I want to let you in on a business coaching secret–simple scorecards not only give you meaningful feedback, but more importantly, they automatically focus your attention on those fewer, better things that make a difference in your business.
How does this impact you as you scale your company? Simple, in order to scale your business you need a rock-solid base in all the five core pillars of your company: Sales/Marketing; Operations; HR; Executive Leadership; and Finance.
One way to do that is to have a clear structure to help you evaluate how you’re doing in each pillar, and to guide you to incrementally improve pillar by pillar as you grow.
In this article, I’m focusing on your HR Pillar (I’ve addressed the other pillars of your company in other articles.)
Here is a simple scorecard that you can use each quarterly to make sure you’re continuously improving your “HR Pillar”.
Each quarter, rate your company on a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being best) on each of the following nine aspects of your HR Pillar:
- Having the Right Team: Do you have the right team on the bus with you? Do you have dead weight or low performers who really should be cut? On a scale from 1-10, how strong is your HR Pillar in this area?
- Having Your Team in the Right Positions: Are the team members you have all sitting on the right seats on the bus? Have you strategically positioned them to get maximum value from them? These means they are operating in roles that leverage their strengths and where possible, make their weaknesses irrelevant. On a scale from 1-10, how strong is your HR Pillar in this area?
- Hiring and Onboarding: Do you have a clear and effective hiring system? How well has it shown itself to perform? Do you have a solid onboarding process that warmly and effectively brings on new team members and quickly empowers them as a highly productive member of the team? On a scale from 1-10, how strong is your HR Pillar in this area?
- Systems for Training and Reviewing Team Members: On an ongoing basis, how well does your company do at reviewing your staff and giving them meaningful feedback? Is this personality-driven or systematically designed? How well do you do at developing talent and enhancing your team’s skills? Does your team have a clear map to follow to have a full and productive career with your company, or do they just do a job and fill a box? On a scale from 1-10, how strong is your HR Pillar in this area?
- Employee Retention: How long do your employees stay with you? What’s your turnover rate? On a scale from 1-10, how strong is your HR Pillar in this area?
- Clear understanding of Job Function: Do each of your employees understand what his or her job is and how that job fits into the bigger picture of the company? Do they know the key results they are responsible for and how the company will measure them on those responsibilities? Do they have a clear understanding of the resources and authority they have in pursuit of these key results? On a scale from 1-10, how strong is your HR Pillar in this area?
- Legal Compliance: How well does your company do at complying with all local, state, and federal labor regulations? How well have you trained your staff on issues like sexual harassment and HR best practices to stay out of legal trouble? On a scale from 1-10, how strong is your HR Pillar in this area?
- Benefits Administration: How well does your company do at managing your employee benefits? On a scale from 1-10, how strong is your HR Pillar in this area?
- Communication Systems for Team to Work Together: How well does your team communicate with each other internally to get valuable work done in an excellent fashion? Is this ad hoc or do you have formal communication systems and processes to make sure your team coordinates effort and resources to best effect? On a scale from 1-10, how strong is your HR Pillar in this area?
Now that you’ve rated your company’s HR Pillar on these 6 key sub-functions, what key insights jumped out at you?
Which ONE sub-function would most benefit your company to focus on improving over the next 90 days.
Then ask yourself, what three simple steps could you take this quarter to improve your score in this one sub-function by 1-2 points or more.
By breaking things down into bite-sized chunks and doing this each quarter you’ll be amazed at the compounded growth your business will enjoy over the next few years.
Also, to help you grow your business and get your life back, we just put the finishing touches on a powerful free toolkit which includes 21 in-depth video trainings on how to intelligently scale your company. To access this free toolkit click here. Enjoy.