Given this, Einstein Medicals HR managers could ask, "What specific HR poli-
cies and practices would help Einstein create a dedicated, accountable,
generative, and resilient workforce, and thereby help it to achieve its strategic
goals?" The answer was to implement several new HR programs and
practices. One was training and communications programs aimed at assuring
that employees clearly understood the company's new vision and what it
would require of all employees. Enriching work was another key HR initiative,
and involved providing employees with more challenge and responsibility
through flexible assignments and team-based work. Through new training and
benefits programs, the company promoted personal growth, which meant
helping employees take personal responsibility for their own improvement and
personal development. Providing commensurate returns was another key HR
strategy initiative; it involved tying employees' rewards to organization wide
results and providing non monetary rewards (such as more challenging jobs).
Finally, improved selection, orientation, and dismissal procedures also helped
Einstein build a more dedicated, resilient, accountable, and generative
workforce.
THE HR SCORECARD APPROACH
Management ultimately judges the HR function based on whether it creates
value for the company, where "value creation" means contributing in a
measurable way to achieving the company's strategic goals. HR creates value
by engaging in activities that produce the employee behaviors the company
needs to achieve these strategic goals. Managers often use an HR Scorecard
to measure the HR function's effectiveness and efficiency in producing these
employee behaviors and thus in achieving the company's strategic goals. The
HR Scorecard is a concise measurement system. It shows the quantitative
standards or "metrics" the firm uses to measure HR activities, and to measure
the employee behaviors resulting from these activities, and to measure the
strategically relevant organizational outcomes of those employee behaviors.
In so doing, it highlights, in a concise but comprehensive way, the causal link
between the HR activities, and the emergent employee behaviors. and the
resulting firm wide strategic outcomes and performance.