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I think you get the message...keep some simple notes. A few quick counts each day or each week can add up quickly. You’ll be surprised how much information you can accumulate when you start tracking the things that eat up your time.

Talking the Language
OK, so you’ve got a good handle on how you did this year (month, quarter, or year) compared with the same period last year. But, can you really make the numbers understood? Can you make them really mean something to senior management? Probably not as well as you’d like.

Here’s a real case. An HR person reduced absenteeism in a given area from 4% to 3%. She was very pleased about the 1% reduction. She was even more pleased when I suggested that the real reduction was more like 25% !! How can that be? Work the math. If you have four quarters in your hand and take one away, how much did you lose? You only lost one quarter, but it was 25% of what you had in your hand. In this example, the reduction was 1 percentage point, but it was a 25% change!

Make it a point to make your contribution as realistic as possible, then make sure you talk in the best terms possible. In fact, convert your contribution to sales or revenue dollars. In the example above, let’s assume the 25% reduction in absenteeism had saved $15,000 in overtime and lost orders. 

The $15,000 sounds good, but try a different view. How many dollars does it take in sales to equal a dollar in savings? Let’s assume that the organization has to have $100 in revenue to net $10. You just saved $15,000. Now, convert that $15,000 in savings to revenue: $15,000 / $10 = $150,000. In other words, your efforts to reduce absenteeism equaled $150,000 in sales!

Talk to your CFO or Controller about the value of dollars saved. Convert savings to dollars of revenue … you’ll get more understanding and more attention from senior management when you speak their language.

Barry Brown is President of Effective Resources, Inc., a Florida-based consulting firm specializing in Compensation (including incentive design), Affirmative Action Plans, and Salary Surveys. For more information call toll-free (800) 288-6044 or visit their websites: www.EffectiveResources.com and www.SalarySurveyOnLine.com.