Evaluating Human Resource Management

Evaluating Human Resource Management

Demonstrate that HR really does make a difference to organisational effectiveness (justifying our existence)

Find out if HR goals have been achieved and change initiatives have worked (measuring our performance - effectiveness)

Track HR efficiency (doing more for less)

Demonstrate that HR really does make a difference to organisational effectiveness (justifying our existence)

Find out if HR goals have been achieved and change initiatives have worked (measuring our performance - effectiveness)

Track HR efficiency (doing more for less)

That HR achieves its goals in contributing to business strategy, improving labour productivity, labour flexibility, change management, i.e. show HR is effective

HR's contribution to competitive advantage

The development and retention of human capital

That we have created performance cultures

That HR's change initiatives achieved the benefits expected

That HR practices are as cost efficient as possible

Determine who manages the audit (internal v external)

Determine what aspect of HR will be evaluated (the scope of the evaluation, e.g. strategic contribution, an HR function, an HR process, a specific HR practice)

Identify data sources - documents, archival HR and accounting data, interviews, surveys, benchmarking

Determine how the evaluation results will be used and by whom

Note: "HR Audit" term is sometimes used to denote the evaluation of a single HR activity or process which is then compared (benchmarked) to best practice

Best practice benchmarking: looks at what the best firms in your industry are doing and/or compares what is done against research standards

Comparative benchmarking: focuses on HR outcomes rather than HR practices. How does a firm compare relative to external organisations on important metrics; e.g. productivity, turnover, absenteeism and $ training spend

Internal benchmarking: compares valued HR outcome metrics over time in the firm (usually broken down into SBUs within multi-divisional firms and across countries for MNEs)