Human Resource (HR) departments are the backbone of an organization. These functions are pivotal in cultivating a thriving workplace by managing business needs and ensuring its employees are set up for success. One tool that enables HR departments to fulfill their duties is HR reports.
From retention rates to workplace demographics, these reports equip organizations with the insights to track their progress against company goals and initiatives. This guide will take you through:
- What HR reporting is
- The different types of HR reports
- The benefits of HR reporting
- How to build an HR report
What is HR reporting?
HR reporting is the process of consolidating and analyzing various HR metrics and data into a single report. They provide detailed overviews of a company's workforce, people trends, and practices, enabling them to evaluate and assess HR effectiveness.
These insights help organizations plan their strategies and policies and better understand HR performance and procedures. HR analytics and reporting help companies make informed decisions, uncover organizational flaws and workforce issues, and improve processes.
Types of HR reports
There are several metrics that an organization can pull for an HR report to help them make more informed business decisions. Some HR reporting examples include:
- Benefits, compensation, and payroll reports
- Headcount reports
- Professional development reports
- Employee turnover and retention reports
- Recruitments reports
- DEIB reports
- Performance evaluations reports
Benefits and compensation reports
Reports on benefits focus on the specifics of the employee benefit packages, such as retirement plans, health insurance, and other company perks.
Every year, I look at our 401K utilization rates to see how our total assets under management are increasing and what levers we can use to bolster team member participation. One unique insight was that annual auto-increases are the best path to helping an individual save for retirement.”
- Mia Valunte, Senior Manager, Global Benefits at ClassPass and Mindbody
Compensation reports might outline salary ranges, compensation structures, and incentives, and how different teams stack up against the benchmarks, within and across teams.
Throughout the year and specifically during our annual merit cycle, we run pay equity analyses to ensure there aren’t any statistically significant differences between different groups of people, to identify and avoid any unintended biases in the system and methodology.
- Oriana Wong, Head of Total Rewards at Mindbody
Payroll reports provide an overview of payroll activity over a specific period. They detail employees' salaries, wages, tips, commissions, bonuses, taxes, deductions, and year-to-date earnings. These reports also include working days, hours worked, and loss of pay. The information compiled in these reports can help identify pay rate discrepancies and compliance issues, assess pay equity, and more.
Compensation, benefits, and payroll directly impact employee satisfaction and retention. These HR reporting metrics are essential for assessing an organization's total rewards packages against those of competitors and market standards, as well as measuring the level of positive impact on the workforce.
Headcount reports
Headcount reports are a collection of data on the total number of employees at a company. They also include specific details such as their job title, job status (active, inactive, terminated), age, gender, ethnicity, tenure, salary, employment type (contract, temporary, part-time, or full-time), location, and more. This data can help inform workforce planning, budgeting, equitable change management, and organizational compliance decisions.
Professional development reports
Many companies offer employees professional development and training opportunities. Reports in professional development detail employee participation rates, training completion rates, employee program feedback, and program costs. This data serves to help leaders evaluate and refine their development programs to meet and cater to employee professional needs. It also allows for follow-up mechanisms to ensure all team members are meeting company requirements.
Tracking compliance training completion is very important to ensure we protect our colleagues and company. We run a report every quarter to identify where we may be falling short on programs like cybersecurity training and harassment prevention.
- Kelly Lousen, Head of Talent Development at ClassPass and Mindbody
Employee turnover and retention reports
High turnover rates can negatively impact a company's productivity, finances, and employee morale. Turnover reports use metrics such as employee departments, gender, age, salary, tenure, performance rating, and exit survey feedback to analyze why employees choose to leave the company.
These metrics signal underlying issues and patterns affecting employee satisfaction, leading to their departure, and help organizations improve retention.
Recruitment reports
How a business manages its recruitment plays a vital role in company growth. It influences the talent they attract, improves retention rates, and impacts turnover. HR departments often use recruitment reports to assess recruitment campaign performance and standardize their recruiting efforts.
