Are You Suffering From Benchmarking Skepticism?

In 1989 I started my company to improve human potential in all areas of knowledge work. As my company grew, I would run across clients saying they had been approached by companies who wanted to use Benchmarking. I was a strong advocate on the side of not Benchmarking. My logic was simple. Typically, those setting the benchmark were people in roles they were proficient in and they would set incomplete and sometime unrealistic standards for those same jobs. So if you were great at project management you could set the benchmark for the project management position. My concern was who made that person setting that benchmark great at project management? Was he or she the best in the world or the best at that company? My intuition proved right because a lot of benchmarking was not effective because those setting the benchmarks were not superior performers. My definition of a superior performer has to do with the specific attention given to how they do what they do and what intrinsically motivated them to come to work every day married to personal and workload competencies. What many companies were selling for the Benchmarking process were ranking attributes that were heavily biased.

However, today I am a 100% strong advocate for benchmarking in many areas. I recommended benchmarking for hiring, developing, and leading a workforce to increase retention and job satisfaction and add to the bottom line. So you might be asking what turned me around from skeptic to advocate. The answer lies in doing a benchmark correctly by understanding the job in three critical areas of job performance. The three areas of job performance are: how they do what they do every day, what excites and motivates them to come to work each and every day, and what attributes (both personal and workload skills) must they know to be proficient at performing the job at a master level. As a bonus, I also incorporate Emotional Intelligence assessments as an additional way to understand how they will manage their emotions and get along well with others on the team. Above all else you must allow "the job to talk" without letting bias creep into the benchmarking process.

This process of not allowing bias to creep in begins by making sure you have a certified qualified facilitator to work with your organization through the benchmarking process. The facilitator's role will immediately eliminate any bias in benchmarking. This is accomplished by identifying key accountabilities from various subject matter experts. Each facilitator is trained to help the subject matter experts not only consider their bias, but assist in showing how to completely understand the job. Once this is accomplished, the subject matter experts can actually completely understand the job, which allows for better identification of competencies and personal skills. Each subject matter expert then participates in a questionnaire which will measure these findings. They then group and compare all the results and construct the benchmark. Next, you run your comparisons and gap reports for either new hires or construction of individual development plans for existing team members. Now you can begin the process of hiring, shortening ramp up time, retention and development.

This sounds plausible, but does this work? Yes! That's another reason why I am no longer a skeptic. Let me share one result my strategic partners conducted recently where the customer satisfaction ranking increased 50% to a top ten ranking in the country. In addition, a secondary goal of increased referral business improved dramatically to the point the CEO estimated that leveraging their strengths and building upon them will see $100,000,000 in annual new revenue when this initiative runs it course. This is one of many recommendations from small, medium, and large organizations that help to turn around my skepticism into passion for benchmarking. Perhaps you should investigate this proven method for your workforce.

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