Management of the HR function

The questions asked by department heads concerning the human resources are generally the following ones:

• How much is absenteeism costing us?
• In what ways are training activities improving the effectiveness of our personnel?
• How good are our HR processes (recruitment, training, remuneration, skills management, etc.)?
• Do personnel adhere to the objectives set?
• What should we do to reduce employee turnover?
• How can HR team contribute to value creation within our organisation?

To answer these questions, and to report on all the tasks which fall to HR department, we define the operational management of resources and strategic management of resources as the primary area on which to put metrics and dashboards in place.

HR operational dashboards

These are the HR efficiency dashboards. Remember that HR efficiency metrics measure the quantity of resources used to obtain an HR result. For example: 400€ per person trained, or 1 HR department member per 100 employees.

We can make use of 4 operational HR dashboards:

• The recruitment dashboard: This measures the pre-selection, selection and recruitment procedures. The goal is to obtain the maximum number of suitable candidates whilst expending the minimum amount of resources. Recruitment activity can be measured in terms of the quantitative values of time and cost.

Example metrics: Number of candidates for a post; number of candidates per recruitment source; number of candidates satisfying the requirements of the offer; number of days between the drafting of the employment advertisement and its publication; number of days between that publication and the reception of 80%, 90% or 100% of CVs; number of candidates analysed/number of candidates interviewed; % of candidates retained; mean analysis time per candidate; total number of interviews per post; total recruitment time; mean interview duration; % of posts filled; % increase in workforce; staff turnover after six months; etc



• The Remuneration dashboard: This must assist evaluation and improve the efficiency of remuneration management. The goal of remuneration management is to understand which combination of remuneration elements enable optimum achievement of the objectives set out by department heads.

Example metrics: Total wage bill; annual wage/ turnover; mean annual salary; amount paid for overtime; variable remuneration/total remuneration; mean variable remuneration/mean annual salary; annual amount of dividends paid to personnel; % of employment offers refused due to remuneration being judged insufficient; % of personnel leaving the company due to a higher salary offer; etc.



• The Training dashboard: This should allow measurement of the four stages of training processes: identification of training needs, design of the training program, performance and evaluation of the training.

Example metrics: time dedicated to identifying training needs; time dedicated to devising the training programme; perceived usefulness of the training/time dedicated (to identification and/or design); number of days training (total, average per employee); mean duration of a training course; total number of individuals trained per year; rate of participation in a training course; ratio of internal training courses/total number of training courses; satisfaction with the contents of the training course; satisfaction with the trainer; etc.



• The HR costs dashboard: This concerns recruiting, training, administering remunerations, evaluations, career management, maintaining social dialogue, maintaining or improving industrial relations and any other HR activity involving expenditure. This is the set of costs that must be measured by this dashboard.

Example metrics: Recruitment costs (advertising costs and/or agency costs and/or recruitment fair costs and/or personal reference costs…); average recruitment cost; cost of medical examinations; cost of absenteeism per employee; cost of departures; cost of replacements; etc.

HR strategic dashboards

These are the dashboards which link the HR metrics to the other management metrics (sales, finance, quality, etc.). Numerous approaches, which we will not describe here, are conceivable.

As an example, we can start with a simple strategic dashboard displaying the links between HR practices and the financial elements of the business and, over time see this evolve into a Balanced Scorecard type of dashboard (or prospective dashboard) which will reread the HR components to the organisation, itself.