4 Key Metrics Your HRIS Software Should Offer

Organizations already collect much of the data they need to transform into data-driven operations, but executives and people leaders struggle to turn that data into confident decision-making. In one Deloitte survey, only 3% of executives reported feeling that they have all the information they need to make sound people decisions. 

This data-to-decision gap extends to all parts of people management. Less than half (42%) of first-level leaders feel very confident in their ability to address team performance. Just over one-third (37%) of senior leaders feel very confident in their ability to address workload management. Meanwhile, only 29% of senior leaders feel very confident in their ability to address questions related to retaining talent. 

Team performance, workload management, employee retention—these are crucial areas that demand confident decisions. With better access to the right data, executives and leaders say they could make decisions faster, better manage and reward performance, and increase the predictability of group performance. 

HRIS vendors can help by providing access to these four key HR metrics that executives and leaders will turn to time and again.

1. Headcount

While headcount seems to be the most straightforward of measurements—how many people work here—and it’s the basis for many further investigations, determining headcount isn’t as simple as it seems. Aside from discrepancies that can result from stale or inaccurate data, two people could calculate different headcounts for the same organization depending on the employee types they include. This could include part-time employees, full-time employees, and temporary workers, as well as permanent employees, employees on leave, and those currently working. 

That’s why it’s important for vendors to provide a clear definition—headcount is the total number of people working in the organization at a given time, including permanent, temporary, contingent, and gig workers—and a single answer. With a shared understanding of that most basic metric—headcount—faster, better decisions can be made.

2. Employee turnover

Turnover rate is made up of involuntary and voluntary departures, but organizations tend to focus most closely on voluntary turnover. Replacing employees is costly—by some estimates, anywhere from one-half to two times the replaced employees’ salary—so retention remains a key focus for the C-suite and people leaders alike. 

Tracking the turnover rate lets users identify resignation patterns, whether that’s in the time of year when people resign, the roles and departments seeing increased resignation, or the profiles—age, tenure, gender, ethnicity—of employees who have resigned. Looking at turnover for the organization as a whole, as well as by department, gives leaders the full picture—something that’s missed when managers only focus on recent departures in their own team.

3. Diversity and inclusion

Diversity and inclusion are organizational priorities, and HR teams can use analytics to become more equitable and diverse. To set goals to increase diversity and inclusion, the C-suite and people leaders need to first identify where they stand today. Looking at metrics like gender and ethnicity ratios gives leaders a place to start. For example, by measuring the percentage of women and minorities in the organization as a whole, in each department, and in senior leadership, organizations can identify areas for improvement and track progress. 

Clear, accessible data helps leaders hold themselves and others accountable and paves the way for quick, accurate decision-making. Offering diversity metrics will help your customers take the next step in their diversity and inclusion work. 

4. Employee movement

Movement tracks the shift of employees into and out of the organization and from one department to another. It provides a bird’s eye view of the granular, individual movements of employees and helps leaders identify broader trends. Movement can also provide a window into internal mobility—the lateral and vertical movement of employees in the organization. Career pathing has become a key concern for employees, and tracking movement and internal mobility helps leaders identify if the organization is offering room to grow.

How, when, and where employees are moving is crucial information for retention strategies, team performance forecasts, and employee satisfaction measures, but it can be time-consuming and difficult for organizations to track on their own. This is where vendors can help.

Why go beyond basic reporting?

Basic reporting is better than nothing, but it’s not enough. Analytics goes a step beyond reporting, turning stagnant data into dynamic, meaningful insights that lead to faster, more confident decisions. 

With analytics, users can see trends over time to pinpoint when something changed and figure out what events or actions caused the change. They can also compare metrics to one another using internal or external data, which provides the opportunity to use benchmarks to see what good looks like.

Analytics allow users to change the time period (day, week, month, quarter, and so on) or group (by tenure, gender, ethnicity, department) to get a closer look at the big picture. To dive deeper in addressing key areas like retention, talent acquisition, and diversity and inclusion, leaders need to be able to zoom in on specific groups and time periods to find out what’s really happening and make plans to address it. 

Ready to learn more?

The right analytics will help your customers make sense of their data and make better, faster decisions. And it can turn your solution into the decision-making engine of their organizations. If you’re interested in offering dynamic views into headcount, turnover, diversity, movement, and more, Visier can help. To learn more, visit visier.com/embedded.

On the Outsmart blog, we write about workforce-related topics like the top talent acquisition metrics your software should offer, how to add insights where they matter with contextual analytics, and how predictive people analytics helps businesses of all sizes thrive. We also report on trending topics like ESG and EU CSRD requirements and preparing for a recession, and advise on HR best practices like how to create a strategic compensation strategy, metrics every CHRO should track, and connecting people data to business data. But if you really want to know the bread and butter of Visier, read our post about the benefits of people analytics.