****Knowledge Infusion Co-Founder Heidi Spirgi recently contributed her thoughts about lessons learned on the shop floor that would benefit HR strategy and talent
Lesson #3 from the shop floor: performance
Think again about those monstrous, greasy, and deafening machines of my childhood spitting out perfectly formed steel nuts and bolts. Their productivity (a function of # fasteners/minute) was measured twice a day. Their quality was measured continually with a whole department and lab dedicated to identifying potential quality issues. Measuring the performance of these machines, defined as quantity and quality of production, was a fixture of the way my Dad���s company operated.
Thirty years later and people are largely unmeasured in most organizations. In the most progressive organizations and only then in the hands of the best managers, performance is measured on a semi-annual basis, at an average organization annually, and in many organizations never at all. Can you imagine the performance implications if a slow machine was identified after a year of producing too few fasteners? Can you imagine the implications if the bolts that hold together the Golden Gate Bridge, Mack Trucks and most of the country���s stadiums weren���t checked continually for quality?
This is the state of the human capital supply chain in 2007. Is it time for a new paradigm for measuring the performance of people?
