Benchmarking is a process which establishes behavioral standards most appropriate for a given position - that is, what behaviors are most effective most of the time in this job. A well-defined Behavioral Job Description acts as a standard in evaluating existing employees as well as a guide in hiring new employees.
Today's benchmarking tools are powerful, but they can cause as much damage as good if they are carelessly applied. With the help of objective tools and targeted guidance, the process has productive results. No matter which quality tools are used in the benchmarking process, more and more companies, because they have experienced misguided application, are turning to professional help.
Traditionally, most benchmarking has involved profiling employees in a target position to determine which attributes are most common in your best performers. This imperfect method has several potential dangers.
First, it actually assumes you already have the best performers and that you can find none that can perform better. This assumption limits benchmark standards to your current employees only, and does not consider standards outside your current environment.
Another common mistake is that guidelines for selecting and ranking the top performers have not been well-defined. For example, sales statistics have been erroneously used to rank performance.
As an example, Joe has been selling for us forever. His figures make him look like a top performer, but Joe developed his client base back when all he had to do was take orders as people called in. He was the only salesperson in an easy market with little or no competition.
Today, however, is much different. Competition is fierce. If Joe had to start from scratch in today's market, how would he fare? How long would it take to build that client base now, if he could at all? If you based your sales position's benchmark on Joe because his statistics look good and hired people with this benchmark as your guide, you may have hired ineffective people with Joe's traits.
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