Investing in What Matters: Linking Employees to Business Outcomes

Preface

Over our careers, we have both held positions as HR/strategy/line-of-business leaders in large and small organizations. We have also worked for many years as external consultants to all types of industries. One common barrier that we see almost daily is the HR skeptic — the individual who does not see the value that we as HR practitioners provide to the organization. The HR skeptic appears in many forms — the senior leader who does not see the value in Human Resources, or the front-line manager who sees Human Resources as a barrier to getting things done. Some will tell you what they think; some will not. We also know that, at some point in your career, you have experienced (or are currently experiencing) the HR skeptic.

In order to gain credibility with these skeptics, it is important to link what we do to business priorities. We know that there are data that exist across any organization, and the ability to pull that data together, make sense of it, and connect it to business outcomes is the key to that credibility. HR leaders and consultants must show that what they do has a direct impact on business outcomes. Forget the phrase seat at the table. We need to get into the minds of leaders at all levels and have them constantly thinking that the HR function is a key weapon to help them achieve their goals.

There are many leaders who are not HR skeptics and believe in what Human Resources does because it makes sense and it is the right thing to do. They will not need to be won over. But, imagine showing them how the things that you do are driving what they are focused on — and just how much impact you are having. Then think about creating an HR strategic plan that focuses on your accountabilities to reach business goals that are beyond just meeting HR metrics. Those folks who already believed in you will become full-blown advocates. Yes, and the skeptics will be on-board too.

This book presents a practical process, which will provide HR leaders, at all levels, what is needed to discover the drivers of business outcomes and show impact and return. Our argument is that by following a systematic process of statistically linking employee data to business-outcome data, HR leaders can create a more effective strategy. The investments made by Human Resources will mirror other capital investments that are made based on analytics and data. This will help attain buy-in from all leaders. By using an approach based on sound analytics (what we call the Business Partner RoadMap™), Human Resources will be able to show its impact and value to the organization’s leaders.

Investing in What Matters draws upon years of organizational experience to provide a practical approach of discovering drivers of business outcomes to create and execute effective organization-wide HR strategies. The process is based on our work linking employee data to business outcomes, as well as strong research in psychology, organizational behavior, and statistics. This book provides a precise process to gain buy-in from both senior and front-line leaders, while using analytics to bring together multiple pieces of data from various functions within the organization.

Throughout the chapters in the book, we will introduce 10 principles that have guided us in our work with organizations applying this process. Some of the principles are hard-learned lessons, some are a warning to HR leaders, still others are words of wisdom that we think will move HR in a better direction. The principles are not distributed equally throughout the chapters and some are even mentioned more than once — whenever they are relevant. The goal is to provide some thought-provoking takeaways for the reader.

Business leaders are looking for their HR partners to provide them with advice, tools, and actionable initiatives that will help them secure a competitive advantage in the marketplace. It is our mission to make Investing in What Matters the resource-of-choice for HR leaders to discover those invisible levers that will lead to competitive advantages.

SECTION I

Setting the Course

Transforming anything is never easy, let alone transforming an entire function within an organization. Having a strong and proven process will make this journey seamless and lasting. In this first section, we have many goals, but they are all centered on placing the groundwork of the process that we continually use, with great success, to transform HR functions from cost centers to strategic partners. Further, we will discuss the challenges that organizations currently face and how Human Resources can step up and become a stronger business partner for them. We will also explore a case study that gives you an inside look at how to apply our Business Partner RoadMap™ process within your organization, so that your impact will be immediate and be focused on key business outcomes.

CHAPTER 1

The Invisible Lever™

Our people are our greatest asset. Countless CEOs have uttered this phrase, and some have even made it their corporate slogan. If someone tells you that employees are critical to an organization’s success, you will most likely nod your head in agreement. It’s hard to argue against this notion because it just seems logical. Every organization employs people, and, if no one showed up for work on Monday, not much would get done. So, when someone describes studies that have scientifically demonstrated the link between employee attitudes, employee behaviors, and productivity, you will probably nod your head in agreement again. The notion that people are valuable to organizations just seems to be common sense. Likewise, the notion that satisfied employees are more productive also seems to be just pure common sense.

Figure 1.1 Assumed Progression of Attitudes, Behaviors, and Outcomes

So, why is it that organizations think about investments in people differently than investments in process improvements, machinery, technology, new sales channels, or even marketing? The answer is fairly simple. When a senior executive invests $10 million in developing a new online sales channel, he or she can easily see, touch, feel, and measure the results of that investment. He or she can monitor the new sales from that channel, surf the new web site, and visualize customers navigating the new channel. This direct connection to something real and valuable to the organization makes pulling the trigger on a significant investment much easier. On the other hand, investing $10 million in work/life balance programs for existing sales associates appears far less tangible. Such an investment will make them happier and might even retain a few of them likely to leave, but it probably won’t significantly impact the Profit & Loss (P&L) statement. But how can you know without proving the value? The bottom line is that the direct impact of investments in people on critical business outcomes is much less tangible — or so it seems.

Principle 1: Organizations already spend significant amounts of money on people … they just don’t spend it on the right things.

