This week is all about metrics!
Metrics are merely measurements that are expressed in percentages or
numerals that can be used to evaluate or give information about the
success of our actions or programs. The course module, self assessment,
and reading material for the week provide excellent foundational
material that I urge you to review prior to applying your knowledge in the following questions and your next presentation.

Note the following:

• We do not use the term matrix or metrics system when referring to metrics for this assignment
• We can use the term metric (singular)
  and the term metrics (plural) but we need to use their respective
  appropriate verbs (a metric is or metrics are).

Many Chief Executive Officers (CEO’s)
and Chief Financial Officers (CFO’s) complain that their Human Resource
professionals do not report metrics about Total Rewards or otherwise that matter
to the organization or share relevant information. We want you to be
able to provide metrics that are relevant to the organization – metrics
that matter.

After selecting a metric for this
discussion, ask yourself what does the metric that I am proposing tell
me about the effectiveness of the Total Rewards program? It must relate
to Total Rewards to be a relevant metric for this discussion and for
your next presentation. Revenue, profit, customer satisfaction are good
data to know, but they are not good metrics for this assignment.

Further, the percentage of turnover is not important by itself as a metric,
but the metric of the percentage of the highly valued employees who are
leaving the organization and why they are leaving is helpful to know
since the data should tell us if the rewards currently offered are a
factor in those valuable employees leaving. Whether employees are happy is not a helpful metric
(nothing against having happy employees but the organization would be
better informed if it knew whether the employees are engaged in their
work because of the total rewards). A metric that reports the percentage
of the employees who are satisfied with the organization is not as helpful as knowing by individual segment of employee which benefit is of most value, through a forced ranking of the benefits.

Please keep this information in mind
as you answer the following questions and design your second
presentation, due this Sunday by midnight. The second presentation and
your final assignments will continue to use the organization you used in
your first PowerPoint presentation.

1. Give an academic definition of the term metric (with an in-text citation and full reference)

2. Discuss why, in general, metrics
are important for HR professionals to report. For example, they can
assist the HR professional in achieving their goals and objectives while
also assisting the whole organization. For example if innovation is a
core capability of the organization, tracking the level of turnover of
the individuals who have had the most success innovating would be
important along with knowing why these individuals are leaving. This
metric would allow the organization to change incentives or other
rewards, if needed, or look for other ways to retain the needed talent.

3. Share an example of one metric you
are considering for your second MS PowerPoint presentation when you will
present three metrics to evaluate the success of the total rewards
program. Assignment 2 is due at the end of this week.

State or describe:

• A metric you are considering for the
  next assignment (typically a metric is an outcome and is presented as a
  percentage or index).
• What the metric tells the organization about the effectiveness of the total rewards program
• How the metric aligns with the organizational capabilities (what it does best)
• How the metric aligns with the employee competencies (the knowledge, skills, and abilities)
• How the data for the metric will be
  collected (for example, through an electronic survey, exit interviews,
  data from the Human Resource Information System (HRIS), focus groups or
  something else)