by Barry
When you have more work to do than available hours, look at some of the reports you publish. I once found myself producing tons of reports – full of statistics on hiring, turnover, cost analysis, productivity, and other interesting HR metrics. These reports took lots of time to produce and, of course, the management insisted they be full color, spiral bound, and personally distributed to the senior leadership team.
One Thursday afternoon, I told my assistant to run all the reports, but NOT to deliver them. Just leave them on the credenza. Not one manager asked for the report. I did have a couple good admin people inquire. However, I found out that all they did with the report was to file it. When I asked about the last time their boss asked to see the report, I wasn’t surprised to hear “never.” To make matters worse, they had drawers full of these reports!
So, the following month, I ran only a handful of metrics that I wanted to track and didn’t print a single report. It was nearly a year later before the reports came up in a staff meeting. “Oh, we stopped doing those reports months ago, but we’ve got the data if you want to take a look.” No takers.
Bottom line: look at the reports that take a lot of time and produce little return. Consider eliminating them, especially if you can’t find anyone asking for them!
When you have more work to do than available hours, look at some of the reports you publish. I once found myself producing tons of reports – full of statistics on hiring, turnover, cost analysis, productivity, and other interesting HR metrics. These reports took lots of time to produce and, of course, the management insisted they be full color, spiral bound, and personally distributed to the senior leadership team.
One Thursday afternoon, I told my assistant to run all the reports, but NOT to deliver them. Just leave them on the credenza. Not one manager asked for the report. I did have a couple good admin people inquire. However, I found out that all they did with the report was to file it. When I asked about the last time their boss asked to see the report, I wasn’t surprised to hear “never.” To make matters worse, they had drawers full of these reports!
So, the following month, I ran only a handful of metrics that I wanted to track and didn’t print a single report. It was nearly a year later before the reports came up in a staff meeting. “Oh, we stopped doing those reports months ago, but we’ve got the data if you want to take a look.” No takers.
Bottom line: look at the reports that take a lot of time and produce little return. Consider eliminating them, especially if you can’t find anyone asking for them!
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