The reality is that organizations already spend significant money on employees. Take a look at your organization’s annual report. What percentage of expenses are salary and benefits? We would bet that 50 percent or more are personnel costs. This does not even take into account the HR budget, or the training costs hidden within lines of business budgets. The problem isn’t that senior executives are unwilling to invest in people, it’s that those investments (1) lack data to justify their worth, (2) use the wrong data, or (3) produce unquantifiable returns.

Principle 2: Organizations make investments in people without any data or with the wrong data.

Causal drivers, for the purposes of this book, are defined as the employee data that are analyzed and statistically shown to have a cause-and-effect relationship with important outcomes. What if we told you that discovering the actual, causal drivers of tangible business outcomes really isn’t that difficult? What if we told you that the data for making such discoveries already exist in your organization? In fact, both of these statements are true. Yes, there is the need for statistical knowledge, but, for the most part, the process is fairly straightforward.

Today, the types of analytics required to discover the drivers of tangible business outcomes are frequently used in different settings. For example, market researchers use customer demographics to predict buying behaviors. CFOs do the same thing when they produce financial forecasts or conduct a cost/benefit analysis. These approaches are used because they make an educated, predictive assessment based on facts and data. The goal is to (1) understand the past and to (2) predict the future, basing these assessments on facts and data. Therefore, the idea that employees’ attitudes can be scientifically and rationally related to tangible business outcomes is not ridiculous. In fact, based on our experience with organizations of all sizes, it is quite feasible — and in this age of intense competition, not discovering the causal drivers hidden in your data silos (we call them invisible levers) could be quite dangerous to your business’s long-term viability. (When we use data silos, we are referring specifically to the data that exist in the many functions within organizations and that are rarely shared across functions.)

If we accept that the link between employees’ attitudes and relevant outcomes can be made and quantified (it has — look at the Sears Employee, Customer Profit Chain study in the Harvard Business Review¹), and that we can examine those links to discover specific drivers of the business outcomes, we should consider the following benefits to your organization of making these links:

The money being wasted today on the wrong employee initiatives can be redirected to more beneficial employee initiatives, such as those that impact critical business metrics and outcomes (instead of the latest unquantifiable HR fads that promise to make employees happier, more engaged, and satisfied).

The investments that you decide to make which focus on employees will result in tangible outcomes that benefit shareholders, customers, and employees.

The returns on such investments, via their impact on the top and/or bottom lines, can be tracked, monitored, and quantified.

HR departments can be held accountable for impacting the bottom line the same way business or product leaders are held accountable.

HR executives will become real players at the table and be included in the conversation since they can now quantify their numerous impacts on business outcomes.

Last but not least, employees might just end up being happy.

There are more benefits, but these six alone are compelling enough to encourage you to apply the approach outlined in the following pages. The purpose of this book is to give you the tools to discover the drivers of business outcomes so that the benefits above may be achieved. From this point on, we will often use the term invisible lever to describe these drivers of business outcomes. The term invisible lever comes from that fact that most of the drivers are invisible because they have been dormant and undiscovered amidst the myriad data that exist in your organization. We call these levers because once you discover the drivers, these levers will need to be pulled (applied in the organization) so that they can have a direct impact on the business outcomes.

We will: (1) Define how the connection between employee attitudes/behaviors and desired business outcomes is made; (2) demonstrate the validity of this connection with data from various organizations — small, medium, and large; (3) outline a roadmap to replicate this process in any organization; and (4) provide practical recommendations for senior executives, HR managers, and front-line managers for implementation of this process.

A brief overview of each chapter in the book follows.

The State of Organizations Today

While organizations have evolved substantially in how they view Human Resources and how they acknowledge a workforce’s inherent value to the organization, some significant gaps still remain. Measurement in the HR department has improved, but the inability to quantify the people-drivers of business outcomes continues to plague many organizations. This chapter acknowledges this issue and identifies existing shortcomings. Most importantly, this chapter points organizations towards the next phase of this evolution, using the framework and process described in these pages. Organizations consist of different stakeholder groups with different perspectives and needs. When we talk about taking a systemic view, we are describing an overall organizational perspective typically seen through the eyes of senior executives. This perspective is essential because it sees the organization holistically, without a bias from a single perspective. Thus, when decisions are made regarding the organization, they are in the best interest of the entire organization. Further, applying and aligning people-related initiatives at the systemic level creates a culture working in unison on broad organizational issues. The approach described in this book provides a powerful diagnostic tool for organizations — a way to find systemic solutions for systemic issues and become true business partners. Specifically, HR practitioners will be able to use our process to (1) gain senior leadership buy-in, (2) pull together the key employee and business-outcome data from across numerous functions, (3) analyze the data to discover exactly what aspects of the work environment drive business results, (4) create and execute systemic, data-driven initiatives, (5) properly calculate the expected ROI, and (6) re-measure to refine future initiatives.

Putting the Business Partner RoadMap™ to Work: A Case Study

The Business Partner RoadMap™ is outlined step-by-step in an organization focusing on a key business outcome that is costing them millions of dollars in losses. We get into the details of gaining buy-in and putting the data together to show impact. Initiatives and programs that