What Should an HR Dashboard Contain? Essential Metrics for HR Leaders
As an HR leader, you want to leverage data in a meaningful way, to make informed business decisions, drive your people strategy, and identify trends. A well-made HR dashboard within your HR solution will help you do just that, by providing you with comprehensive and powerful insights into how your organisation is growing and performing, as well as enabling you to successfully manage every stage of the employee lifecycle.
What is an HR dashboard?
An HR dashboard is a business intelligence tool that allows HR teams to track, report and analyse various HR metrics and KPIs in one interface. It pulls together valuable data from multiple sources and can provide visual insights, such as graphs and charts, to help HR leaders with strategic decision making, reporting and monitoring performance.
“A good HR dashboard should act as a snapshot of your key HR metrics in an easy-to-digest format,” says Cameron Scorer, head of people at Silver Cloud HR. “It’s something an HR leader can use to tell a story to non-HR stakeholders. Dashboards can be customised based on each company’s needs but, ultimately, it’s a quick one-stop-shop to get a sense of what’s happening around the organisation.”
The importance of an HR dashboard
Well-designed HR dashboards can have quite an impact on an organisation’s people strategy and wider business goals.
“HR dashboards can provide visual insights into employee performance and workforce trends, as well as help to identify areas of concern,” comments Sarah Prendergast, HRIS project analyst at ReThink HR. “These insights can inform future people strategies such as improved recruitment processes, onboarding and induction, retention, employee engagement and employee development policies. HR dashboards can also assist with closing the gap between HR initiatives and broader business objectives, as well as illustrate the direct impact HR initiatives have had on the overall business success.”
Sophie Bryan, founder and chief workplace culture consultant at Ordinarily Different, adds that HR dashboards can turn raw data into a clear story that connects what’s happening with employees to the bigger picture for the business. “If you’re tracking metrics like engagement, diversity, or retention, you can see where the issues are and what opportunities lie ahead. That way, HR leaders can align their plans with what the company needs, such as improving team morale, reducing turnover, or creating a more inclusive culture.”
A good HR dashboard can be seen as a guide to understanding your priorities and therefore shaping your people strategy, says Cameron Scorer. “It can gather data and identify trends throughout the business. This can better help you see what areas of the business need your focus, instead of relying solely on your own day-to-day interactions. Without having clear data in place, you don’t have anything to base your strategy on.”
HR dashboards are a great tool for leadership visibility too, as they enable business leaders to quickly and easily identify trends or opportunities for improvement.
“These dashboards can be extremely helpful for leaders because they give a quick snapshot of key trends without drowning them in detail,” remarks Sophie Bryan. “If execs can see things at a glance, such as rising recruitment costs or falling retention rates, they’re in a better position to act fast and prevent bigger issues down the line. It gives them the visibility they need to make smarter, more proactive decisions.”
What are the most important metrics to track in an HR dashboard?
There are many metrics that can be included and tracked in an HR dashboard that will be valuable to both HR and the wider organisation, and it will ultimately depend on what is important to the business and its unique needs. However, there are a few key metrics that all HR leaders should consider including in their dashboard.
“Typically, you’ll want to track employee engagement, retention, diversity, and performance,” advises Sophie Bryan. “If you’re looking at engagement through surveys or feedback, for example, you can quickly spot any dip in satisfaction and adjust. Retention metrics help pinpoint why people might be leaving and what you can do to keep them.”
Sarah Prendergast believes that some of the most important metrics for HR leaders to track are time to hire; absenteeism rate; employee turnover rate; and employee engagement.
“With time to hire, you can measure the average duration to fill open positions, reflecting the efficiency of the recruitment process,” she explains. “Absenteeism rates track the frequency and reasons for employee absences, which can affect productivity; high absenteeism can also significantly impact business costs and employee motivation. Employee engagement metrics evaluate the level of employee involvement and satisfaction, which is essential for productivity and retention. And employee turnover rates indicate the rate at which employees leave the organisation, helping to identify retention challenges.”
Quality of hire is another important area to measure, adds Cameron Scorer. “You can track this by how many people pass probation or stay beyond a year while performing at a high level. Making bad hires can be costly and time consuming, not to mention damaging to the wider business.”
Tracking diversity, equity and inclusion is also crucial, he adds. “It is well documented that having a more diverse workforce means a higher performing team. Adding stats around these factors could be your answer to things like further innovation or cultural development.”
Other common HR dashboard metrics include employee productivity, training and development costs, and cost per hire.
How to make meaningful comparisons with an HR reporting dashboard
A well-built HR dashboard also enables HR leaders to track different metrics within the same dashboard, allowing them to make meaningful comparisons and analysis, and gain deeper insights.
“For HR leaders to be able to view these metrics within a single dashboard enables informed data-driven decisions; they can visually identify trends at the click of a button without the need for in-depth data analysis,” comments Sarah Prendergast.
“For example, dashboards that are filtered by teams can help to identify those high performing employees, as well as highlight those needing support by analysing engagement, turnover rates, absence rates and performance. To monitor gender equality, dashboards can be used to compare metrics across training participation, promotions, salary increases, retention rates, and absence rates by gender. And to enable fair and consistent compensation practices, dashboards can track salary and benefits data across different roles and demographics.”
While stats make for a great snapshot, the story behind the stats is just as important, says Cameron Scorer. “Using seemingly unrelated data can help dig down further and provide better context around trends. For example, there could be a correlation between low diversity stats and performance metrics. Seeing how this varies across teams could highlight your top areas or low areas that you need to address.”
In this data-driven world, a good HR dashboard is essential to help HR leaders shape the business and become strategic partners.
