People Strategy case study

Count Your HR Metrics Before You Add Any

85HR metrics already being reported
7documents and dashboards carrying them
0metric definitions written down
14best-practice sources screened

The situation

The question behind the question.

This HR function reported to many audiences: the executive committee, the board, the member states behind it. It was not short of numbers. Page after page of functional indicators went out in committee reports, a performance framework and 3 dashboards, with no word on the trend or what it meant. Nothing was written down about how each figure was defined or produced. The organisation had a people strategy for 2023–2028, and asked for a data book and a dashboard to track it. The risk was a longer list.

As it was asked

“Help us build an HR data book and a dashboard.”

As we reframed it

Count before you add. Establish what is measured today and how, keep only what serves the strategy, and give each number the audience that needs it.

How we worked

How the work unfolded.

01

Take stock

We began with an inventory, not a wish list. Every metric reported was traced to the documents that carried it: 2 committee reports, the performance framework, the metric-setting document and 3 dashboards. 85 metrics came out, and only 18 appeared in more than one place. Where one of them gave 2 different numbers under the same name and definition, we traced why: a different formula, or a variable defined differently. For each metric, the baseline recorded its source, whether it was produced by the system or by hand, and whether the data it needed existed. None of it had been documented before.

02

Cut to the strategy

Then the cut. Every metric was mapped to the 5 focus areas and 15 objectives of the people strategy, and whatever did not serve one directly came out. What remained had to pass 3 tests: relevant to an objective, within the reach of the owner answerable for it, and producible from data the organisation holds. To see what was missing, we screened 14 published best-practice sources and compared notes with peer organisations, and the HR leadership decided, metric by metric, what to continue, stop or start.

03

Match each metric to its audience

Not every number belongs in every room. For each metric that survived, the HR leadership decided who should see it: the member states, the board, the executive committee, or the HR team itself. The same catalogue could then feed a short set for governance and a fuller one for running the function, with confidentiality designed in, instead of every audience receiving every page. We mocked up the key presentations so that each report opens on the trend and what it means, before the numbers.

04

Write it down

Because nothing had been documented, the catalogue became the reference: for each metric its name, definition, formula, source, production method and reporting period. Each got an owner for its meaning and a steward for its production, and any addition, change or retirement goes to the HR leadership. We handed it over and stayed on in a quality-assurance role while the HR and IT teams built the dashboard in the HR system, checking the prototype, the build and the launch against the catalogue.

The instrument

A catalogue with a gate and a ladder

The catalogue. Every metric written down once: name, definition, formula, data source, production method, reporting period, owner and steward.

The gate. A metric stays only if it serves an objective of the people strategy, sits within its owner’s reach and can be produced from data that exists. Existing metrics face continue or stop; new ones, start or not.

The ladder. Each metric that passes is assigned the level it is reported at, from the HR team up to the member states.

What passes the gate and finds its rung is what the dashboard is built on.

What moved

What changed, and what didn't.

38of 85 metrics kept, each documented and reported at its own level
Evidence Decision taken Adopted in practice Measured impact
What moved

Of the 85 metrics the organisation reported, 38 were kept, each tied to the people strategy, documented in the catalogue and assigned to the audience that needs it. The catalogue did not stay on a shelf. The HR team uses it to plan which metric to produce, when and for whom, and as the backlog for the dashboards it keeps building in the HR system, updating it as each one goes live.

What didn't move

Automation stopped at the edge of the HR system. Of the 34 metrics assessed for production, 18 still had to be compiled by hand, and 14 relied at least in part on data held outside the system, in finance and planning tools. The catalogue says so, metric by metric.

What we'd say to a peer

Most HR functions do not need more metrics. They need to know which of the ones they already produce serve the strategy, and who each one is for. Count before you add, cut to what the strategy needs, and give every number a definition and a room. An inventory is a better start than a wish list.

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Method note:

Own approach in 4 steps; metric baseline, reconciliation and catalogue; 14 published best-practice sources and a peer benchmark; owner decisions on continue, stop and start.

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