Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER CANADIAN HR REPORTER May 19, 2014 May 19, 2014 12 FEATURES FEATURES Twyla Meredith President and CEO of SaskGaming The Regina-based Crown corporation has 895 employees A Treasury Board Crown corporation, SaskGam- ing has seen its share of ups and downs — from double- digit growth and hectic hiring to declining revenues and layoff s. As a result, HR metrics have be- come even more important for the 895-employee corporation, which operates Casino Regina and Casino Moose Jaw. As a Crown corporation, it is ac- countable to a board as well as a shareholder entity that oversees all Crown corporations in the province. And they've put in place a balanced scorecard system, with one quadrant related to employ- ees, says Twyla Meredith, presi- dent and CEO. SaskGaming now has fi ve key metrics it watches and reports on, which are monitored and re- ported on on a quarterly basis, she says. "Of course, at the executive level, our compensation is tied to the achievement of these goals so we want to make sure that we have initiatives in place to move those in the right direction. It's all tied back to our strategy." One metric is a bi-annual em- ployee satisfaction survey. Sask- Gaming sits at about 48 per cent employee satisfaction which is not great but, apparently, that's the in- dustry average, says Meredith. And the results of the employee survey lead to new plans and goals to help address any issues at the corporation. "Given all the change we've had, to be honest we're a little leery of what we're going to get back this year," she says. SaskGaming also looks at the service component of guest sat- isfaction surveys, which are done quarterly. "We interpret that result to be a good marker for the training we provide. So it's kind of a diff erent way of getting at it but, over the last few years, we've found this is a pretty good indicator of the… eff ectiveness of the training," says Meredith. ere's also a metric that looks at the percentage of staff who have completed core training that's typical to the gaming industry, such as customer service, money laundering regulations and re- sponsible gaming. "Since we have a fairly high turnover — because it is gaming, food and beverage/hospitality, we experience about a 20 per cent turnover rate — there's constant retraining of staff ," she says. And a new metric added this year monitors employee absenteeism. "It is a problem we need to deal with so we do have plans to try to bring that down and deal with staff , try to help them with reduc- ing their absenteeism, and I guess managing people with chronic absenteeism out of the workforce," says Meredith. Aboriginal representation is another key measurement. e casinos were created not just for revenue generation but for social responsibility reasons — includ- ing the target of having one-half of the workforce be Aboriginal, she says. "It's always been an important mandate of ours to try to achieve that; therefore, we monitor and report on that. In fact, our board is comprised of government ap- pointees and three appointees from the First Nations here in Saskatchewan, so it's always a very important metric for our board." And right now, the representa- tion is at 40 per cent, which is still very good, says Meredith. " e economy's booming here so it gets tougher to hire anybody, let alone trying to ensure specifi c targets." While those are the high-level, corporate metrics of interest, there are also operational ones that interest the C-suite, such as employee turnover or employee safety. e latter is a good example of a success story around metrics, says Meredith. "We paid attention to that and put a number of initiatives in place and we brought it down so much now and operationalized the way we deal with OH&S is- sues that we feel we could take it off the corporate balance score- card because it's moved in the right direction and it's become operationalized. at's sort of the goal of all of these." Brendan Carr President and CEO of Island Health The Victoria-based health authority has about 18,000 employees A s an organization that's about people support- ing people, Island Health puts a lot of faith in HR metrics to understand what's going on with its staff . "Our organization is largely a car- ing organization, so the work that we do is hands-on work and… what we achieve as an organiza- tion is directly related to our staff and how they're feeling when they come to work and the conditions that we've created for them to do their jobs," says Brendan Carr, president and CEO. "Our staff are our greatest as- sets so metrics about our staff and how they're doing, the conditions that they're working in and what they're able to accomplish are re- ally critical to our mandate." HR metrics are as important as fi nancial and care metrics at the regional health authority, which has about 18,000 employees and 2,000 physicians, he says. "There's certainly an opera- tional level to HR metrics to help us understand how our system is operating but there's also very much a strategic aspect of those metrics too that helps us under- stand whether or not our staff are actually coming to work and feeling that they're supported and that they're valued and that there's clarity of focus and they know what their job is and they know how to do it." Victoria-based Island Health has a fairly