The ultimate HR metrics ‘cheat sheet’: part 5
Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been deep-diving into the key metrics in HR. Which interesting data does the HR sector have available? And how to employ it in a clever way for decision-making?
Before we get to our last topic in this series, let’s recap what we’ve discussed so far. We looked into 4 specific domains of HR, namely:
- Staffing & employment: how to plan your workforce more efficiently?
- Recruitment: how to better find and attract new talent?
- Training & development: how to efficiently train an employee’s skillset?
- Employee well-being: how to improve employee retention & satisfaction?
To finish this series, let’s look further into 1 topic that applies across all of these domains: finance & administration. Many parts of HR come with a financial side and an administrative load. It’s important for any company to keep a close eye on this, and to have a good oversight.
You’ll find this article most useful if you’re involved in processes such as:
- Payroll
- Contracts & administration
- HR automation
How to start reporting on HR administration?
How many hours of overtime were booked this month? What about vacation days or sick leave? How does all of this affect the organization financially? In terms of compensation: how are salaries different across job functions and seniority? How do they differ for FTE’s and contractors? Are there any abnormalities to be solved?
As a fact, there are lots of administrative processes in HR, often directly related to the payroll. So, when your personnel cost goes up, you’ll want to know why and how this happened.
Therefore, it’s crucial to keep track of the administrative level. A good insight into your HR processes will help you track down where potential risks or problems rise for the
Luckily, there are many tools out there nowadays that help companies better manage their HR administration. For example, platforms like
Having all that data is a good start. But it leads to 2 further questions:
- Out of all the available data, what do we want to keep track of?
- How do we present it in a visual report?
What are common HR admin metrics to track?
With the amount of data literally increasing by the minute, you can analyze almost anything. So before you dive into the HR data, make sure to answer this question first: “Which information is important to my department?”
Every company typically has a set of
Now, you need to start somewhere, right? Therefore, we made this list of basic HR admin metrics, which you can use as a starting point to set more specific KPIs.
| Total hours worked | Total hours overtime | Total days absence | Total gross salary cost | Total net salary | Total vacation days | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Employee | ||||||
| Contract type | ||||||
| Type of compensation | ||||||
| Seniority | ||||||
| Time | ||||||
| Used/Unused |
Creating an HR dashboard
Once you’ve selected your KPIs, you’ll get the most out of them if they are presented in a visual, up-to-date report. Real-time dashboards can be a good solution.
Are you already using software for HR administration? If you’re lucky, it might already offer a form of reporting inside the platform itself. If you’re still looking for the right tool, this type of additional reporting can really make the difference when making your final choice.
Play around with the embedded dashboard below, to discover how it works.
Conclusion: how to do data-driven HR?
Now that we’ve come to the end of this series, let’s do a recap. What are the 4 steps to a data-driven HR strategy?
- Assess: Which HR tools are we using? Which data do they have available? If possible, we recommend picking tools that allow you to export data, or have an integrated reporting component available.
- Define: Out of the available metrics, decide which ones are crucial to your business. Define KPIs that align to your business goals.
- Analyze: Build dashboards that visualize your KPIs, or get a process in place to use your reports proactively.
- Take action: Based on your insights, define actions within your organization to optimize the parts of your business that need improvement.
That’s it, you’re ready to start doing data-driven HR. Good luck!
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About The Author
Mieke Houbrechts
Digital marketer & content writer at Cumul.io.