The revolving door: Annual workforce turnover
Median
Best in class
2005
10.0%
3.4%
2006
10.0%
4.1%
2007
14.0%
3.0%
2008
11.1%
3.9%
2009
10.0%
3.2%
2010
6.8%
0.8%
2011
8.0%
2.4%
2012
5.0%
1.0%
EXHIBIT 4
The “soft” side: Metrics for interpersonal performance
SOFT METRICS
Communication approaches
Collaboration approaches
Trust
Leadership orientation
Innovation
Team focus
CONCEPTS
performance, attention will turn to what we call the
“soft” side of performance—how human beings interact
with one another in the workplace. That’s because skills
like the ability to communicate effectively and build and
maintain relationships—whether with colleagues, suppliers, or customers—have a measurable impact on both
operational performance and customer satisfaction. (See
Exhibit 4 for some examples.)
To put it another way, the effectiveness of an organization’s relationship with customers and suppliers depends
heavily upon non-operational elements of performance:
employees’ ability to communicate well, personally
interface with counterparts at other companies, make
mutually beneficial decisions, solve problems jointly, and
collaborate. Ignoring these interpersonal aspects of performance can often have negative long-term effects on
relationships, which is likely to have severe consequences
for a company as a whole.
To develop a true picture of supply chain success, then,
organizations must measure both the “what” (
operational) and the “how” (interpersonal) aspects of performance. The importance of these soft skills dictates a
need for a new generation of business metrics and scorecards designed to gauge both sides of performance.
In the upcoming years, research will be needed to
explore how these attributes should be defined, calculated, and tracked. It is significantly different from previous
metrics and benchmarking studies, as many of the measures are relatively new. The University of Tennessee and
Georgia Southern University have already started
researching companies that are taking a hard look at the
soft side of performance. ;
About the authors: Joseph Tillman is senior researcher
for the consulting firm Supply Chain Visions, Karl
Manrodt is a professor at Georgia Southern University,
and Kate Vitasek is the co-founder of Supply Chain
Visions.
Editor’s note: The full results of the study are available at
www.werc.org. To read more about the “soft” side of metrics, see “A hard look at the soft side of performance,” which
appeared in the Quarter 4/2011 edition of DC VELOCITY’S
sister publication, CSCMP’s Supply Chain Quarterly.
