Futurestep, a global industry leader offering fully customized, flexible strategies to help organizations meet specific workforce needs, released its Global Talent Impact Study recently.

Futurestep commissioned the study of nearly 1,600 human resources professionals in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Brazil, the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Australia and discovered organizations were taking a distinctly short-term approach to recruitment.

"We found that organizations typically value performance above retention and measure the impact of employees within year one. Our view is this is a reaction to recent economic turbulence and ongoing uncertainty, which has created a focus on the needs of organizations today and the role individuals play to deliver upon these," said Byrne Mulrooney, chief executive of Futurestep.

The performance of new hires is seen by recruitment and talent managers globally as the most important measure of a successful recruitment process. When asked to rank seven measures in importance, new hire performance was placed first by nearly half the respondents, followed by retention which claimed only a 15 percent share. This reveals a clear emphasis on immediate impact and the imperative to efficiently fill the role at hand compared to longer term requirements.

Performance of new hires in their first year is seen as critically important - 76 percent of respondents' organizations seek to measure the impact that the new hire has had within year one. About 35 percent of respondents admit that their organizations measure the impact of a new hire before they expect recruits to have made their greatest impact on the business.

Decision quality -avoiding making bad decisions - has edged ahead in the study as the competency most commonly required for new hires to make a significant impact in their first six months. However, if performance measurements place too much focus on avoiding bad decisions, there is a risk of stifling innovation and the ability of organizations to learn from mistakes, according to the study.

More than 60 percent of companies say they undertake formal measurement of the effect new hires have on their business, but only half of those report that the methodology they have in place is widely used in their organization. It would therefore appear that while HR professionals can find the process of defining metrics to be challenging, the greater challenge is encouraging the adoption of those metrics.

Of the human resources managers who report measuring the impact of new hires, 40 percent also question to some extent the value of doing so.

shijing@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 09/20/2012 page15)