This is the seventh of a multi-part case study that discusses the radical, strategic, necessary, and successful changes implemented by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the second largest public school district in the nation. The LAUSD was able to implement a large scale $95 million enterprise resource solution a full four years ahead of schedule, which clearly demonstrates how processes or technology alone can never transform an organization’s culture. To read the case study from the beginning, go to Part I.

Step 4: Introduce accountability and the use of metrics

Like many business professionals and organizational leaders, educators fear accountability. They believe they will be held accountable for something beyond their control. The LAUSD’s recruiters were never asked to account for their recruiting performance by having their efforts and expenditures measured against the results they obtained. Once they were provided with the tools they helped to acquire, modify, and implement, they were asked how many interviews were needed to yield a hire and how long it would take to turn interviewed candidates into hires so that the LAUSD could backwards map the recruiting process and determine when the recruiters would need to start their sourcing efforts in order to hire the needed candidates on time. As basic as these questions and answers may be to many human resource professionals, they were completely foreign to the LAUSD recruiters.

Results of Step 4

Once the recruiters were shown that accountability should be used to analyze and identify the most productive activities and to modify or eliminate those activities with a low return on investment, they started to buy into the process instead of feeling like their jobs were being threatened by the introduction of accountability. For the first time, they could start comparing their results with the results of their fellow recruiters. These comparisons instilled the desired effect of creating a little healthy competition among them and ultimately improved the outcomes for the whole team. The metrics had the added benefit of increasing the credibility and eventually the pride of the entire recruiting branch.

The introduction of accountability and metrics improved the ability of the human resources department to communicate with the superintendent and school board. As a result, both gained confidence in the human resource department and the credibility of the district was dramatically enhanced at the state level. The metrics provided the department with the roadmap that it so desperately needed to help it achieve its goals – and its plans, actions, and results were fully documented every step of the way.

To continue reading this case study, please go to Part VIII.