Welcome to Australian Survey Research

Human capital - consulting

ASR’s service offering in human capital is very much data driven – incorporating organisational information with employee attitudes and perceptions.

We offer a range of human capital services which help you understand your current and required workforce, where you stand in terms of human capital inventory and how human capital can be optimally managed. We design processes to collect human capital data and integrate this, wherever possible, with other organisational processes and the data these processes generate.

Terris Consulting, ASR's people consulting arm, focuses on two key areas: understanding employees' skills and knowledge, and individual performance management processes. Often these two areas are closely linked.

Our consulting assignments cover a spectrum from working with organizations which need to link training needs with effective training expenditure to organizations that want information about the type of people who need to be retained and/or recruited for the future. ASR helps organizations address the before and after issues of implementing job, people and training databases.

An essential component of most people management activities is information about skills, knowledge and attributes (together we call these capabilities or competencies). Workforce capability information drives processes such training, career management, succession planning, retention strategies and workforce planning. Mapping and managing human capital is becoming a critical process in most organizations. It is often a core driver in achieving competitive advantage.

We assist organizations to focus on:

what information should be researched about jobs and collected from employees
how information can be structured so that it acts as an integrator of processes, rather than having multiple databases that share data with difficulty
how information can be collected consistently and efficiently, and at all times maintaining data integrity
how people information is managed and presented for simple decision-making by a wide range of users
linking a range of people management processes through performance management systems.

We also design specific HR processes for clients, such as performance management and training needs identification.

A key component of most consulting assignments is management education and employee communication. All employees involved in a project are shown how components link together and how to understand and use the information about themselves and their jobs. We show decision-makers how to clarify HR processes and especially to understand the links between skill profiles, job descriptions and performance management. Each has a clear and different role to play in people management and too often they are confused. Having a fully trained and skilled workforce is only the first step of the journey. Employees need to have a clear understanding of job expectations and then clear goals and targets.

Examples of consulting assignments

Workforce database	Identifying skill and knowledge requirements of the organization; using these to describe jobs (job skill profile), collecting information on employee's current skills and levels; then matching the two sets of information - what we need with what we've got. Information was updated on a regular basis and the matching information was used to make management decisions about training priorities, retention hot-spots, and workforce deployment.
Training needs analysis	Building a very detailed organization-wide competency framework and data collection process for an organization that wanted to tightly manage and assign its training budget so that the right people got the right training at the right time. This very technical organization also needed to extend and improve the skills of local staff so that they could replace expatriate managers in the medium term. Conducting a training needs analysis to brief curriculum developers. The organization was dispersed nationally and research was conducted by telephone interviews and web-based survey. Ideal job profiles were developed along with critical training gaps.
Competency framework deployment	Designing a competency framework including assessment, pay and career structure around a nationally-endorsed competency standard for the printing industry.
Job profiling	Identifying skill sets that were required by key positions and presenting this information in such a way that current and potential job incumbents could collect feedback from a range of sources and identify their development needs. The profiles were also used in selection, career management and succession planning activities.
Performance management process	Designing and implementing refinements to an existing system so that much greater emphasis was placed on deliverables and ability (skills, knowledge and behaviors) to do the job. At the same time the amount of paperwork was reduced and a much clearer focus on corporate objectives was created.
Job grading linked to performance management	Designing a salary structure, remuneration policy, and a performance management process at a green fields site.

Workforce planning metrics

The Human Capital Report (HCR) includes workforce reporting outputs over the employment life cycle. This report is underpinned by the WRDI® survey, which measures employees’ effort, affective commitment / engagement, satisfaction, and retention risk, plus a diagnosis of what may be contributing to deficits. The HCR Report provides predictive data and risk profiles for the workforce, “sliced and diced” according to the examples below, offering deeper insights concerning the state of the workforce. This performance and retention related data, presented in a unique format, including an estimate of the numbers of people who are likely to leave in the ensuing 6-12 months, and associated costs, constitutes an essential element of workforce planning.

