HR has evolved from an administrative function to a strategic business partner. Despite 91% of HR leaders recognising the importance of people analytics, only 34% effectively leverage data for decision-making – creating a critical gap between intention and execution.

What a year! Congratulations on making it through the year that was 2020. As things draw to a close and we get to enjoy some down time, we figured it was appropriate to pause and reflect before we prepare for 2021. If there's one lesson we could call out at the headline for the last 12 months it was about digital transformation. If you got caught out when the world of work got turned on its head, then you've no doubt realised that complacency on the technology front is no longer acceptable. As we went back through this year's most read blogs to create this post, we realised that one of them (a piece about the top 5 risk areas for HR) had digital transformation (or a lack thereof) as the #1 risk. That means that back in 2013 (when that post was published) was, according to us, the best time to embark upon your digital HR transformation. We will sign off for 2020 by reminding you that the next best time to implement you digital transformation (if you still haven't done so) is NOW.

The results of Mercer’s 2020 Global Talent Trends Study reveal that in a future full of opportunity, the realities of work, life and the unresolved debates currently raging across the globe are weighing us down as we enter this new decade. Facing into an age of uncertainty, conversations about our collective future, and its impact on our health, wealth and well-being, are front and centre. The report results make it abundantly clear: the next decade will take us in a radically new direction whether we're ready for it or not... In this week's HR Blog we look at Mercer's take on future talent trends.

Every year, Deloitte conducts an extensive study on the emerging and prevailing trends in human capital and the future of work. Each year, the post we write on our HR blog about that report is always one of the most popular. In 2020, the Human Capital Trends Report highlights an intensifying combination of economic, social, and political issues impacting HR and business leaders. These factors continue to put pressure on businesses to operate in a more socially oriented manner (a continuation of 2019's trend, which we covered in a previous HR blog post), and to reinvent their organisations around a more ethical and human focus. Let's take a look at the highlights of this year's report and discover the HR metrics that matter in 2020 and beyond.

HR Dashboards are an indispensable tool for HR professionals. They provide critical data visualisation for relevant metrics across the entire employee lifecycle, including hiring, retention, onboarding, performance, and more. Today's #HRTech makes it possible to purchase dashboard apps to integrate with your other business systems. Or if you have developers within your organisation you can build your own dashboards using excel or by developing your own system. But really, what you want is an HR system with customisable Dashboards built in to your HR software itself. In this HR Blog we look at the benefit of using dashboards to get a real-time overview of your data so that you can gain valuable business intelligence to run an agile and successful organisation using HR automation.

Productive HR reporting is critical to the ongoing success of every business. Developing an HR Dashboard that visualises your HR data in a way that tells the story of your business to the right people in the right way, is your pathway to growth and success. However, it is incredibly difficult for anyone in a business to make informed decisions when HR business partners and other stakeholders lack insight into their own operations and employees. To ensure that leadership and management have the information they need to make informed decisions, HR Professionals need to provide HR data in a way that informs, engages, inspires and persuades. In this week's HR Blog, we explore how to build the right Dashboards for productive reporting on your HR Metrics.

We recently discovered a fantastic article on LinkedIn that outlined 70HR Metrics you should be measuring in your business. One of our most popular blog posts ever is a 2013 post 'Key Metrics You Need in Your HR Reports,' so after stumbling upon this great article, we thought we'd do a 2017 edit to keep you up to date with HR best practice. What was also interesting in this article is that the author has offered for free, a breathtaking array of excel spreadsheets related to all manner of calculating, tracking and reporting HR metrics. Very generous, very useful AND in 2017, a total waste of time AND money (money that you would pay an employee to input and update the information to provide results for all the metrics). You might think that is a pretty mean thing to say, but having said this before, I’m going to say it again. If you’re still using excel spreadsheets to calculate your HR metrics or manage your HR processes, you’re living in the dark ages AND wasting precious time AND money. Today’s HR platforms give users the capacity to access these types of metrics at the click of your mouse – no updating of spreadsheets required. There. I’ve said it, now let’s take a look at the categories of key metrics you need in your HR reports – 2017 edit.

We've been going through a bit of a mid-year review and as I was looking at the metrics about our HR Blog, it became very clear that you - our audience, our community, has a very broad range of interest in all aspects of HR. One could make some pretty interesting assumptions about what HR Professionals are interested in learning about in order to stay on top of what is important to both business and employees in a rapidly changing workplace environment. As part of our reflection on the last financial year, we decided to put together a list of the top 10 Blog posts (based on popularity / readership) from the last 12 months.