We issue a standard HR metrics dashboard to our leadership team so they can track both how we are meeting company-wide hiring goals as well as to track the talent pipelines for their function. This ensures we are all on the same page and can surface any challenges to be overcome.
- Mandy Fordah, Head of Talent Acquisition at ClassPass and Mindbody
These reports include evaluations of the quality of job candidates and recruitment activities, as well as metrics such as time to hire and cost of hire. With these insights, the team can identify areas for improvement, optimize and streamline their processes, and make better hiring decisions in the future.
DEIB reports
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) initiatives are focused on creating more diverse and inclusive workforces. HR departments assess the organization's performance against relevant goals.
A DEIB report offers visibility into employee demographics, such as gender, ethnicity, and age, and their representation across job levels and roles. These reports also evaluate the impact of company DEIB initiatives and measure employee feedback regarding workplace inclusivity.
We leverage our biannual employee engagement survey to track feelings of belonging and compare that against different demographics, teams, and locations. We then tailor our employee experiences to address gaps and cast a wider net of inclusion, consistently monitoring progress on feelings of belonging to assess progress and continually refine.
- Julia Hartnett, Head of Talent at Mindbody
Performance evaluation reports
Performance evaluation reports provide a complete and detailed overview of employee performance scores. These reports contain information on employee names, job titles, departments, performance scores, feedback areas, and improvement opportunities. Such data helps organizations identify employee strengths, weaknesses, and areas requiring additional training or support.
Benefits of HR reporting
HR reporting provides numerous advantages to both HR departments and organizations in general. Some of these benefits include informed decision-making, improved productivity, and proactive strategic planning. Here’s a breakdown of the benefits of HR reporting:
Informed decision-making
HR reports provide companies with guidance on how to make data-informed decisions regarding HR processes, strategies, change management, and employee management.
Strategic planning
HR reports offer valuable insights into workforce demographics, employee performance, engagement, and more. Organizations can align their HR initiatives with company goals by analyzing this historical data.
Stronger company culture
HR reports deliver a complete view of data related to how employees are treated, compensated, supported, and included. By prioritizing transparency in their reporting, companies are more likely to create a workplace culture that promotes belonging, respect, and positivity. This, in turn, positively affects job satisfaction and employee engagement.
Improved productivity
Organizations can monitor HR metrics and performance indicators to identify process bottlenecks and make timely changes to enhance efficiency.
How to build an HR report
Transforming data into meaningful insights is crucial in creating an effective HR report. These reports provide strategic insights that can guide business decisions, shape policies, and enhance a company's workforce.
Thanks to technology, building reports from scratch is no longer necessary. Today, companies can rely on HR reporting tools and software to consolidate HR metrics into a single platform, making it easy to generate reports based on specific data.
But not so fast; there are still some best practices to consider when building an HR report:
Ask questions and identify the problem
Before generating reports, identify the information you need to solve your problem or answer your question. Are you interested in knowing whether the turnover rates have increased? Or do you want to know more about employee satisfaction? Focusing on your immediate questions and needs is essential to avoid collecting irrelevant data that may not provide much insight into your problem. It's key to encapsulate the context of the issue or situation at hand to produce impactful reporting.
Know your audience
When creating a report, consider tailoring it to meet your audience's specific needs and preferences. For example, a hiring manager may need a different level of detail than someone in the C-suite. It is important to consider the level of access corresponding to the level of sensitivity or confidentiality of the data presented in the reports as well.
Use visuals and data storytelling
Effective communication requires more than presenting raw data. To capture your audience's attention, blend data with storytelling techniques. By supplementing your presentation with visuals like graphs and charts, your insights are easier to follow and relate to their needs. Presenting data alongside informative and engaging narratives creates a better connection and leaves a lasting impact.
Provide next steps
After presenting your findings, offer recommendations and next steps. Use those insights to act; this may include adjusting future strategies to combat potential problems.
HR reports can have a pivotal impact on your organization. Whether you're interested in modifying your professional development program or searching for ways to make your compensation and benefits package more competitive, HR reports are worth their weight in gold when evaluating your workplace's overall health.
