The Universities' HR Benchmarking Program was initiated by QUT and commenced in early 2004. QUT's main objective in the provision of this service to universities is to establish a highly relevant, low cost and flexible HR benchmarking program with a high level of university participation.
To date, we have successfully attracted 48 universities (38 Australian universities and 10 international universities) to participate in the program and the subscriptions in the program are growing. Participating universities in the program are committed to working together to better manage human resources in the higher education sector.
What is Benchmarking?
Benchmarking essentially involves learning, sharing information and adopting best practices to bring about changes in performance. To simplify this, it can be stated as: 'Improving ourselves by learning from others'
In practice, benchmarking usually encompasses:
- regularly comparing aspects of performance (functions or processes) with best practitioners;
- identifying gaps in performance;
- seeking fresh approaches to bring about improvements in performance;
- following through with implementing improvements; and
- following up by monitoring progress and reviewing the benefits.
Alan Flower (1997) lists 5 main stages in effective benchmarking:
- Selecting aspects of performance that can be improved and defining them in a way that enables relevant comparative data to be obtained - in effect, producing performance indicators that will make sense to other organisations;
- Choosing relevant organisations from which to obtain raw or headline data;
- Studying the data to identify possible opportunities for improvement;
- Examining the procedures of the best-performing organisations to pick up ideas that can be adopted or adapted to achieve performance improvements; and
- Implementing new processes .
Organisations usually benchmark performance indicators (eg profit margins, return on investment (ROI), cycle times, percentage defects, sales per employee, cost per unit) or business processes (eg how it develops a product or service, how it meets customer orders or responds to enquiries, how it produces a product or service). For human resources, three types of benchmarks are particularly appropriate (Matters, 1993).
- Broad measures of performance which take an organisation-level view of HR management, using broad productivity measures like sales per employee, profit per employee, volume per employee, number of employees per HR specialists, and other relevant "output-over-input" ratios;
- HR practices focusing on how effectively HR programs and practices are implemented, and making comparisons with other organisations; and
- HR competencies tracking the knowledge, skills and abilities of HR specialists over time.
References:
Flower, Alan. 1997. How to: benchmarking? Personnel Management 12 June
Matters, M. 1993. Benchmarking HR: The nuts and bolds of benchmarking . Melbourne : Alpha Publications.
Why Join the HR Benchmarking Program?
- Designed for universities, run by universities;
- Join a network of universities who are focussed on strategic workforce improvements;
- Low cost program, leading to higher participation;
- Minimal effort required for data submission;
- Fast turnaround; and
- Data confidentiality is assured by reporting on percentiles only, allowing participants to compare themselves to others, but not actually identify the results of a particular university.
Participants receive an easy to read yet comprehensive report with results for a variety of HR performance measures. The report clearly outlines each measure's definition and purpose and provides tips for interpretation. Results are presented in both tabular and graphical format.
University Specific
The university-sector workforce is unique. The intricacies of attracting and managing an academic workforce have many implications for the university HR department. Comparing your workforce to that of a large public department or private firm gives you an idea of how you are performing, but these organisations' workforces do not face the same challenges as a university.
'The key benefit of the university sector benchmarking program is that it provides the perfect basis for strategic discussions between university HR departments' |
In a nutshell, Human Resource Benchmarking enables you to:
- Identify staffing trends and significant issues within your University and the university sector as a whole.
- Setting appropriate staffing goals - What is your target and are you hitting it?
- Evaluate the effectiveness of HR initiatives.
- Identify key areas of improvement.
- Guide the strategic planning of your HR department and allow for greater HR input to the University's strategic planning.