The HR profession is a great place to be right now. Not only are HR professionals in high demand—with HR generalists at the top of the list in 2015—but Business Insider named human resources manager as one of “the 19 hottest jobs for 2016.”
One of the most exciting changes that’s occurring in the profession is its evolution into a more strategic role. Senior leaders are increasingly relying on HR to help create and guide organizational strategy, so the ability to collect and analyze data has become a necessary competency. This change is so exciting and attractive that mathematicians, scientists and technology professionals are moving into HR roles.
Whether you’re a compensation and benefits manager or an internal recruiter, the size of the organization for which you work will have great influence over your HR metrics.
The data in the SHRM report How Organizational Staff Size Influences HR Metrics show that “as organizational staff sizes grow, changes occur in key HR metrics. Decreases in the HR-to-employee ratio, the percentage of HR staff in supervisory roles, and the HR-expense-to-FTE [full-time equivalent] ratio as staff sizes increase suggest that HR departments in small organizations require a baseline of financial investments for staff and other resources, but that they gain efficiencies when organization size increases. Alternatively, increases in the use of structured interviews, time-to-fill and employee tenure as staff sizes increase suggest that organizations develop more sophisticated and formal ways to select and retain talent to manage large and diverse workforces.”
The report also emphasizes that the size of an organization should be considered when assessing the organization’s competencies against the best in class. “Knowing that staff size affects changes in HR is helpful when HR professionals seek to evaluate their metrics in light of their HR programs, investments and other outcomes. In benchmarking, it is best to compare HR metrics against organizations of similar staff size to ensure that the comparisons are relevant.”
What is your experience as an HR professional, whether in a large or small organization, and how does size affect your role and the analytics that are important to you and your senior leaders?
Please join @shrmnextchat at 3 p.m. ET on January 20 for #Nextchat with special guest SHRM Manager of Workforce Analytics and Research John Dooney @SHRMAnalytics. We’ll chat about how organizational size affects the practice of HR and its metrics.
Q1. As an HR professional, what aspects of working for a small organization would you like the most and the least?
Q2. As an HR professional, what aspects of working for a large organization would you like the most and the least?
Q3. How does the HR role change when moving from a small to a large organization, and vice versa?
Q4. What competencies become more important when moving from a small to a large organization, and vice versa?
Q5. What HR metrics are most affected as organizations grow?
Q6. What HR metrics are most important to your organization in 2016?
Q7. How are the demands different when reporting HR activities to senior leaders in a small versus a large organization?
Q8. What trends are you seeing in HR analytics now, and how do you think HR's use of data will change over the next 10 years?
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