Human Capital Dashboard Tracks Strategic HR Metrics Using Xcelsius

Human Capital Dashboard Tracks Strategic HR Metrics Using Xcelsius

August 13, 2007, 1:50 pm

A Human Capital Dashboard addresses what was deemed a weakness in HR measurements – that companies gather human resource metrics but don’t use them strategically. A 2004 survey of senior executives, managers and HR professionals showed a wide gap between HR KPI collection and the use of that information as a management tool. See Human Capital Metrics: Most Users are Missing the Point.

Enterprise Dashboards, of course, are excellent in providing actionable business intelligence and are tools used to bridge gaps such as these.

Thanks to a Dashboard Spy over at Inverra, a consulting company with a focus on performance dashboards and scorcards, we get this great live demo of an Xcelsius Human Capital Dashboard. It really works hard to address that gap between knowledge and action by providing human capital metrics that are grouped in an intuitive and helpful way. Let’s start by looking at the screenshot of the dashboard:

Remember, these are just screenshots of the dashboard. The live demo is definitely worth visiting as you can see the many pages of the dashboard and get a sense as to the interactivity that Crystal Xcelsius can provide.

The KPI views of the human capital dashboard are driven by departments within the company. You use the selector in the middle to select different departments. Drilling down within the dashboard brings you this view:

The HR metrics are divided into the four main groups of

Key Talent Processes
Human Capital Balance Sheet
Workforce Analytics
Compensation and Benefits

Within the category of Key Talent Processes, we have KPIs within sub-categories: Supply Resources (Open Positions, Speed to Hire, Employee Movement, New Hire Success, Leader Span of Control), Improve Capabilities (Key Job Skill Depth, Timely Feedback, Return on Training, Succession Ready, HR Span of Support), Reward Performance (Bonus Measures, Promotions)

In the Human Capital Balance Sheet, we have the following metrics: Assets (Leader Effectiveness, Investment in Leaders, HR Effectiveness, Investment in HR), Liabilities (Labor Cost, Cost to Hire, Cost to Develop, Cost to Manage, Cost of Benefits, Cost of Turnover), Equity (Competence – ‘Can Do”, Engagement – “Want To”).

In terms of Workforce Analytics, we have these HR Metrics: Demographics (Average Age, Avverage Pay, Average Tenure, Average Promotion Rate), Diversity (Ethnicity, Academic, Language), Turnover (Voluntary, Manager, Key Job, New Hire, Diversity)

Finally, in the category of Compensation & Benefits, we look at KPIs in these sub-areas: Compensation (Overall Compensation Ratio, Overall Pay at Risk, Top Performer Pay, Bottom Performer Pay, Key Job Pay, Diversity Pay), Retirement (Participation Rate, Average Deferral, Average Balance) and Health & Welfare (Medical Claims, Unused PTO, Disability Claims)

A great collection of human capital metrics, wouldn’t you say?

I had the opportunity to ask my source (Pat Quirk at Inverra) about the human capital dashboard and the underlying technology and process.

Here we have some notes on the HR metrics:

In terms of the technology behind this dashboard, the technical team at Inverra chose Crystal Xcelsius by Business Objects. I asked them to explain some of their reasoning and they were kind enough to provide a glimpse of their thinking:

We went with Xcelsius Pro 4.5 and Microsoft Excel because we found that the combination provided basically better, faster, and far cheaper, monthly scorecards and dashboards. We highly recommend the “pro” package to anyone with basic excel/powerpoint-ish skills – we don’t recommend it for real-time applications or those without requisite underlying skills.

Other points made by the team:

• Really need multiple skill sets to get most out of the package – creativity (design, look and feel, color, form) + perfectionism (get all the details in / working) + analytical (understand nuances of package / data)
• More advanced work in Xcelcius takes months of hands-on time to master – that is why we created a business model to do that work for clients, thereby allowing them to focus on insights and action
• Not geared for real-time updates (unless you purchase far more expensive enterprise version and licenses)
• No IT capital expenditure needed
• No IT licensing needed
• No IT software needed
• No IT service requests / support

In terms of the process used in their dashboard projects, here is a typical flow:

• We consult with clients on metric selection
• Client feeds us raw data and we do intermediary calculations
• We get client data updates in any format they want (.txt, .ppt, .xls etc) from as many sources as they have (hr, ops, peoplesoft, OD, etc)
• We maintain data warehouse
• We build the template (took a day for me to build this)
• We maintain the data in a simple data warehouse
• We store as little as possible in the underlying file to keep performance high
• Usually have 1 tab with selectors, 1 tab with data
• Use hlookups extensively within the main tab to pull from the data tab as user navigates
• We update and deploy the dashboard (typically monthly)
• We include unlimited updates and mods to the dashboard in our $250 / month pricing model
• Typically takes several weeks to align executives and select key measures
• Typically start with straw model and cut-back / add based on what data client actually has
• Typically have place-holders for more advanced metrics and start data gathering go-forward and add results as they become available

Again, Dashboard Spy readers should check out the live demo for the full effect of this human capital dashboard.

Also, be sure to check out:

Tags: Human Capital Dashboard, HR Metrics, Human Resources KPI, HR Dashboard, Executive Dashboards, Enterprise Dashboards, Crystal Xcelsius Dashboard, Business Objects Dashboard, Inverra

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