Where to Leverage Technology
The cost of collecting data. What is the actual cost of collecting all of the needed data? Your labor and dollar cost will vary, but the cost is at least 10 times less expensive today than it was 15 years ago. Specifically, costs have gone down because:
HRIS and ATS systems are better able to provide data quickly.
Survey tools are now web-enabled and accessible directly by Human Resources with less expertise needed to develop.
Data collection from the staffing function has improved as Talent Management Systems have made it easier to status and rank candidates (recruiters now can batch status scores of candidates at the same time).
New technologies that were designed to automate processes also give managers greater visibility. For example, if you have just implemented performance reviews online, you can likely now run a report on the top 10 percent of performers by department in 2005. How long did it take to compile that data by hand in 1999?
What to do when you do not have a dedicated analyst running your metrics. Many of us don’t have an HRIS analyst dedicated to creating and running complex reports and then assembling them into dashboards. If there is a provable ROI, hiring that analyst and/or outsourcing the compilation is a good investment. However, when you are directly challenged to provide a dashboard, with limited time and limited resources, do the following things:
Keep it simple, stupid. Focus on fewer metrics and fewer data points. Make sure that your data is cleaned well and focuses on displaying your data simply using tables, pivot tables, or pivot charts.
Use the most of PowerPoint and Excel. Both have many flaws. However, quickly displaying information visually isn’t one of them. If you are crunched for time and resources, use PowerPoint to lay out your dashboard and Excel to create your charts and/or pivot tables or pivot charts.
Find your high-potential in HR. There is inevitably one high-potential in Human Resources that loves to dig into data, knows Excel very well, and is fearless. Find this high-potential and harness his/her energy for the dashboard project.
Ad hoc reporting. The words “ad hoc” are generally not used correctly in HR. Many times, people use the words ad hoc to describe real time reporting. Or, ad hoc means “I can run whatever I want whenever I want, and however I want to show it.” Neither of these definitions is particularly true. Ad hoc reporting systems are amazing tools when you know what service they provide.
A true ad hoc reporting environment (like Brio, Crystal, or Microsoft reporting services) provides business-level users with the ability to create relationships between their data, pick fields, build calculations, and create reports without (necessarily) the use of a technology resource. Ad hoc environments put the data in the hands of the business user. Most ad hoc reporting environments are not run against real-time data but against a data warehouse or another snapshot of the data. Ad hoc environments have constraints against what they can and can’t run. And all ad hoc reporting systems require the business user not only to learn the sophisticated software but also to be comfortable with the data and the tables that store them.
What are ad hoc reports capable of providing to HR? Actually, quite a lot. However, that doesn’t cure all of the problems of reporting. In fact, it introduces a few more concerns.
Ad hoc reports still need to be planned out and tested against the source data precisely. It’s far too easy to create a report that one believes is reporting average tenure of staff in the sales team, and then find out that a small error in the ad hoc report has been over-reporting the information by months. When using an ad hoc report, here’s what you should expect it to provide and what you should not expect it to provide. Expect that ad hoc reports will:
Run simple tables, selecting the fields that you’re looking for, row by row.
Summarize information in pivot table-type reports.
Turn cells red or yellow or green in stoplight fashion if a measure exceeds a threshold.
Create some graphics based on the data (although perhaps not exactly how you’ve envisioned them).
Schedule the reports to be sent out to colleagues automatically.
Generally, do not depend on your ad hoc system to:
Check your data for correctness. Humans created the report, Humans need to validate them.
Control a dashboard display to a very fine degree. Some systems can accomplish this with the assistance of a specialist in the software. But out of the box, a beginner probably would have a hard time here.
Do acrobatic tricks. This type of software allows a user to do a great deal without technical help. But it also means that the user is constrained by the templates and tools the reporting system provides. Without technical help, it may not be able to put the exact graphic in the exact spot with the exact result that you’re looking to produce.
When setting up the dashboard using ad hoc tools, working with a software expert is a good investment when possible.