Data counts when it comes to leading, managing, and directing. In law enforcement, they call this CompStat for “Computer Comparison Statistics.” As more police departments employ the systems, they value the process and strategic support in pursuit of their mission to “protect and serve.” Likewise, Human Resource Information Systems can “police” your business’s people performance, propensities, and problems. CompStat improves police organizational outcomes, and it just may be a model of how HRIS can best support human capital.
What do the police have to do with it?
Any version of CompStat will let any police force replicate its information systems and processes. Transferable, compatible, and scalable, the data input and output repeats regularly and in real time. Accessible across varied platforms, the information becomes raw material for critical review by peers, experts, and decision makers. The process itself becomes a problem-solving philosophy and model.
CompStat makes its metrics the talk of the work unit, forecasts its own futures, and formulates responses. It keeps things quantifiable, reduces the subjective, and invites innovation in strategic deployment, and line and management accountability. At its best and most successful, modern policing is changing its image, and the data proves it.
What policing does HR do?
Legacy Human Resources has long been trying to shed its role as an organization’s police force. It wants to stress its softer side, its willingness to enable employees, and its ability to manage risk and compliance. In a world of “us vs. them,” the rank and file system easily identify the “police” in HR. Too many shudder at the appearance of Human Resources personnel on their floor. Peer managers expect HR to take on their respective disciplinary roles. And, senior management requires HR to keep the litigators from the door.
However, Human Resources information software and cloud systems – from core systems to the most sophisticated global systems – can police and still relieve HR management of the negative legacy:
- Core Business: HRIS manages wage and hour administration, payroll reporting and distribution, tax calculation, and filings. Inherent in the pieces of information feeding, these processes are the networks of defining data on compensation equity and affirmative action.
- Human Capital:Human Resources information software will mine talent resources, support recruiting processes, and process, track, and archive personnel forms. It will facilitate training, self-assessment, and personal development. And, it will share evolving data with peer and interested managers.
- Corporate Goals: Policing of employee hours lowers the cost of business. As long as corporate leadership passes this burden to HR, HR will suffer. On the other hand, HRIS data provides a best line of defense when arguing decisions and dollars. When HR can count on reliable self-confirming data, it frees itself to invest in human capital in other ways.
What CompStat has done for urban policing is to create partners. The data systems have neither bias nor political purpose. They owe nothing to anyone and suffer no pressure to comply. Likewise, you can position Human Resources Information Systems to provide the same unchallenged objectivity, authoritative clarity, and measured independence. Positioned so, HRIS will enhance your management creativity, involve more players, serve employees better, and align with corporate goals.
To read more about how CompStat uses and measures data see, The CompStat Process: Managing Performance on the Pathway to Leadership.