This is a photograph of a measuring tape like the one sitting on my office desk. It belonged to my Dad.
I keep it there as it reminds me of measuring things with him as a child when I was allowed to ‘help’. He was forever creating things out of scraps of wood or nothing much and ‘retired’ from his day job at 55 to realise his dream to start his own business. He loved his work and I count myself fortunate to have had such an inspiring Dad.
Looking at this reminded me of how much difference measuring our work makes; as they say, what gets measured, counts. Yet sometimes we resist measuring – I’d be the first to say it can stifle creativity but in reality a brilliant piece of furniture will lose something by having the wood for it measured incorrectly!
It reminds me off a series of blogs I did last year on KPI’s – the measurement tool of recruitment, so in case you didn’t catch them (I have loads of new subscribers since then) I’m re-running them here. And for those of you with Dads, have a listen to what they say, or take a moment to remember; there will be pearls of wisdom.
The first in a series of my takes on KPI’s in recruitment.
I am inspired to blog on KPI’s! But surely I hear you cry …inspired and KPI’s in the same sentence is an oxymoron? I don’t think so actually. And I have three things to say so watch out for this and 3 following blogs.
One – there seems to be a big fuss about KPI’s in the recruitment industry. Recruiter’s are queuing up to work in a non KPI-driven environment.
But we need KPI’s to become more professional and better at running our businesses. No-one would ever say a manufacturing business shouldn’t count how much raw material it had or how much labour it needed to run its factory. No-one would ever say that a retail business shouldn’t worry about how many customers come through the door or whether its shelves are filled.
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