HR Dashboard

One place with all the HR insights you may need at your fingertips.

Imagine driving a car without a dashboard. You’ll probably end up with a few fines, and forget to check the oil level until you see smoke coming out of the bonnet. Far from ideal! Now imagine managing an HR function and the employees of your company without a dashboard. It still happens in many organizations, but in our opinion, it’s not exactly desirable. The solution: implementing an HR Metrics Dashboard!

What are HR Dashboards?

A Human Resource Dashboard is, just like a car dashboard, a visual display of the most important information. Preferably, the information is consolidated on one screen, so that the user can see the status, and whether adjustments are needed, at a glance. The terms HR Dashboard and HR Reporting are both used to describe the same thing. However, there are differences between the two.

HR Dashboards

HR Dashboards are concise; they only focus on key indicators (often referred to as key performance indicators or KPIs).

A good HR Dashboard is easy to read.

HR Dashboards preferably include the target values, and whether these are being met.

HR Reports

An HR Report includes other values (often referred to as metrics) in addition to the KPIs.

An HR Report is more extensive and a little more complex.

Most HR Reports have a more descriptive style.

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Who uses HR Dashboards?

If we ignore the strict distinction between HR Dashboards and HR Reports, several user groups can be identified.

The line and HR Business Partners

HR Dashboards can include all the KPIs that the line, together with HR, is responsible for. That’s usually no more than five. Think, for example, of the absenteeism and turnover rates and the eNPS score. It is possible to expand the HR Metrics dashboard with a periodical, supporting analysis carried out by an HR analyst. This can include an overview of possible causes as well as the actions that are needed for adjustments.

The HR Director and the HR Management Team

An HR Management Dashboard contains all the KPIs that were set by the HR Management. These include the KPIs that the line focuses on, plus a few others. Think for example of the target value for the male/female ratio, or the bench strength for succession planning. Again, an HR analyst can provide periodical, additional details.

HR Policy / Center of Excellence

HR policy officers are often responsible for the HR portfolio, which can include several different themes. For example: Sustainable Employability, Internal Mobility, Diversity & Inclusiveness or Remuneration. KPIs can be set for each theme, and the theme owner/MT member with that particular topic in his or her portfolio can be provided with an HR Theme Dashboard. As policy officers are often experts in the field, HR Theme Dashboards are usually supplemented with HR Reports providing further HR Metrics. That’s why this type of dashboard is sometimes referred to as an HR Metrics dashboard, although purists don’t like to hear this. Some of these operational HR Reports offer the possibility to view data at a personal level as well.

Internal HR

In addition to the relevant HR Metrics Dashboards, HR officers are often also looking for operational HR reports or ‘lists’. Who joined the organization when? How much do the employees in team X earn? Ideally, there’s a standard set of lists, and/or HR officers can click on the information they need to compile an operational HR report.

HR Analyst

The HR Analyst typically has access to all HR Metrics dashboards and HR Reports, from the HR Management Dashboard to the Operational HR Reports. HR Analysts can also build new HR Dashboards and HR Reports, allowing them to optimally support their colleagues with insights.

Which HR Metrics are suitable for HR Dashboards?

HR Metrics / key indicators provide insight into the characteristics and the nature of the workforce and the HR management. When they’re collected and presented periodically, they can show developments and discrepancies and highlight possible challenges within the organization.

The execution of a strategy, project or process often comes with three aspects: quantity, quality and outcome. For example: ‘how many people have competence X’, ‘what’s the level at which employees master a certain competence’, ‘how much does customer satisfaction increase because of competence X’. It can be useful to keep this in mind and/or use it as a checklist when setting target values.

With hundreds of HR key indicators to choose from, it’s important to be critical when you select what you want to focus on. If there are too many indicators, it can be hard to see the forest for the trees. It is always best to select HR Metrics that are in line with the business and HR objectives. The HR Strategy Map or the Issue Tree can come in handy here.

Another tip is to make the indicators as much action oriented as possible. By making them mostly predictive for example, like the ‘future number of vacancies’ or the ‘% employees in essential functions retiring in the coming year’.

AnalitiQs’ working method for HR Dashboards

When a client asks AnalitiQs to help them with an HR Metrics dashboard, we prefer to take a structured approach.

Strategy Map

For general HR Dashboards, we start with making a strategy map based on the business and HR strategy. For a specific theme dashboard, we use HR and HR theme strategy to create a strategy map.
Voor een algemeen HR Dashboard beginnen we met het opstellen van een strategiekaart op basis van de bedrijfs- en HR strategie. Voor een specifiek thema dashboard gebruiken we de HR- en HR thema strategie om tot een strategiekaart te komen.

Metrics and KPI’s

Once it’s clear how HR supports the business strategy, and which themes within HR are important, the metrics for each HR theme are determined. After that, a selection of those metrics is chosen as General HR KPIs and/or HR Theme KPIs. The general KPIs are included in the HR Management Dashboard page. The theme KPIs are used for the various HR Policy/CoE dashboard pages. Think for example of an absenteeism dashboard, inclusiveness dashboard, diversity dashboard, training dashboard, recruitment dashboard, voice of the employee dashboard and a vitality dashboard.

The HR Dashboard offers a way to access the HR Metrics that weren’t chosen as KPIs, allowing the user to move beyond the dashboard, down to the level of a report.

Technology

Once the ‘crown of the tree’ has been designed, with the general HR KPIs in the top and the HR Theme KPIs in the middle, it’s time to decide on the ‘trunk’ and the ‘roots’ of the tree.

The trunk symbolises the technology. For example, will the HR Metrics dashboard be hosted by the client or by AnalitiQs, and which applications will be used to build the HR Dashboard? AnalitiQs is agnostic when it comes to technology; we decide in consultation with the client’s organization which technology would suit them and their context best. We don’t have commercial relationships with software providers.

Data

The roots symbolise the data that’s needed to build the dashboard. It could turn out that there’s a gap between the desired KPIs and the required data.

Building

When the tree is designed from crown to roots, the building can begin. We prefer to work Agile. That means that we create a backlog of all the tasks that need to be carried out, and subsequently go through the backlog in sprints. We always aim to deliver a Minimal Viable Product as soon as possible, so that the client has something concrete to improve on. When we receive the client’s feedback, it’s prioritized and taken into account in our subsequent sprints, until we deliver a complete HR Metrics dashboard that the client is happy with.

Maintenance

AnalitiQs can also carry out the management and maintenance of the HR Dashboard, or provide training to the client’s internal people, so that they can do it themselves.

AnalitiQs developed an HR Dashboard for us. We really liked how they thought along with us and we were happy with their support during the process and the rollout of the dashboards. We got exactly what we wanted.
Data expert
Financial Service provider

HR Dashboard example

AnalitiQs is independent of software parties. We work in the application that best suits the customer. Thanks to our many years of experience in HR Analytics, we are well versed in visualization applications such as PowerBI, Qlik, MicroStrategy and Tableau.

Below you will find an HR demo dashboard that we have created in PowerBI for inspiration.