Our human resources and administration managers claim that their roles are purely qualitative and that they cannot track weekly numbers without creating meaningless admin work. What specific weekly measurables should we assign to a back-office seat?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

The objection that back-office seats are too qualitative to measure is a myth. Every seat on your Accountability Chart exists to produce an outcome, and if an outcome exists, it can be measured. When an HR or administration manager resists weekly metrics, they are usually confusing complex department key performance indicators with the simple activity-based numbers needed for an EOS scorecard.

For a human resources seat, do not track vague concepts like morale. Instead, track concrete leading indicators. Excellent examples include the number of days to fill open positions, the percentage of performance reviews completed on time, or the weekly compliance training completion rate. If you are preparing the company for a clean exit, a great HR metric is the percentage of employee files that are fully updated and audit-ready.

For an administrative or operations support seat, look at the bottlenecks they control. You can track the average turnaround time for customer inquiries, the percentage of office supply expenses within budget, or the weekly accuracy rate of data entry into your software systems.

The key is to select one to three weekly numbers that give the leadership team absolute confidence that the back-office engine is running smoothly. Work with the seat owner during their next review to identify these numbers. Make sure they understand that having a weekly scorecard metric is not a micromanagement tool. It is their opportunity to objectively prove they are executing their role with excellence.