliefs, norms and unwritten rules? Second,

capability. Can the worker do what's pivotal? Or the characteristics that enable

pivotal actions. Third, opportunity. Does the worker get the chance to do it? Or the

situations that allow pivotal actions. And fourth, motivation. Does the worker want

to do it? Or the desire to take pivotal actions. How do these four questions apply

to Disney park sweepers who help guests? Disney culture says customers are

guestsand everyone is an entertainer. For capability, Disney sweepers must have

service skills and know key information about the park such as where the shady

spots are. For opportunity, Disney sweepers must be located where guests

congregate, and they must be given discretion to stop sweeping and help guests.

For motivation, Disney sweepers must have a desire to be helpful, and a passion

for creating delightful encounters.Imagine I had asked you to tell me the pivotal

characteristics in Disney sweepers. You would probably make a long list of things

like knowledge about cleaning, attention to detail, and motivation to clean

thoroughly. It turns out that these may be important,but improving them will not
pay off as strongly as building the characteristics we just described. Focusing on

what's pivotal helps you build the precise worker capabilities that have the greatest

impact. Choose a job in your organization. Identify what is the most pivotal thing

that workers in that job do. Now, describe the specific culture, capability,

opportunity and motivation elements that would most improve that pivotal

performance.

Pivotal HR deliverables

- How is the HR strategy in your organization described? Often, it is only a long list

of HR programs,like performance-based rewards, on-demand training,rigorous

selection and leadership development.Typically, HR's performance is measured

only by how such programs work. If we trained employees, did they learn? If we

give recruits a knowledge test, are new hires more knowledgeable? If we give

employees a bonus, do they try harder. A better HR strategy would target HR

programs where they have the greatest impact. The vital question is, where does

better training, better recruitment, and bigger bonuses have the biggest impact?

This question focuses on what's pivotal. That's the key to creating more strategic

and pivotal HR programs and practices. Do you remember the story about the

Disney sweepers who create pivotal impact when they stop sweeping and help

park guests find shady spots to view the parade? The pivotal HR programs will be

the ones that improve sweepers helping guests. What might those programs be?

Here are a few examples. Reward and recognition programs would include higher

bonuses for sweepers who gethigh guest ratings or testimonials. Training and

development programs would include classes on service skills and tests to ensure

masterful knowledge of the park attractions, retail stores, and even

restrooms.Staffing programs would include recruiting sweepersfrom top-tier

service organizations, comedy clubs, and acting classes, and selection tests that

simulate difficult customer interactions. Focusing HR programs where they are

pivotal creates greater strategic impact than spreading HR programs like peanut

butter by offering similar programs and practices to all employees. Choose a job

in your organization. Identify what is the most pivotal thing that workers in that job

do? Now, devise a specific HR program, such as rewards, training, or staffing, that

would improve that pivotal performance.

Strategic HR budget

- If you want to make strategic HR investments, it might seem logical to start with

the HR budget. Many leaders carefully analyze how HR spends money and the cost

of HR programs with questions like, how many programs and activities does HR

deliver for every dollar spent? Or, how can HR deliver more programs to more

employees at the same cost? It's often possible to save thousands of dollars with

lower cost HR programs. In fact, most organizations probably spend too little on

pivotal talentbecause they fixate on budget cuts. But don't confuse an HR budget

with an HR strategy. Saving money on less expensive HR programs may be short-

sighted if they reduce the quality of talent with the greatest impact. Spending more

money on HR programs is prudent if the extra cost produces greater strategic

payoff. It's just like strategic investments of money and technology. A strategic HR

budget spends more where they payoff is higher, and less where the payoff is

less.You can create a more strategic HR budget. To do that, you must target your

HR spending according to the way different talent creates different strategic

payoffs. Recall our example of the Disney theme park, where the pivotal strategic

goal is to create magical guest experiences. A pivotal talent pool is the park

sweepers,not only for their cleaning, but also for their spontaneous interactions

with guests, where they answer questions, tell jokes, or entertain. So the HR

programs, like rewards, staffing, and training, should be tailored to these behaviors.

To fund those programs, a strategic HR budget for Disney park sweepers would

include extra money for bonuses to sweepers who achieve high guest ratings or
testimonials. 10% increase in training budget for classes on sweeper service skills.

A $50,000 contract with a vendor to use tests of knowledge about the park

attractions, retail stores, and guest services. Salary and expenses for three new

recruiters, to visit top tier service organizations, comedy clubs, and acting classes

to find sweeper candidates.These budget items actually increase HR

spending.Without a clear connection to HR strategy, they would be tempting

targets for budget cuts. Now, the clear connection to pivotal talent makes their

payoff clearand spending the money is worth it. Think about the last time you

presented or received an HR budget. Were you tempted to meet a crucial cost-

cutting goal with an across-the-board cut? Now, find one way to allocate the budget

better, so that it optimizes your strategy by spending more where the payoff is

highest, and less where the payoff is less.

