Ultimate Performance: Measuring Human Resources at Work

Introduction

In every industry we need to be able to ask, “What is the performance of X and how do we measure it?” For example, in terms of education we need to be able to ask the question, “What is the performance of a good school supposed to be and how do we measure it?” and “What is the performance of a good teacher supposed to be and how do we measure it?” In the Information Technology industry we need to be able to ask “What should the performance of technology be?” and “What should the performance of a programmer be and how should we measure it?” In the field of sports we need to be able to ask both, “What should the performance of a player be?” and “What should the performance of a good team be?” There is a variety of names for metrics across the market: metrics, statistics, indicators, criteria, and so on. All of these names amount to a numerical way of judging performance. This is indeed what Hume’s sentiment comes to; without metrics we can say very little with certainty.

The main reason we need metrics is that we can’t know how to improve if we don’t have a benchmark of how we are doing today. However, we also need to be able to chart how we have been doing over the last few days, months, and years. Therefore, our metrics should be saved so that we can access them and conduct research with them in the future. By and large our metrics need to use industry-wide standards so that we can compare one firm or individual’s performance with another person or firm’s performance ...