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The Metrics That Matter (And The Ones We Need To Let Go) · Edan Haddock - Total Talent

• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Eden Haddock Total Talent.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Eden Haddock, Head of Talent and People Experience at Movember.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: No guests, no sponsors, just conversations about the future of talent from somebody who's still doing the job every day.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Today's episode comes from something I've noticed over the past decade.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Talent teams have become incredibly good at building dashboards.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: We have more data than ever before, more Power BI, more Tableau, more workday dashboards, more greenhouse reports, more charts, more colors, more percentages.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: But are we actually measuring talent?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Or are we measuring recruitment administration?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because of course, those are two very different things.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think somewhere over the last ten years, we've accidentally become obsessed with reporting things that are easy to count instead of things that actually help the business make better decisions.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And today I really want to unpack that.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Not just what we should measure, but why.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because metrics without context are just numbers.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Data without narrative is noise.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: And talent teams don't need bigger dashboards.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: We need better stories.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: We'll start with a statement.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: We report to ourselves.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Here's an exercise.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine you're presenting your monthly talent report.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: You proudly tell the executive team time to fill is 38 days.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Offer acceptance is 96%.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Candidate NPS score is at plus seventy-one.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Agency spend is down 18%.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Hiring manager satisfaction is 4.8 out of five, for example.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now imagine your CEO asks, so what?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Silence.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Not because they're wrong.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: But because we've answered a question nobody asked.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Executives don't wake up wondering about candidate NPS.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: They wake up wondering: can we deliver our strategy?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Do we have enough capability?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: What are our biggest risks?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Can we hit revenue?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Can we launch?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Can we innovate?
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Talent often reports operational metrics, but executives want business intelligence.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll talk now about recruitment metrics versus business metrics.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is where I think we need a mindset shift.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Recruitment metrics tell us how recruitment performed.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: But talent metrics tell us how the organization is performing.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: They are related, but they're not the same.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: So let's compare.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Recruitment asks, how many hires?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: The business asks, did we hire the people who changed the business?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Recruitment asks how fast?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Business asks, what happened because we weren't fast enough?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Recruitment asks cost per hire.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Business asks cost of vacancy.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's a completely different conversation.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want to tackle the big one.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Time to hire.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Every few months, LinkedIn decides time to hire is a terrible metric.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: I disagree.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Sort of.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Here's where people get confused.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Time to hire is not a measure of recruitment performance or a talent functions performance.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Let's stop using it that way.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: If a recruiter fills a niche AI engineering role in ninety-five days, are they slow?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe not.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there were only six people in Australia.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe compensation wasn't competitive.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the approvals took six weeks.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the hiring manager disappeared twice.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the organization changed strategy halfway through.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: So of course, blaming talent for time to hire is lazy leadership.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: But throwing the metric away is equally lazy.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because time to hire tells us something incredibly important.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Business risk.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine your head of cyber leaves.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a hundred and forty days to replace them.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a recruitment problem.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: But it's an organizational risk problem.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: It tells us we didn't have succession.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't build capability.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: We relied on one person.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: We had no talent pipeline.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: We had no contingency.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's valuable intelligence.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Time to hire didn't fail.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: We just interpreted it incorrectly.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: So the metrics I think actually matter.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk about what I think belongs on executive dashboards.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Firstly, role criticality.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Not every vacancy is equal.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Replacing a graduate coordinator isn't the same as replacing your chief revenue officer.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: So why do we often report them equally?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Role criticality changes everything.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Time, risk, investment, executive attention.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Vacancy risk, I think, is important.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: How many critical roles are currently vacant?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: How long have they been vacant?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: What's the operational impact?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Revenue, safety, customer experience, innovation?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Right, now we're talking.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Then we move on to succession coverage.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Is there one successor?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Two?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: None?
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: Are they ready now?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Ready in twelve months?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Ready in three years?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's talent.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Performance distribution as well.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Where are our highest performers?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Where are they concentrated?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Where are they leaving?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Where are we over-dependent?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: And potential.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: This one fascinates me.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Performance tells you what someone has done.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Potential tells you what they could become.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And great organizations measure both.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because tomorrow's leaders don't magically appear.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: I like regrettable loss.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: I like that as a measure.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, but we need to stop measuring turnover.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: And we need to start measuring who left.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's a huge difference between losing someone and losing someone you absolutely couldn't afford to lose.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Then internal mobility, of course, I think we all report on that.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, but reframing it, can your people grow?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Or do they leave to get promoted?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's a real powerful talent metric.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: The last one is workforce resilience.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's a big one for me.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: How exposed are we if someone leaves tomorrow?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's a board-level conversation.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: But we really need to stop reporting numbers and start telling stories.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: This might be my biggest takeaway today.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Dashboards don't change businesses.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Stories do.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of saying time to fill increased by six days, say our average time to fill increased because our highest risk technology roles doubled in complexity.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: During that period, three major projects were delayed, costing approximately eight weeks in delivery.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: We recommend building succession pipelines for these capability areas.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it's the same data, but a completely different impact.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Or instead of saying and reporting, we hired 180 people, try those 180 hires enabled us to open two new markets, launch three new products, and reduce contractor reliance by 22%.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, executives care when it's presented that way because you've translated talent into business language.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: I genuinely think the future of talent isn't reporting what happened.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's predicting what's about to happen.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine walking into the executive meeting and saying, we believe marketing is at high risk succession within the next twelve months.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Or we have identified three business critical teams with no ready now successes.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Or based on mobility trends, we expect a spike in regrettable turnover within engineering.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's where AI changes everything.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's where people analytics changes everything.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it's predictive.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's not prettier dashboards.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's not more data, but it's better predictions.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Talent shouldn't be the department that explains yesterday.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: We should be the function helping the business prepare for tomorrow.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the challenge I'd leave everyone with this week.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Please do open your latest talent dashboard.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: I have.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Look at every metric and ask yourself one question.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: If I removed this tomorrow, would the business notice?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's a big question.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if the answer is no, then why are we reporting it?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Talent has spent years proving we can recruit.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the next decade is about proving we can influence business strategy.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that means measuring risk, capability, potential, leadership, criticality, succession, readiness, resilience.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Not because dashboards look impressive.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because organizations make better decisions when they understand the story behind the numbers.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: Metrics are important.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: But metrics alone don't create confidence.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Stories do.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that's our opportunity.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Eden Haddock Total Talent.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you have enjoyed today's conversation, I'd really appreciate it if you could follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: And please share the episode with someone who still believes a green dashboard means everything is fine.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Or share it with someone that that doesn't.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, keep challenging convention, keep asking better questions.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And remember the best talent teams don't just report what happened, they help shape what happens next.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.