sophisticated mea- surement system and series of dashboards that have quality met- rics, operational metrics and fi - nancial metrics — along with hu- man resources metrics, says Carr. ese are looked at on a continual basis or when there's a particular challenge or focus, with key op- erational indicators such as sick time, overtime, benefi ts, patterns of utilizations and the economics of HR metrics. e metrics of most interest to Carr are clusters found at the stra- tegic level, such as measurements around employee satisfaction: recognition, whether they are happy working there, if they feel it's a safe workplace and if there is a respectful environment. "We see those as measures around the culture," he says. ere are also measures around safety and quality, looking at areas such as increases in staff report- ing near-misses — which is a good thing because it means employees are comfortable communicating these issues, says Carr. "Reporting on safety and qual- ity, that is an important indicator of what it's like to work here." Carr also likes to look at in- formation around the changing workforce, so demographics, but not just age or gender — also the distribution of staff . ere's been more of a shift towards part-time and casual staff , he says. " at's pretty relevant to us be- cause casual… employees have a different relationship with the organization, they're oftentimes working in other places, they're only here part of the time so, from a leadership point of view, that creates diff erent challenges for us in terms how do we engage those people and what matters to them." In addition to traditional mea- sures, the rate of fi lling relief lines and churn is also of interest, says Carr. "We think it's linked to the ca- sual and part-time issue, where we've got more and more people who are moving within the orga- nization and we think that that probably has an impact on qual- ity and continuity of service… the learning resources that we need to have in place to support people as they move from role to role, things like that. So those are things that haven't traditionally been mea- sured that much." And, over time, HR has im- proved its methods when it comes to compiling and understanding metrics, he says. "In the past, we've been largely focused on transactional mea- sures and I do think that we're actually seeing the connection between our staff and really achieving organizational strat- egy. I really do think that we're getting more sophisticated in terms of understanding not just our staff and the conditions we're creating, (but) understanding what matters to staff ." Ben Dutton CEO of the Casman Group of Companies The construction and project management company is based in Fort McMurray, Alta., and has about 450 employees A s CEO of the Casman Group of Companies, Ben Dutton has a good understanding of the business implications of metrics. "Our capacity to grow is dictated by our people so we need to make sure that we have a strong, stable core of employees and they have the right capabilities to perform the work we need." In the last couple of years, the company has changed a lot and it's about looking more holistically at things, he says. "(It's about) statistics that give us a better idea really of what's go- ing on. We were tracking attrition before but we weren't breaking out, for example, the trades and salaried-based employees, which skews things," says Dutton. " ere's a certain transitional element to the workforce that we would expect. We break that out, we track the workforce in terms of salary base and the total work- force… we're trying to get at the same thing, we're trying to look at how much turnover do we have, what's planned, what's unplanned. We try to make that meaningful so we're not clouding the numbers with transitional workforce staff - ing up and staffi ng down." Metrics of particular interest include relatively standard ones such as turnover or positions to be fi lled, he says. "We need to recruit from out of the country so I'm looking for information on labour market opinions, I'm looking for stats on the current employees we have who are under labour market opinions as well. I want to make sure that we're renewing those in a timely manner." And to gain a pulse on the or- ganization, employee surveys are appreciated. "I'm trying to get a sense of morale and make sure everyone feels that the group of companies is heading in the right direction," says Dutton. Absenteeism is also of interest, along with retention, though the latter can be tough to gauge when it comes to average tenure, says Dutton. "Honestly, that's a little chal- lenging for us right now because we're growing so fast. We've grown about 75 per cent in the last couple of years… If we were to look at the average tenure of the employees, we're going to fi nd that deteriorating." On a monthly basis, Dutton also looks at the total departing workforce and attrition. So how many people were moved along and how many were associated with a shortage of work. Hours of work and open positions are also of interest, he says, but not neces- sarily time-to-fi ll, especially being located in Fort McMurray. "Our focus is more on getting the right person rather than how quickly we can get someone." Metrics of particular interest include turnover or positions to fi ll.

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