How to Use HR Dashboards to Drive Better Business Results

What is an HR dashboard?

An HR dashboard is a business intelligence tool that allows businesses and HR teams to record, evaluate, and report on various HR performance metrics. Generally speaking, business dashboards deliver high-level and interactive summaries of multiple types of information from multiple data sources that can be easily accessed and analyzed. 

Interactive HR dashboards split a single screen into several individual cells or widgets that summarize and present data through numbers, graphs, tables, and various other visuals. These visuals are often accompanied by links that let users drill down into more detail on specific metrics or data sources. This is instead of, for example, a single static report on attribution rates or multiple reports on various HR metrics that are spread across different screens or documents. 

HR dashboards might be broad, encompassing all of the information and data needed for the HR function. Or, an HR team may have multiple dashboards specific to various HR roles. This could include a dashboard on employee satisfaction, an employee training and development dashboard, and one designated for executive compensation, for instance. The goal in all cases is to aggregate, simplify, and present data in a single screen to make it easier to quickly view, analyze, and take action on specific HR metrics.

Combining people data and work data together in a single dashboard is essential for making sound, strategic business decisions. HR dashboards help leaders at all levels—from department managers to the C-suite—by providing a clear view of workforce data for better decision-making.

In the past, businesses often relied on gut instinct and fragmented reports to address workforce challenges. During growth or restructuring phases, such leadership teams would find it difficult to identify skill gaps, forecast talent needs, or determine the impact of employee turnover on productivity.

The impact of using HR dashboards

The core benefit of HR dashboards is their ability to simplify and centralize key metrics and data points that HR teams use to drive their strategies and make decisions. 

If you zoom in on the specific impacts of HR dashboards, you’ll notice: 

• The real-time data about employee performance, attrition, and engagement you get provides greater insights, supporting workforce decisions.

• You'll increase productivity by accurately identifying work inefficiencies, adjusting the structure of your teams, and better using your resources.

• You'll get a better look at attrition trends and real employee sentiment so you can launch engagement strategies that will finally move things.

• These dashboards will shape workforce planning based on your business goals, maximizing profitability and operating efficiency.

• Through automation, you can compare reports, speed up HR functions, and eliminate repetitive, manual work.

Visier's AI-enabled HR dashboards raise workforce intelligence to a new level by integrating continuous insights, predictive analytics, and AI-driven recommendations. With Visier, organizations can:

• Bring people and business data together to get a holistic view of workforce impact.

• Use AI-driven insights to proactively address workforce challenges.

• Optimize performance and retention via strategic workforce planning tools.

• Make confident data-driven decisions with always-ready analytics.

Visier gives organizations access to a Workforce AI Edge designed to assist leaders in confidently navigating today's swift-changing business environment. Our technology helps you improve workforce productivity, improve business outcomes, and stay ahead of the competition in a fast-changing world.

Companies using Visier's Workforce AI Edge enjoy many advantages, such as:

• Being 3x more likely to surpass financial goals by implementing GenAI-powered people analytics

• Seeing 9x better agility from using advanced analytics practices

Process for developing and using HR dashboards

The process for developing and providing HR dashboards to the HR team is fairly simple, but it does involve some key decisions. Most notably, the selection of the right HR dashboard vendor.

Here are the key steps in the overall process.

1. Determine the use case

Setting up an HR dashboard without having an idea of the intended purpose and benefits is a recipe for failure.

Some organizations may not even have a great use for such a dashboard at all, although generally just about any organization should be able to make use of an HR dashboard in some manner. Still, it’s critical to understand what an HR dashboard will be used for before doing anything else.

2. Research vendors

Some organizations pride themselves on their own business intelligence tools. However, even sophisticated, multinational software companies go out into the marketplace to find specialized applications rather than building everything themselves.

While there are a variety of HR software vendors, few can offer a full suite of solutions for all of the varied HR functions. Without having this full range of information, though, an HR dashboard can’t provide a complete picture of an organization’s entire HR role.

3. Implementation

Once a vendor has been selected and a purchase agreement signed, the next step is implementing the solution. For an on-premises solution, this would mean installing software on a business’s servers. 

For a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution, this would mean the vendor setting up the application on the vendor’s or a third party’s servers.

Installing the software is just part of the implementation process, however. This step also involves building interfaces to data sources, training users on the dashboard, setting up integrations with your existing HR systems, and customizing dashboards to meet specific user needs.

4. Ongoing evaluation and support

Dashboards are typically designed with customization in mind. Users should be encouraged to play around with the selected solution and provide feedback to the organization. That feedback can then be shared with the vendor to address any issues or to request potential enhancements.

Examples of HR dashboards

As noted previously, there are a number of HR dashboards available depending on specific needs. 

HR dashboards can help HR professionals and senior leaders answer important questions like:

• Is our voluntary turnover rate too high?

• How efficient is our talent acquisition process?

• Are we seeing higher turnover among women and people of color compared to other employees?

Below are a few examples of the more commonly used HR dashboards.

Executive HR dashboard

HR executives are busy people. They don’t have the time required to dive down into the weeds on every HR issue. An executive HR dashboard lets HR leaders quickly review the most important information.

Diversity dashboard

A diversity dashboard focuses specifically on the diversity element of the HR function but still provides a high-level view without getting into minute details. These dashboards might show a summary of employee ethnicity in one cell, gender diversity in another, and diversity metrics specific to certain groups (i.e. executives) in yet another cell.

Recruitment dashboard

A recruitment dashboard can look at metrics specific to the recruitment process, such as the length of time a job opening goes unfilled, the number of job requisitions across various departments, and the effectiveness of various recruitment marketing outlets.

HR, of course, is a broad function. Because it is, there are a number of other dashboards that HR leaders might choose to implement and monitor. It all depends on the current HR strategy, goals, and objectives. Dashboards should be established to provide critical analytics related to each HR strategy or initiative.

Track metrics that matter in one view

HR dashboards are popular in many organizations because they allow leaders and HR team members to quickly review high-level data relevant to the HR function. Dashboards also provide the ability to drill down deeper through links contained within the dashboard that direct to other solutions or pages. HR dashboards may also provide reporting functionality and allow for customization and intuitive user interfaces.

HR dashboards help you compile all the data you need to see in a meaningful way, quickly and easily. With HR dashboards, you can keep an eye on employee satisfaction and employee engagement to make proactive decisions when problems arise and evaluate the likelihood of employee turnover and its underlying causes. Use HR dashboards to look at internal staff movement more holistically by illustrating the number of new hires, exits, and internal transfers all in one central location.

Create a strategic compensation dashboard to easily look at comparisons and analyses of employee compensation across job functions, geographic regions, seniority levels, demographics, and employee performance. This can be extremely helpful when trying to get ahead of issues related to pay inequities, or when gathering data for ESG purposes.