Pitfalls of benchmarking as HR strategy

- Are you trying to benchmark your way to an HR strategy? A benchmark was

originally a chiseled cut in a stone structure creating a bench for a leveling rod.

That way, level was measured the same every time. In business, benchmarks let

you see what other organizations do and compare your organization to them. For

example, in marketing, a benchmark might compare you and another organization

on the percentof your advertising budget you spend online. That's useful

information but you wouldn't just allocate your advertising budget to match your

competitor. You know that your unique strategic payoff from online advertising

might justify spending more or less than your competitors. In HR, typical

benchmarks compare things like cost per hire or training days per employee.Unlike

marketing, when it comes to HR, leaders are tempted to match the benchmark.

Particularly when the benchmark is from an admired organization, the logic is that

organization is very successful, so let's do HR the way they do HR. An HR strategy

based on matching benchmarks has two flaws. First, HR investments often

produce different value in different organizations.Second, HR benchmarks usually

reflect only HR efficiency, what HR spends on its programs. We can see the danger

of relying too heavily on HR benchmarks by using our Disney sweeper example.

Disney's pivotal strategic goal is to create magical guest experiences, so Disney's

park sweepers are pivotal for entertaining and helping guests. This is very different

from how sweeperscreate value in most other organizations. If you are a Disney

leader, what happens if you benchmark HR against other companies that also

employ sweepers?You would find that Disney sweepers have a much higher cost

per hire, cost per trainee, and total reward cost per employee than those other

organizations. If Disney reduced its ratios to the benchmark, you would save

thousands of dollars per year. That's exactly the wrong decision for Disney. Disney

sweepers are pivotal to the guest experience, so there is a high payoff from

Disney's higher cost, selection, training, and pay. Other organizations may employ

sweepers only as cleanerswho never see guests or customers. Matching the

benchmark would reduce Disney's unique strategic payoff from its sweepers.

Suppose you're a leader at Disney and you want to attract the best sweepers in the

industry. If other companies create their HR strategy by matching a low-cost

benchmark, meaning they will pay less and train less, if you pay and train above the

benchmark, it actually makes it easier for you to attractthe best sweepers for your

organization. Matching benchmarks is tempting, but blindly matching benchmarks

could put you at a competitive disadvantage. Do your HR scorecards include

industryor competitor benchmarks? Do you find it tempting to match such

benchmarks? That's usually because the unique payoff from your HR investments

is unclear.Before you rush to match others, try to identify the talent and

organization pivot points where you'd be different from the benchmark, where your

talent creates uniquely pivotal strategic value.

A strategic question guide

- You create great strategy by asking great questions.Your HR strategies must

avoid jumping too quickly to answers in the form of HR programs and

practices.Instead, you must have the courage and the tools to ask the questions

that will reveal how your talent uniquely builds your strategic success. You can use

the HC BRidge Framework as a question guide by breaking HR strategy into three

integrated elements. Impact, effectiveness and efficiency. Each element poses a

key question. Impact asks what pivotal talent and organization performance has

the biggest effect on sustainable strategic success? Effectiveness asks, what

pivotal HR programs have the biggest effect on talentand organization

performance? Efficiency asks, what pivotal HR investments have the biggest effect

on HR programs? You use these questions differentlydepending on the situation.

If you are creating a new strategy, you ask the questions in the order from the top

down. Impact, then effectiveness, then efficiency.The impact question identifies

your pivotal organization and talent segments. Then the effectiveness

questionidentifies your pivotal human resource programs and practices to

enhance those segments. Finally, the efficiency question identifies the pivotal HR

resource investments to make your HR practices happen. If your executing an

existing strategy, you use the questions in the order from the bottom up. Efficiency,

then effectiveness, then impact. The efficiency question reveals how you make HR

investments that produce programs and practices. Then the effectiveness

questionshows how your HR programs and practices improve your organization

and talent. Finally, the impact question shows how well the organization and talent

improvements enhance your sustainable strategic success. Sometimes, you're

analyzing just one part of a strategy, like one pivotal process bottleneck. In those

cases, you can even start in the middle using the effectiveness questions to

identify the talent that is pivotal to expanding the bottleneck and the HR programs
that would enhance that talent. The HC BRidge Framework can flex to fit your

situation. Think of a strategic issue facing your organization or business unit. Are

you designing a new strategy? Executing an existing strategy? Or dealing with a

specific process bottleneck? Practice applying the framework top down,bottom up

and starting in the middle. By staying flexible, you'll find that the framework reveals

more insights.

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Strategy energy and rebalancing

- Organizations usually have a particular energy that drives their strategy

processes. See if one of these three energy descriptions fits your organization.

