Using HR Data to assess business success

There are lots of different pieces of HR data that can be used to measure success:

• Wages.
• Recruitment costs.
• Promotion.
• Labour turnover.
• Employee engagement.
• Absenteeism.
• Morale.
• Labour productivity.
• Management (styles).
• Working environment.
• Health and safety.

High labour turnover is bad, although you don't know why they left - it includes retirees.

Assessing Success using Environment Data

The UK government recommends that businesses report on environmental performance in four key areas:

• Emissions to air (e.g. Greenhouse gases, particles, dust).
• Emissions to land (fertiliser, pesticides, waste).
• Emissions to water (metals and organic pollutants).
• Use of scarce and non-renewable resources.

Environmental data is becoming more important:

• The media look at it.
• It can affect the business' reputation.
• Climate change.
• Non renewable materials.
• More stakeholders are now interested.
• Poor planning may impact on the future.

Assessing a business' sucess via its marketing

The following marketing related items can be used to assess a business' success.

• Return on advertising.
• Customer loyalty and retention.
• Brand awareness.
• Where and how they're marketing.
• Analysis of social media.
• Analytics of video and images.
• Web traffic.
• How much is spent on marketing.

It is important to note that marketing data may be misleading  It must be placed in the context of wider business activities and compared to previous years.