5 Key Ingredients to Effective HR Reporting

Posted by Mathew French

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7 November 2013

An Economist Intelligence Unit survey commissioned by KPMG International revealed that 85% of the 418 global executives surveyed believe their HR team doesn’t excel at providing insightful and predictive analytics.

According to KPMG, despite having a clear understanding of the importance and value of HR analytics, HR practitioners “continue to offer generic and basic operational and transactional measurements – metrics that provide little in the way of predictive data or actual insights that could have a positive impact on the success of the organisation”.

This could be attributed to the complexities brought on by globalisation and Big Data. In this blog, we discuss the five key elements to effective HR reporting and the HR metrics you need to analyse within your organisation..

1. High Quality Data

Regardless of Big Data, the key to an organisation’s reporting accuracy is ‘good data’. It is therefore prudent that HR functions in organisations focus on acquiring and storing good quality data, and ensure their data acquisition process and storage systems are designed to support this. To uphold a high standard of quality, HR Managers should set a standard, create simple codes and consistent definitions and control the data promptly and regularly.

2. Integrated Data 

Due to the rise of Big Data, organisations are increasingly facing the problem of fragmented data brought on by complex data architecture models and disparate storage databases. To simplify reporting, HR Managers will have to clean up their data. According to KPMG, with the existence of cloud-based HR management systems, organisations can now maintain all of their HR data in a single, standard format, at a fraction of the cost and time taken by older systems. This will help organisations create a bank of integrated data and make HR reporting much less tedious.

3. Industry Information

Internal data alone is not enough to provide insightful information, i.e., reports of absenteeism or employee turnover don’t tell you anything that interesting. External data will provide the right context and give you the big picture of the performance of the organisation within the market overall. To know the true contribution of employees to the business, HR Managers must constantly measure results against previously set priorities, existing market conditions and competitor performance.

4. Skillful HR Team 

For HR reporting to be truly effective in delivering valuable insight, your HR team must include a specialist in statistical analysis. In addition, the team needs to use their knowledge of the industry and of the organisation to determine the right metrics to measure – essentially, ask the right questions. KPMG suggests HR managers need to ask themselves the question, “What do we want to know?” and test relevant questions in order to gain real insight from a combination of measurements.

5. The Right HR Management Tool

Once you have good quality and integrated data, market knowledge, and the right team in place to draw real insights from that data, the last piece of the puzzle is the HR management tool. The ideal tool should come with the following features:

  • Flexible self-service function.

  • Easy configuration of employee and manager access.

  • Comprehensive list of standard reports.

  • Simple interface to create a standard report in under 60 seconds.

  • Ability to create detailed reports using formulae and filters.

  • Compatibility with various database structures.

  • Easy projection of data visually.

  • Integration with other systems such as PDF or Excel.

  • Enabled to schedule and automate report generation.

  • Ability to update existing reports with real-time information.

With the above features, you then have an efficient, easy to use and flexible HR management tool to increase your reporting accuracy and effectiveness.

Every HR manager knows that HR reporting can be complex and tedious. The best way for you to navigate through these complexities is to understand the value of good data and put into place the means and resources to acquire, store and analyse this data. Through this, HR Managers get accurate reporting and valuable insight that can contribute to the business’ growth. 

To discover more about HR reporting amid the rise of Big Data, download our free white paper on Productive HR Reporting by clicking the download button below. If you're ready to explore how HR Reporting software can transform your business, request a discovery session, where you'll get a customised demonstration from the comfort of your own desk.

Do You Have The Tools You Need to Find Efficiencies in Times of Change?

If you've been called on to re-shape your workforce recently, then you know how important it is to be able to provide accurate, real-time data so that you and your leadership team can make informed decisions about how to best restructure your business. If you don't already have them, here's a list of just some of the data points and reporting you can access quickly and easily through HR Software:

If you're struggling to keep up with all the tasks and processes you need to complete within your organisation, or if you're still doing them manually, the good news is it doesn't need to be that way. Watch the video below to discover more about how configurable HR software can benefit your business. Find out about the role widgets, wizards, permissions and APPs can play in bending your HR software to your will.

 

Like what you saw in the video. Want it for your business? Get started by requesting a demonstration.

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Topics: hr reports format, human resources reports, human resources analytics

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