Measuring What Matters The difference between being good and being great is not so significant it terms of what companies do, but is significant in what returns are produced as a result. So how do companies know what makes the difference? Simply - Metrics! Knowing what to measure and when to measure and then what strategy is required produces the results. Identifying the clear measures of success and performance metrics specific to the company and industry support the productivity gains that McKinsey states are possible. The art of business is simply – make a good product or service – keep costs to a minimum and manage your assets wisely. In days gone past, the assets were plant and materials as indicated directly from the Profit and Loss Statement. We are no longer in the manufacturing era, but the strategy of business management still is. We are treating employees with the mentality of manufacturing rather than what we have moved into – the information age! In the information age, plant and materials really have turned into people and knowledge, but somehow this never got to the P&L. Human Resource professionals can not be the ‘admin slaves’ from that bygone past! We now have 25% of the workforce involved with the information age or the other coined term – we now have the ‘knowledge worker’. The role of the HR professional now needs to change to the ‘gate keepers’ of the corporate knowledge. The asset of the business has clearly shifted from the widget to the neuron. We must manage the knowledge of our employees or someone else will. Far too many companies pay for the training and development of their competition’s next key employee. The measurements of the past were all based around production times, delays and material costs; metrics for the information age need to be centered on - cost of hire, voluntary separation, absenteeism, revenue per employee, profit per employee and human capital ROI. The executive team need to take HR seriously and make them a part of the strategy of the business as they are the link to the organizations’ biggest asset and potentially biggest cost – the knowledge worker! Metric Matters provides the tools to measure the people, productivity and profit within an organization of any size.