Ultimate Performance: Measuring Human Resources at Work

Metric Five: Human Resources Time-to-Contact

Follow-up on an employee transfer request is absolutely critical for Human Resources. The cost of not following up on an employee referral is well understood by most Human Resources managers, but sometimes not by the Human Resources staff, the prospective hiring manager, or new entrants. Lack of follow-up hurts the career prospects of an employee, hurts the manager looking to hire, and builds a reputation that the Human Resources department is unresponsive to their constituents. As a Human Resources staff management tool, measuring Time-to-Contact is suggested.

Value. Ensure that Human Resources and hiring managers are getting the simple things right. Are they contacting the employees that have applied for jobs? Is this within the contracted time-to-contact?

Audience. Human Resources staff and hiring managers responsible for contacting employees on internal transfers.

Data elements. Ideally, your applicant management system will allow you to track this, since routed communications are involved. What is needed is the date of initial employee request, the date of Human Resources contact to the employee, and the date of hiring manager response (where applicable). Take this data and average it across a month of internal transfer requests completed to determine the average time-to-contact. Compare this number with the contracted time-to-contact agreed upon by Human Resources members and (ideally) hiring managers.