Burning Questions: How Can We Be More Objective When Making Human Capital Decisions?

As part of our on-going Burning Questions series we’re diving into the topics, concerns, and questions that we hear about most commonly when we speak with HR professionals and leaders who are embarking on skills management initiatives. This week we’re taking a look at an incredibly important question that has never been more relevant than it is today, “How Can We Be More Objective When Making Human Capital Decisions?”

The opportunity to embrace a more objective, data-driven approach to human capital decision-making is there – organizations just need to put the systems in place to weave the collection, analysis, and use of critical skills data into their existing processes and company culture. Below are four steps you can take to revolutionize the way you approach human capital decision-making.

Determine Your Organization‘s Values

Whether it is hard skills, soft skills, embodying company values, or anything in between, your organization places value on specific, measurable aspects of an employee’s profile and behavior. Identifying these components upfront is critical, because it lays the groundwork for the measurement and analysis phases of any skills management initiative.

Measure Consistently and Rigorously

Once you have identified the skills, behaviors, and proficiencies that you care about, it is time to put mechanisms in place to track them across your workforce. Only by consistently applying a rigorous approach to measuring and tracking skills and proficiencies across the organization can you hope to compare employees on even footing. A failure to evenly apply standards across departments, roles, teams, or managers will result in additional bias creeping back into the equation.

Act on the Results

Understanding how employees or applicants stack up is one thing; acting on that information when push comes to shove is another. Analytics gives organizations the opportunity to make more objective decisions about their people; but, in order to effect real change, organizations need to embrace a talent and skill-driven company culture.

In his book, The Sales Acceleration Formula (check it out here) , Mark Roberge, the former Chief Revenue Officer at Hubspot, discusses how he thinks about aligning a person’s strengths with the unique context of the business. For example, a sales rep who is a star at Company A, may fail spectacularly at Company B, because their skills are not aligned to what is required by the current context. Likewise, someone who has been successful in a role as your company is growing from 10 to 100 clients, might not be the best person for the job as you look to go from 100 to 1,000 clients. Hubspot used these insights to rate, measure, and track applicants for sales positions against an ideal set of criteria before making a hiring decision. The result? A much more objective (and fruitful) hiring process as they scaled their sales team globally.

Use Data to Help Eliminate Bias

By relying on data as a key input into human capital decisions, organizations can go a long way towards taking bias (both conscious and unconscious) out of the equation. Armed with insight into the skills, capabilities, and proficiencies of their people, organizations can make more informed human capital decisions based on what their employees can do and how well they do it rather than relying on more subjective measures of fit and performance.

If you want to learn more about this topic and the other burning questions that we’ve been hearing from people like you, download our new eBook, “7 Burning Questions in Skills Management.