Over a third of payroll professionals do not know the number of sick days their staff take, how long they stay in their jobs, or even the cost of recruiting staff, according to research in 2005 by a major HR and payroll software provider.

Worse yet, nearly three-quarters do not know how their HR data benchmarks to industry peers thereby challenging the notion that HR can create a competitive advantage.

Nearly 500 HR professionals across a range of sectors took part in the survey. The main findings reveal:

HR cannot see its current people issues:

• Nearly half have no idea of the cost of recruiting staff
  
• More than one in ten do not know how many employees work for their organisation
  
• A mere third agreed inducting new staff should be part of the recruitment cost
  
• Over a third do not have software to manage staff information

HR cannot show how their people should be performing:

• Over a third of HR professionals do not know how many sick days their employees take each year
  
• More than two-thirds do not know how their organisations’ absence rates compare with the industry average
  
• More than a third do not know their previous year’s employee turnover and more than two-thirds do not know how they compare to industry average

HR cannot forecast for the future and identify recruitment and succession needs:

• More than a third do not know their employees’ average length of service
  
• Nearly one in four do not know how many employees willretire in the next three years

Guy Liddall, Managing Director MTS comments on this research:

“HR aims to make a real business impact by contributing to strategy and business planning. But to do so, it has to first understand the HR basics. Without being able to accurately forecast the future business needs, HR will only be able to ‘feel its way’ not fulfil its boardroom ambition. Without this knowledge, how can HR expect to really help drive performance?

We believe in the motor industry it is essential that developing the human resources of the business to achieve the strategic objectives. They would be best advised to allow specialist outsourced providers to concentrate on the day-to-day operational tasks of: Recruiting, Managing Attendance and dealing with routine administrative payroll issues.

The result would be economies of scale, in terms of knowledge and operational efficiency and time for HR people to concentrate on human resource capability and development."