5.4HR indicators & dashboards
The essentials in 30 seconds
- 8 indicators max: headcount, turnover, absenteeism, payroll, training, hiring, climate, diversity — each defined, targeted, owned.
- Read the signals: forced vs wanted, tenure of leavers, reasons by team — figures raise questions, the field answers them.
- A dashboard that decides: lights vs targets, trends, 1 action per red — HR with a plan gets funded.
Threaded mini-case — Amira handles her turnover
Amira walks into the committee with “turnover 18%, 60% of departures under one year, strengthened onboarding plan” instead of a vague “people come and go”. This section tells how she segments (who leaves, when, why), costs the departures, acts (1-30-60-90 onboarding, coaching, equity budget) and gets the rest funded.
Sequel to cases 5.1-5.3 — Amira steers by numbers after attractiveness, fairness and data.
1. 8 indicators that steer
Headcount + FTE, turnover (leavers/headcount), absenteeism (rate + reasons), payroll (% of revenue), training (hours/employee), hiring (time, cost), climate (survey), diversity (index): each defined, targeted, owned. More than ten is noise.
Amira keeps 8 indicators on one page: one owner per figure, one dated target per indicator.
2. Turnover and absenteeism: read the signals
Forced vs wanted turnover (who leaves? the good ones?), tenure of leavers (under one year = onboarding), absenteeism by reason and team (workload? management? psychosocial risks?). Figures raise questions: exit interviews and surveys answer them.
Amira crosses early departures with department X: the signal points to onboarding and local management — not “the generation”.
3. The dashboard that decides (monthly, 1 page)
Lights vs targets, 12-month trends, 1 action per red, presented in a committee that decides. HR who arrives with a costed plan gets funded; HR who merely observes endures.
Amira presents segmented turnover + plan + expected savings: the next plan is funded — the dashboard is no longer decoration.
🔎 Concrete example — Turnover handled in 6 months
Segment before acting.
Situation: high turnover, departures concentrated under one year (onboarding) and in one team (management); actions: 1-30-60-90 path, manager coaching, equity budget.
Lesson: turnover brought down, savings costed (a departure estimated in months of salary): presented in committee, the next plan is funded.
Section vocabulary
- HR indicator (KPI)
- A measured figure serving steering (not decoration).
Simple example: Amira tracks 8 KPIs with target and owner.
What it is not: 40 stacked figures nobody uses.
Reflex: does each figure have a question and a use?
- Turnover
- Staff rotation; high or forced = a signal to dig into.
Simple example: Amira separates wanted and forced departures of talent.
What it is not: “a lot” with no figure or segmentation.
Reflex: who leaves: the good ones or end-of-contracts?
- Absenteeism
- Absences measured by rate, reasons and teams.
Simple example: Amira crosses reasons with department X before acting.
What it is not: punishing without understanding workload or climate.
Reflex: which reason dominates, and where?
- Payroll
- Total cost of pay, tracked as a share of revenue.
Simple example: Amira flags its drift before the budget.
What it is not: only watching headcount without its cost.
Reflex: what share of revenue, and what trend?
- HR dashboard
- A monthly one-pager: lights, trends, actions.
Simple example: Amira gets her plan with 1 page + 1 action per red.
What it is not: a decorative report never presented in committee.
Reflex: did my dashboard make anyone decide this month?
In practice — Steering HR through indicators
- Pick a few indicators useful for your issues: turnover, absenteeism, payroll, hiring time and cost, training.
- Collect data reliably (often via the HRIS) and present it in a synthetic dashboard.
- Interpret with context and trend (an isolated figure says nothing): segment by tenure, team, reason.
- Derive concrete actions, track their effects and use this data to talk with management.
Ready-to-say script — defend the plan in committee (1 min)
"Turnover at 18%, including 60% under one year: it is onboarding, plus a management point in department X. I propose a 1-30-60-90 path, coaching and an equity budget — targeting 11% in 6 months. Will you fund the plan?"
Say in committee; bring the segmented page (who, when, why) + the dated action.
Copy-paste template — 1-page dashboard
INDICATOR / TARGET / 12-MONTH TREND: _______________
SEGMENTATION (who / when / why): _______________
REDS + 1 ACTION PER RED: _______________
OWNER + DEADLINE: _______________
EXPECTED EFFECT (costed): _______________First dashboard
Amira starts with 5 KPIs (turnover, absenteeism, payroll, hiring time and cost): 5 tracked figures beat 40 endured.
New-hire turnover
Departures under one year: rebuild onboarding (1-30-60-90) before blaming the market.
Targeted absenteeism
By reason and team: workload, management or conditions — interviews and surveys answer.
Management dialogue
Each red arrives with its costed action: HR who proposes gets funded, HR who observes endures.
✓ Best practices
- 8 indicators max, defined and targeted.
- Segment: who, when, why.
- One page that decides, not decoration.
✗ Common pitfalls
- Twenty indicators making noise.
- The average alone hiding.
- The decorative dashboard never defended.
Key takeaways
- HR indicators (turnover, absenteeism, payroll, time-to-hire…) make activity objective.
- They detect problems, track changes and prove HR's value.
- What matters is picking useful indicators and interpreting them (context, trend), not piling up figures.
- Well used, they move HR from “feeling” to “steering” and strengthen its credibility.
48h challenge — apply tomorrow
Pull 3 figures (turnover, absenteeism, time-to-hire), segment 1 of them (tenure or team) and write 1 action on the template above. Present the page: who decides what?
- I can answer in committee: segmented figure + plan.
- I know why the average alone is blind.
- My 1-page dashboard + 1 action is ready.
Frequently asked questions
Which HR indicators are essential to start with?
No need to measure everything at once: a few useful, reliable indicators are better. The most classic and telling ones to start: turnover (leaver rate), absenteeism (a climate and health indicator), payroll and its trend (a major economic issue), and time/cost-to-hire (process efficiency). Depending on issues, add the training rate, the women-men equality index, or climate/engagement measures (surveys). The right principle: start from your questions (“do we have a retention problem? a climate problem? a cost problem?”) and pick the indicators that answer them, rather than stacking figures to look “pro”. A dashboard of 5-6 well-tracked indicators beats a 40-KPI report nobody uses.
Is a figure like turnover enough to conclude there is a problem?
No — an isolated indicator always reads with context and nuance. A raw turnover rate says little without benchmarks: is it rising versus previous years (trend)? how does it compare with the sector? which leavers are involved (forced departures of talent = alarming; planned end of seasonal contracts = normal)? concentrated in one team (a local managerial signal) or general? The figure alerts and invites digging; it does not conclude alone. That is why interpretation matters more than raw data: cross indicators, look at trends, segment, and go understand the “why” in the field.
In committee: “so what is turnover?”