I\u2019ve always been interested in business theory and its possible applications to HR.\u00a0 Unfortunately, many HR practitioners (or business practitioners for that matter) are not well educated in many business theories.\u00a0 Even MBA\u2019s get a minimal schooling in these.\u00a0 One theory that has caught my attention lately is queueing theory.\u00a0 Best briefly described by From Wikipedia:<\/p>\n
Queueing theory (also commonly spelled queuing theory) is the mathematical study of waiting lines (or queues).<\/p>\n
The theory enables mathematical analysis of several related processes, including arriving at the (back of the) queue, waiting in the queue (essentially a storage process), and being served by the server(s) at the front of the queue. The theory permits the derivation and calculation of several performance measures including the average waiting time in the queue or the system, the expected number waiting or receiving service and the probability of encountering the system in certain states, such as empty, full, having an available server or having to wait a certain time to be served.<\/p>\n
Queueing theory is generally considered a branch of operations research because the results are often used when making business decisions about the resources needed to provide service. It is applicable in a wide variety of situations that may be encountered in business, commerce, industry, public service and engineering.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So there are some obvious applications.\u00a0 In our customer service centers, there is probably quite a bit of queueing theory going on, whether the service center manager knows it or not.\u00a0 More probably the VP running the place has some knowledge of queueing theory.\u00a0 The problem is that when we get to HR service centers, the expertise we are provided is sometimes one step away from the top tier talent that the business gets.\u00a0 While we may run the same metrics in the HR service centers, we may not be looking at or interpreting those metrics in the same way, or getting the same meaning out of them.\u00a0 In other words, we may all intuitively know that we\u2019re trying to reduce overall wait times, but have we really considered what wait times mean in each state and what the cost\/benefit is to reducing those times?<\/p>\n
In a less obvious application, we can apply queueing theory easily to recruiting.\u00a0 You cold look at this from a couple of angles.\u00a0 First, there is the queue of the applicant and how quickly you can get them through a process.\u00a0 In this case, you\u2019d look at losses of applicants within the process at various stages.\u00a0\u00a0 This is of course critical, but if you look at it from the business side where the business is the customer waiting in line, you would be looking at lost time and money in various stages as well as identifying where bottlenecks occur.\u00a0 While both are important, the latter is probably where more value can be created by strategically looking at end to end queue processes.<\/p>\n
I know that this is pretty abstract stuff for most HR practitioners, but the value of applying business theory linked to financial metrics can be very valuable.\u00a0 It demonstrates how we can speak the language of business, and shows that we\u2019re on the same page in our approach to reaching business goals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve always been interested in business theory and its possible applications to HR.\u00a0 Unfortunately, many HR practitioners (or business practitioners for that matter) are not well educated in many business theories.\u00a0 Even MBA\u2019s get a minimal schooling in these.\u00a0 One…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,11,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-strategies","category-service-delivery","category-talent-acquisition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}