HR con­trol­ling

Companies like saying that employees are their most important asset. But it can seem hypocritical, especially in companies which lay off massive numbers of workers as a knee-jerk reaction to economic difficulties. The ongoing human capital discussion has, however, helped to change the view of staff as being a cost factor to seeing them as an asset. Now the onus is on HR units to verify this value contribution transparently while actively guiding their own activities and justifying capital requirements with well-substantiated figures.

Existing HR systems generally do a good job of capturing staff costs and the costs of the HR department. They generate the usual employee statistics and any number of HR performance indicators. However, the main obstacle to value-based HR management usually lies in the fact that there is an unclear understanding of the company's strategy and management approach. As is typical for central functions, challenges range

• from lacking prioritisation of targets and poor expectation management between HR and operational management,
• to unclear delimitation of governance and responsibilities between HR and on-site managers,
• to a lacking HR “controlling tradition” in the sense of existing data capturing processes and system support.

(Re-)structuring HR controlling means having to address strategic, conceptual and implementation-related issues from a holistic perspective and solving them at the interface of HR, controlling and operational management:

• Objective: what is the purpose of HR controlling and who is it for – external reporting, an information portal for executives, functional controlling of the HR department or managing strategic human capital value drivers?
• Management approach: which management approach helps achieve the objectives while being aligned with strategy and company-specific management aspects (e.g. HR process control, scorecards, value drivers)?
• Metrics: which KPIs can be used to manage HR impact/effectiveness (e.g. talent retention rate), in addition to factor-related statistics (e.g. women’s quota) and process efficiency metrics (e.g. average time spent in a position)?
• Responsibility: for which company-wide HR objectives and processes does HR carry management responsibility, and what falls under the (instrumental) application and management responsibility of operational managers on site?
• Interlinking: from a content and process view, how can HR controlling be transformed into a future-oriented planning tool (keyword: demographics) rather than just a tool for after-the-fact analyses? 

CTcon can help you answer these questions and supports you in implementing customised HR controlling: using the tried-and-tested CTcon management framework as our consulting approach, we ensure that HR controlling is holistically analysed and anchored at the interface of HR, controlling and operational management.