Using HR metrics is a critical way to quantify the cost and impact of your employee programs and measure the success of your HR efforts. But don’t go overboard.

“When you try to measure too many things, you dilute the focus,” said Cindi Summers, senior vice president of human resources for Casey’s General Stores Inc. in Ankeny, Iowa. “If there are 15 things you need to improve, it’s hard to move the needle.”

Summers and Bob Graczyk, vice president of human resources for QuickChek Corp. in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, spoke about “HR Metrics that Matter” at the 2018 NACS Show in Las Vegas this past October. Metrics they deem worthy of measurement include turnover, retention, time to hire, staffing, engagement/leadership, store staffing needs, overtime hours and compensation.

Yet after their presentation, Summers said she and Graczyk were approached by a number of attendees who told them about their top 10 things they were measuring. “Bob and I felt like, ‘Wow! That sounds like a lot,’ ” she said. Graczyk recommends focusing on “two, three, four key measures on the HR side—that’s a lot to pay attention to.”

Summers also favors focusing on three to five measures. To determine where to focus next, she said Casey’s has undertaken “a massive engagement survey” of employees at the retailer’s headquarters, distribution centers and stores as well as drivers. “We took a broader approach this year. ... We’re digging deeper.”

The goal is “to take a snapshot of where the company is [now] and measure where we are going,” she said. All employees took a general survey about how they feel about the culture while a smaller group was asked more detailed questions about what they believe an ideal company culture would be. “We want to look at where the gaps are, talk about gaps and talk about the road map for the future,” she said.

If there are 15 things you need to improve, it’s hard to move the needle.

An important part of the process is showing employees the company really listened to what they had to say, Summers added. “You can’t just take a survey and tell employees that ‘Yes, we heard you.’ You need to follow up with real stories. Don’t just say, ‘Turnover has been reduced by X percent.’ Tell the story of someone who decided to stay because of something that was done. You need to bring it to life for people.”

Casey’s also sent its director of training and development into the field to visit new stores and older ones and to listen to new employees as well as employees with long tenures, she said. “We’re on information overload a little bit.”

To help manage so much information, Casey’s partnered with students and faculty at the Iowa State University CyBIZ Lab, which provides consulting services to local businesses. “They’re helping us with the focus group and the road map to follow,” she said. The three to five things Casey’s decides to measure will be very different from each other, she said, and there will be a targeted strategy behind each one.

Working with the university has provided the company with fresh perspectives as well as being “super economical,” Summers said. She recommends that HR executives looking for help with metrics take advantage of local academic connections.

Turnover Versus Retention

Summers and Graczyk noted that convenience stores often want to measure turnover and retention. But what’s the difference? Turnover is the number of employees who left compared to total active employees over the same period. Retention is a measure of retained employees with one year or more of tenure.

Graczyk said retailers can have one of three staffing scenarios:

• High turnover and high retention. These companies have difficulty keeping a specific position filled, but the core team is in place and tenure remains strong.
• High turnover and low retention. These organizations have difficulty retaining the core team; new hires and tenured employees are leaving, and tenure is generally low. Management should look for store leadership issues.
• Low turnover and high retention. This is the ideal—a strong core team, with few people leaving each year.

QuickChek establishes performance measures and set goals for turnover and retention. These goals are proposed in planning sessions and are usually top-down, Graczyk said, “but there can be a lot of interaction along the way. It’s similar to when you establish sales goals. Are you on goal or not? We track the program to stay focused on the desired result.”

Graczyk warned that you don’t want managers to hold onto an employee who is a bad fit just to protect their turnover number. Therefore, QuickChek ties net turnover rather than gross turnover to managers’ end-of-year bonuses. “If we make a bad hire, we record it in the gross but it won’t be counted in net turnover” if the new employee is terminated in 30 days or less, he said.

Convenience stores also focus on measuring engagement because they understand that better engagement leads to higher customer satisfaction, lower profit variance to budget and lower employee turnover, according to Graczyk. What questions help you ensure you have the right people engaged in the right activities? He suggested asking employees to indicate if they agree with statements such as these:

• I am proud to be part of [Retailer Name].
• [Retailer Name] motivates me to contribute more than is normally required to complete my work.
• Given the opportunity, I tell others great things about working at [Retailer Name].
• I plan to work for [Retailer Name] for at least the next 12 months.
• I would recommend [Retailer Name] to family and friends as a great company to work for.
• It would take a lot to get me to leave [Retailer Name].
• Overall, I am satisfied with [Retailer Name] as a place to work.

Another crucial measurement often used by convenience stores is staffing needs, which can be tracked with a store staffing needs system (SSNS). An SSNS provides a forecast of hours available for scheduling in a given week. Hours are earned based on the number of transactions, the time to deliver or make the item and a standard set of hours for common tasks such as cleaning and meetings. Retailers can compare required work hours to actual work hours to determine whether their stores are understaffed or overstaffed.

The goal is to have tasks staffed at 100%. An SSNS result of 102% or more indicates a store might be understaffed and using too few hours. A lower SSNS, such as 98%, suggests a store might be overstaffed and using too many hours. (See SSNS calculation.)

QuickChek takes this measurement seriously, Graczyk added. “We really look at this number. We look at it at 4:30 every Tuesday.”

The most important thing you can do with any HR metric is to react. Any report you do not do something with and react to, is worthless to you.