systematicHR

The intersection between HR strategy and HR technology

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Cycling Technology: GPS

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Yeah, believe it or not, I have a GPS on my bike.  It’s even a Garmin.  With a push of a button I can go to a screen that either shows me how fast I’m going and what my heart rate is, or I can see a little map with direction arrows and everything.  I can download my ride when I get home and it will google map the whole thing for me.  If I get lost, I have a little function that points the way home (I have never had to use this).

It’s always good to know where you’re going.  I’d say about 1 in 10 riders on the road now have a GPS unit.  (we’re talking racer types, not your average rider).  I’d guess that the stat is about the same for managers in the business.  Maybe even less than 10% have good KPI’s that are presented on their dashboards every day.  Not only do they not know “where they are,” but they don’t know what their organizational turnover rate is and how their employee engagement scores impact it.  They haven’t been trained on how to apply management techniques to create more satisfied employees.  Executives don’t have a good view to see how many of their managers have finished their performance reviews and how that rate impacts the overall development of talent within the organization.

I’m not saying that every cyclist needs GPS, it’s actually just a nice to have on the bike.  But every manager and executive needs to have KPI’s and understand what they mean and how they are applied in the business.

(I have a Garmin 305, but the 705 is cooler)

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3 responses to “Cycling Technology: GPS”

  1. Sean Rehder Avatar

    Amen, brother. Amen.

    Here is a “working man’s” solution to getting some great KPI’s around an ATS that doesn’t really give you what you want when it comes to reporting.

    Most ATS systems deliver basic reports with “lots of records”…like a spreadsheet. Take this report and put it into excel in a tab called “report data.” Then, create a tab called “Metrics.”

    You will have to know a little bit about writing formulas in excel, but if you write formulas in the “Metrics” tab that reference the “report data” tab…you can get some great scorecarding or KPI’s.

    For example, rather than records you see numbers. Meaning, how many people applied to a req…or how many people from a specific state made it through to the hiring manager. Etc…etc…etc.

    Every recuriting leader I have shown this to say one thing, “I want that.” And…its free for anyone that has excel…like the whole world.

    KPI and scorecarding is the first step to creating ROI in your recruiting program.

    Great post Mr. SystematicHR!

  2. systematicHR Avatar

    Thanks Sean. If only recruiting organizations around the world could roll out this type of data in a simplified and common way. I agree that every manager wants to know, but the data is often in the hands of someone else. The trick is a governance structure that forces managers to look at the same type of data in a standardized way.

  3. Keith DeLong Avatar

    I have the Edge 705 and love it – today. When I first got mine last spring, Garmin had just released a buggy software update that caused me to lose data for about 1 in 3 rides. I hated it and realized that almost having data was worse than having no data at all. After about 3 weeks I was ready to give up completely. Of course Garmin came out with a fix and I quickly learned to love all the fitness data I could effortlessly track with the Edge. All was forgiven but not forgotten.

    The business lessons were not lost on me. My company publishes Virtual Time Clock software. My Garmin experience has been used as a practical reminder that real employees and real employers absolutely rely on us for easy and accurate time and attendance data. We’re committed more than ever to remembering that unreliable and inaccurate data systems are more frustrating than no system at all.