What we can measure	Why this is important?
Recent recruit adaptation (eg. up to 18 months with the organisation)	New recruits are the highest “at risk” group in terms of turnover. It is important that: what has been offered (i.e., the promise of the “deal”) is delivered there are some objective measures in place to assess the adequacy of selection, recruitment and induction policies selection and recruitment practices are producing good person–job and good person-organisational fit.
Retention and engagement – general workforce	It is becoming increasingly more important to conserve people resources, to optimise their performance and retention, with appropriate people management strategies, policies and practices. The labour and skills shortage will become more exacerbated, with turnover increasing as people will have more choices. The 2 key drivers of retention are also 2 key drivers of performance. Relying on historical turnover data as an accurate predictor of future trends is fraught with disaster. It is essential to have predictive and diagnostic data as a risk mitigation strategy.
Retention and engagement - high performers/low performers and high potentials	With the growth of search firms, high performers will increasingly become more targeted in the future, with their loss posing significant risk to the achievement of business and strategic objectives. Generally, low performers are more likely to leave compared to high performers. There is typically a 20% pay buffer or cushion for people who are engaged and satisfied before they start to seriously consider leaving for a better offer.
Leadership	There is a clear link between leadership, employee engagement, satisfaction and retention. It is important to have data that traces that link, as a basis for determining the effectiveness of past leadership initiatives and for future leadership investment decisions.
Exiting employees – disengagement and reasons for leaving	People leave organisations for the 3 P’s: Push or dysfunctional organisational factors or limitations (approx 60% of turnover) Pull (approx 20% of turnover) Personal (approx 20% of turnover) It is important to be able to identify reasons for turnover according to the 3 P classification, and to minimise push and combat pull.
By employee demographic: Length of time in job Length of time with organisation Age or Generation Gender Education level	By determining the engagement and retention risk profiles of various groups, targeted interventions can be applied to address that risk. For example, different engagement and retention strategies apply to Generation Y compared to Baby Boomers or imminent retirees.
By skills quadrant (both valuable and unique skills) - that is, people whose roles are determined to be: Criticals (e.g., managers, designers). Professionals, skilled or semi-skilled (e.g., nurses, accountants, project engineers). Doers (e.g., manual labourers, admin people, front line staff). Specialists (e.g., train drivers, defence, air traffic controllers).	Segmentation is a critical concept with marketers – different clients and products have different values. In the case of the workforce, not everyone is equal - a “one size fits all” approach to people management policies and practices is obsolete. Skills are the new currency, with different categories of employees requiring different levels of investment (i.e., “make” versus “buy” decisions, including outsourcing), and different relationships or psychological contracts. The implications of a Critical leaving are much more severe compared to a Doer leaving.
Other cuts: Classification (e.g., SES, APS 2-4, APS 5-6) Military, especially concerning intention to stay in relation to imminent contract renewal	This is another variation on the above workforce segmentation concept, where for example, engagement and retention strategies will differ for SES versus lower job levels. (For the military, we may need to change some of the terms in the questionnaire, eg, ‘job’ may need to be ‘posting’, etc, but otherwise the WRDI should work just as well as for civilians).
Organisation structure: business unit specific work areas job level location	This reporting provides a rigorous basis for the identification of organisational “hot spots”, the application of targeted interventions to address deficits, and maximum use of resources, rather than applying interventions to work groups that may not be necessary.
Specific work roles: By profession (e.g., engineers, lawyers, accountants) By nature of work (e.g., field vs clerical)	With the labour and skills shortages, some professions will be affected more than others. Market forces will become more influential in determining salary levels of various professions, with internal salary relativities becoming somewhat obsolete. Therefore it is important to assess risk profiles of various work roles, and apply targeted interventions to address that risk.

Note:

We can code participants according to job level, skills quadrant, and up to five other dimensions (eg, business unit, location, performance rating, etc). Part of this information needs to be derived from pay roll or other sources of organisational data.
To be able to extract the full value of reporting options (i.e., by combining survey data with pay roll and other organisational data), we need to know the identity of each respondent (i.e., the survey is not anonymous). However, the identity of the employee is known only to the consultant, not the client.

