How HR measures our impact
... and how we often get it wrong.
“What impact did HR make this year?”
If you work in HR, you’ve heard this question. And if you’re honest, it’s hard to answer.
It’s not our fault. So much of what we do is based on abstract metrics or academic best practices. We hear we need employee recognition programs, training, better culture. And sure, these things matter. But we shouldn’t create programs just to check a box.
We should be thinking about how to drive real outcomes for the business.
Let me show you what I mean.
I once worked at a healthcare organization with a problem. Leaders kept getting pulled from their work to run week-long onboarding sessions because we were hiring so many people. In a leadership meeting, one of them told me it was getting harder and harder to keep doing this every month.
This was clearly a pain point. These leaders were the experts, so they had to teach specific sessions. But they needed more time with their teams and their work.
At first, I thought I needed to condense the information or find non-leaders to teach the sessions.
I was only focusing on symptoms.
So I stepped back to look at everything contributing to this issue.
These onboarding sessions were happening monthly because we had high turnover. With 35%+ turnover year over year, we always needed new people trained.
That’s when it hit me.
The real problem wasn’t onboarding. It was who we were hiring.
We’d been hiring people in school or life transitions because they were easy to recruit. That worked for a while. But these weren’t people who stayed long term.
So I took a different approach.
I worked with my team to fix our recruiting. We rolled out a new ATS and focused on reaching a different candidate. Not people in transition, but people who cared about our mission and had the skills to level up our performance.
Applications jumped 200%. More importantly, we started hiring better candidates. People who stayed longer. People who brought new skills.
By addressing our hiring practices, we reduced turnover from 35% to 25%. Fewer people leaving meant fewer onboarding sessions. Which gave leaders their time back.
We solved the business problem by looking upstream.
Here’s what I learned. When a leader tells you what keeps them up at night, don’t just solve the thing right in front of you. Look for what’s causing that problem in the first place.
Then solve that instead.
The onboarding sessions weren’t the problem. Turnover was. And our recruiting approach was driving turnover.
Once I saw that, the path forward was clear.
This is how we should be thinking about impact in HR. Not just employee happiness. Not how many programs we run. But actual impact to the business.
So instead of rolling out a new program and measuring its success, talk to your business leaders. Find out what they need help fixing. Then think critically about the root cause.
Sometimes the solution is a few steps upstream from where everyone’s looking.
And here’s the thing about people programs. The impact isn’t overnight. Something you change today might not show results for six months. Keep watching. Keep tracking.
Because when someone asks “What impact did HR make this year?” you need to be ready with an answer that matters.
Not “we ran 12 training sessions.” But “we solved the turnover problem that was costing leaders 40 hours a month in onboarding.”
That’s the impact that gets people’s attention.
What business problem are you solving right now? Are you addressing the symptom or the cause?