Best Dashboard Practices with Mary Claire Ryan, Director of Sourcing at Riviera Advisors
| Q1: | How do you ensure that the data you present is the data that is important to your CEO? |
| Before I begin to think about the data, I use an in-depth questionnaire and sit with the CEO to understand his/her priorities. Even with that set of meetings, I know there will be a surprise in every meeting I have subsequently, whether it’s a business shift, entering a new product line, or an acquisition—process to dig into the new initiatives, business realities, and so on. | |
| Q2: | What is on your Ultimate Executive Dashboard? |
| The first data points on my dashboard are related to Workforce Planning in the short term and in the long term. I map the key initiatives, new priorities, and economic realities to a practical talent plan for the organization. This is not a typical “telephone book” sized workforce plan—it’s concise, forward-looking, and has red flags where I think executives need to pay attention.
Then I’ll keep the key data points that we’ve worked out with the executive team. Usually, turnover, New Hire Quality, and talent budgeting will be on the dashboard. A review of talent targets will be on there too, including management targets, internal survey data, and hiring manager feedback. I also always have a nugget of competitive information as well to compare us to, and I don’t hold back. If we’re not keeping up with talent acquisition, or if our competitor snapped up the top engineers in our most profitable business unit, executives will know about it. | |
| Q3: | How frequently do you meet with the CEO on data? |
| I never bother the C-level until I have hard facts on the data that’s important to them. Then, I make sure my executives are armed with the two to three key data points they need for board meetings, investor calls, and their employee talks. | |
| Q4: | What is on your Ultimate HR-Centric Dashboard? |
| I’ve focused on using data to manage both dedicated recruiters, which require a specific set of data to manage versus generalists that are also responsible for recruiting in the organization. I’ll focus on the generalists here with respect to recruiting.
I tend to focus on the recruiting process immediately when managing a team of generalists since it tends to have plenty of management opportunities for improvement. Hiring Manager Satisfaction data is important to me. It helps me show the team exactly what our constituents expect of us and where we are at. I’ll also compile our own performance reviews focusing on key areas like sales skills in recruiting candidates through the interview process. In addition, I also like to look at our commitments to our hiring managers with a strong focus on Time-to- Start (not time to hire), New Hire Quality, and Candidate Interview Feedback. I also try to arm my generalists with data that assists them in educating their hiring managers on market forces in recruiting, candidate lag, and the hiring manager’s own responsiveness. | |
| Q5: | What was the most interesting thing you have learned from analyzing data on your talent base? |
| Here’s an example that shocked executives inside and outside of HR. We were having a terrible problem hiring for a highly-skilled, highly-degreed job group that was critical to profitability in our core business. First, we took a look at the external market and found our first problem: 80 percent of the candidates with the skill sets we needed lived across the country, nowhere near us. Then, we did an analysis of the population of potential candidates and found our shocker—we already employed 50 percent of the candidates with the degree we were looking for! They were working in a completely different division, doing a job that didn’t actually require the degree and skill sets we needed. The employees were underutilized in their current job, while another business line was suffering. We presented a plan to offer a great internal mobility opportunity to these employees and a plan to train other potential candidates to fill their old jobs. It was a win-win plan that was directly tied to business outcomes and talent optimization. | |
| Q6: | What is your best piece of advice in building a great dashboard? |
| Keep it simple at first! Make sure you don’t try to use one report to tell three stories. Tell one story and make it a good one with clean data. |