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Benchmarking is a process which establishes behavioral standards most appropriate
for a given position - that is, what behaviors are most effective most of the
time in this job. A well-defined Behavioral Job Description acts as a standard
in evaluating existing employees as well as a guide in hiring new employees.
Today's benchmarking tools are powerful, but they can cause as much damage as
good if they are carelessly applied. With the help of objective tools and targeted
guidance, the process has productive results. No matter which quality tools are
used in the benchmarking process, more and more companies, because they have experienced
misguided application, are turning to professional help. Traditionally,
most benchmarking has involved profiling employees in a target position to determine
which attributes are most common in your best performers. This imperfect method
has several potential dangers. First, it actually assumes you already have
the best performers and that you can find none that can perform better. This assumption
limits benchmark standards to your current employees only, and does not consider
standards outside your current environment. Another common mistake is that
guidelines for selecting and ranking the top performers have not been well-defined.
For example, sales statistics have been erroneously used to rank performance.
As an example, Joe has been selling for us forever. His figures make him
look like a top performer, but Joe developed his client base back when all he
had to do was take orders as people called in. He was the only salesperson in
an easy market with little or no competition. Today, however, is much
different. Competition is fierce. If Joe had to start from scratch in today's
market, how would he fare? How long would it take to build that client base now,
if he could at all? If you based your sales position's benchmark on Joe because
his statistics look good and hired people with this benchmark as your guide, you
may have hired ineffective people with Joe's traits. |
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common error is profiling only your top performers. Unless you profile your bottom
performers as well, your information is invalid. If, for instance, your bottom
performers scored the same as top performers in a certain category, that trait
could be an insignificant concern in the hiring process. Yet, testing just the
top performers would narrow your field and decrease your chances of successful
job matching. The benchmarking process is intended to improve productivity
and performance but the opposite can occur if certain variables in the environment
are not accounted for in the ranking process. It will not be an effective benchmark
if your top ranking performers are in a "flush" market - that is, where almost
anyone could do a good job. Other environmental factors such as the consistency
of systems and procedures across all employees considered in the benchmarking
process may also have a powerful influence. If only half of your team is computerized,
the behavioral job description may not be the same at all. Likewise, communication
behaviors appropriate for supporting Sales & Marketing staff is probably quite
different from doing that same support work for Auditing. A better method
is to have those who work, manage and know the position do an objective behavioral
job analysis, starting 'from the beginning' - that is, don't look at current people,
but evaluate the job itself. Some of the newer tools on the market make this exercise
convenient (15 to 20 minutes), accurate and inexpensive. Once the ideal behaviors
are prioritized, the job description becomes much easier to define and fulfill. This
refinement also accelerates the orientation process, greatly reducing that period
of time it takes to "get the feel" of a new job. Turnover is reduced, performance
is enhanced. |