Some organizations spend most of their time and energy on the numbers that

describe how resources are used and budgeted. Other organizations might spend

most of their time and energy devising ways to deliver and improve products and

services. Finally, some organizations spend most of their time and

energyexamining their ultimate strategic purpose. Did one seem to fit your

organization better? Understanding your strategy energy can be a powerful tool to

reveal patterns and biases that you can correct. There is no one correct strategy

energy. Good strategy processes use all of them in the right balance. When a

strategy fails, it can be because one energy profile is too dominant while others are

overlooked. These three energy profiles correspond to the three elements of the

HC Bridge Framework. Impact, effectiveness and efficiency. Impact asks what

pivotal talent and organization performance has the biggest effect on sustainable

strategic success? Effectiveness asks what pivotal HR program has the biggest

effect on talent and organization performance? And efficiency asks what pivotal

HR investments have the biggest effect on HR programs? You can use these

questions to map the HR strategy energy of your organization or unit. You do that
by analyzing your strategy processes, what documents and information receive the

greatest attention, what organization functions lead the strategy process, what

elements get the most discussion and analysis, and what do the HR strategy

presentations emphasize? If you do this, you will often find that one of the three

questions gets much greater emphasis and your strategy energy maybe out of

balance. When your strategy focuses exclusively on HR budgets, benchmarks and

resources used, you may have overbalanced on an efficiency energy. To rebalance

it, you can ask, how do these programs affect workers' capability, motivation and

opportunity? That question shifts the energy from efficiency to effectiveness.

When you're strategy focuses exclusively on HR programs and their quality,

innovation and user satisfaction, your may have overbalanced on an effectiveness

energy. To rebalance it, you can ask questions about how those programs improve

the worker performance that most impacts business outcomes. That question

shifts the energy from effectiveness to impact. Finally, when your strategy focuses

exclusively on organization goals, such as customer satisfaction, share price,

product quality and innovation, you may have overbalanced on an impact energy.

To rebalance it, you can ask questions about what talent performance is pivotal to

those outcomes and how HR programs enhance that pivotal performance. That

question connects impact to effectiveness. The energy of your HR strategy is very

powerful but often invisible. It creates unconscious patterns that get baked into all

your HR strategy discussions, measures and processes. You can use the

framework of impact, effectiveness and efficiency as a language to balance the

energy of your HR strategy.Think about your own HR strategy and identify one way

that it may overemphasize efficiency, effectiveness or impact. What questions can

you ask that would rebalance the energy?

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HR measurement and analytics

- Do your leaders say, our people are our greatest asset? Virtually every leader does.

And then, they ask for lots of numbers to analyze their most important asset, their

people. But how do you make sense of all those numbers and use them to really

have an impact? Today your HR systems generate more numbers than

ever.Employee performance is tracked at work stations,social media and email is

analyzed into technology gapsand social networks reveal the true organization

influencers. Google created predictive analytics that tell a manager an employee's

risk of leaving, sometimes even before the employee themselves realize they might

want to leave. Yet, leaders usually find HR numbers, much harder to use than

numbers about money, technology, and customers. That's because leaders don't

have a logical framework for HR numbers that connects HR investments to

strategy outcomes. The HC BRidge Framework of efficiency, effectiveness, and

impact can help you build the logical story line that uses HR measures to tell your

HR strategy story. You probably don't need more numbers. You need better logic

to connect the numbers you already have. Recall the three HC BRidge questions.

Impact asks, what pivotal talent and organization performance has the biggest

effect on sustainable strategic success?Effectiveness asks, what pivotal HR

policies and practices have the biggest effect on talent and organization

performance? And efficiency asks, what pivotal HR investments have the biggest

effect on policies and practices? Now, let's fit your HR and strategy measures into

the framework. Impact numbers measure sustainable strategic success such as

revenue growth and profit margin. Impact also measures the pivotal processes,

such as product development rates, brand awareness, production speed, and

quality.Effectiveness numbers measure the actions of pivotal talent pools such as

hours of customer contact, use of production and safety procedures, and

collaboration between organizational units. Effectiveness also measures the

pivotal worker attributes, such as skills, engagement, and satisfaction that enable

those aligned actions. Finally, efficiency numbers measure the resources that HR

uses to produce those programs such as cost per hire, time to train, bonus budgets,

and the cost to build and maintain HR learning and information platforms.

Efficiency also measures the use of those programs, such as training hours

delivered, recruitment interviews, and visits to the online HR learning platforms.

You're probably realizing that you already calculate many of these numbers in your

organization.They are probably in separate systems, such as financial reporting,

enterprise resources, or HR scorecards. Using the HC BRidge Framework of

efficiency, effectiveness, and impact, shows you how to combine them to show

how HR investments connect with strategic success. It's easy to be overwhelmed

the sheer quantity and variety of numbers related to your people assets. Make a

list of the kinds of measures that are available in your organization's systems.

Then, use the efficiency,effectiveness, and impact definitions to group the

numbers into each category. You'll start to see how the measures connect to tell

the story about your HR investments, and their strategic effects.