Human capital report

In partnership with the WRDI Institute, ASR has developed a state of the art Human Capital Report (HCR) which provides business-focused metrics and dash board indicators linking people and results. We can explore your employees’ perceptions of the value proposition of working for your organisation – what attracts them and why do they stay.

The HCR is based on three core data sources:

Employee self-reported attitudes or perceptions collected using a structured and validated instrument.
Human resource management information system (payroll, performance management, skill and training and development systems, etc)
Organisational processes such as remuneration adjustments, safety statistics, quality statistics as well as production volumes

By drawing together three types of Human Capital data (see People Data Cube), of the right measures (i.e., based on empirical research), we provide a sound, integrated and comprehensive data platform, taking workforce analysis and reporting to the next level of sophistication.

By combining these three data sources we can deliver insights about your workforce which create business value while reducing turnover risk and costs. This integrated data analysis and Human Capital Report delivers significantly more value than a typical employee survey report.

Results can be produced at business unit or branch level, job level, or any other demographic of client choice. Graduates, new recruits and high potential employees are three perfect examples.

We use the Workplace Relationship Development Indicator (WRDI®), a diagnostic engagement and retention survey, based on a validated model of the psychological contract between employers and employees. Using this tool we are able to quantify engagement and retention risk and associated bottom line impacts. The WRDI® survey uncovers those organizational, workplace, and individual factors which lead to engagement and retention over the employment life cycle.

The WRDI® can be combined with elements of your existing employee survey.

The workforce analytics generated from the data collected provide answers to the following typical questions:
How many of your people (including key talent, high performers, and high potentials) are likely to leave? And what will it cost you?
Where are the disengagement and retention risk hot spots in your organization (e.g., by business unit, job level, gender, age)?
Do you have the leadership capabilities you need to succeed?
Has expenditure in training and development provided enhanced competencies and performance or reduced retention/turnover risk?
Is increased pay resulting in increased effort?
Which competencies are linked to higher performance?
Is turnover due to push (ie, perceived dysfunctional organizational factors), pull (better deals elsewhere), or personal reasons?
Is the retention risk of your high performers and potentials increasing or decreasing over time?

Employee surveys

With its broad experience in human resource management, combined with survey expertise, ASR is an ideal provider of employee surveys. We can assist in questionnaire development, deployment and analysis, as well as working with you to ensure representative samples.

Our years of organizational and psychology experience gives us immediate insight into workforce issues, and which assists us to identify action items which will have the most impact.

Employee surveys can focus on a range of topics, from current terms and conditions of employment, internal service reviews (such as purchasing or IT service), multi-rater, peer or upward feedback to engagement and retention studies.

We collect data using a variety of methods and the combination is dependent on the topic or the nature of the assignment. We regularly conduct interviews and focus groups to assist in preparing self-completion questionnaires, and we collect data using paper, web, or telephone questionnaires.

ASR is experienced in deploying both anonymous and known respondent employee surveys. The latter allows us to track longitudinally, particularly for retention studies, and to incorporate other payroll-associated data, such as amount invested in training, competency sets or performance ratings.

We can assist in developing communication programs which will significantly increase response rates, using innovative messages and media.

We have experience in surveying very small (less than 100) and very large (more than 20,000) workforces, in both white collar and blue collar environments. Where it is important, we work closely with employee groups such as unions.

As part of its employee survey expertise, ASR conducts skill audits of whole workforces or specific segments and has extensive experience in collecting skill profiles by paper or electronically and then using this information for workforce planning and training needs analysis.

ASR develops organisation-specific indices or benchmarks which can be used to track progress and to identify trouble-spots. They can also be used to identify high risk retention or engagement areas within an organisation.

Types of employee surveys include:

team or post feedback – peer reviews
single division internal customer satisfaction studies, eg, property, purchasing, IT or shared service delivery
climate and culture surveys
skills audits
engagement and retention studies
program evaluation such as how well a new initiative has been adopted or accepted
communication audits
corporate values
work/life balance studies
employee census (who’s where, got what and knows what).