HR Reports: The Journey and the Aftermath!

The criticality of HR reporting for an organization’s success cannot be overstated. According to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, 89% of organizations use HR metrics to measure their HR programs’ effectiveness and 85% use HR metrics to help inform business decisions.   
HR reporting provides a way to gather and analyze HR data, allowing organizations to track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as employee turnover rates, time-to-hire and diversity metrics. By measuring these KPIs, organizations can identify areas where they need to improve and make data-driven decisions to optimize their HR function.  
In fact, organizations that make use of HR reporting are more likely to be successful in achieving their business goals. It also provides insights into workforce trends and patterns, such as identifying skill gaps and determining which job roles are most critical to an organization’s success. By analyzing this data, HR leaders can make informed decisions about talent management and succession planning. We’ll explore the world of HR reporting further in detail and help you optimize your HR function and drive business success.  
5 must-have HR reports for any organization    
There are several types of HR reports that organizations can use to measure the effectiveness of their HR programs and make data-driven decisions. Here are some of the most common types of HR reports:   


Recruitment reports  


Management of employee recruitment and new hires depends heavily on recruiting reports. These reports make sure that no candidate is left out and that everyone is taken into account. They also aid in regulating hiring expenses, evaluating the success of your full-cycle hiring strategy and scheduling onboarding.  
According to a Capterra survey of HR professionals, 75% use software to monitor recruitment activity and 94% of those respondents feel the solution has helped them hire better.  
The same can be true for you: it can keep you organized and better prepared to compete for talent. You may create real-time recruiting reports from a centralized database and understand precisely where you are with attaining your recruitment objectives rather than managing recruiting activity using emails and spreadsheets.  


Turnover and retention reports  


Attrition reports, commonly referred to as turnover reports, emphasize the number and the percentage of individuals who quit during a specific time period. The effectiveness of your workforce retention efforts can be assessed using this data.  
It is important for all firms to know who is leaving, the reasons for it and where they are headed. High employee turnover can result in large expenses, including not only replacement costs but also lost productivity and organizational expertise. Not every quitter, though, raises an alarm. As long as you are not losing your essential talent, some turnover is healthy.  


Training and development reports  


Giving employees the chance to grow professionally is essential if you want to have a knowledgeable and motivated team. Measuring development and learning is crucial.  
As professional development consumes a lot of time and resources, its effectiveness must be evaluated. You can undertake a detailed overview of training reports that includes course ratings, learner progress, trainer ratings, course categories, learning resources and more.  


Compensation reports  


Compensation reports are essential for calculating labor costs. But they can also assist HR departments in comprehending how employee salaries increase over time.  
This might assist businesses in estimating overhead costs. Let’s imagine that expenses of the department of software engineering have increased dramatically over time. This report can be used to forecast the department’s costs over the following five years in a more accurate manner.  


Performance management reports


Monitoring employee performance is necessary if you want to create high-performing teams. Performance reviews assist you in:  

Identifying your best performers  
Recognizing and nurturing prospective leaders  
Determining which employees require coaching or mentoring.  

 Moreover, performance reviews can assist managers in giving employees more pertinent feedback. Keeping track of employees’ objectives, skill sets, KRAs, feedback and other data is essential. Without this information, it will be difficult to compare each person to their peers, and promotions will be based more on opinions than on hard data. Performance appraisals begin with a reasonable starting point: performance reports.  


Attendance and leave reports  


There are important aspects that any organization should comprehend when it comes to absence from the workplace. It’s critical to understand how frequently absence occurs, when it occurs and what might be the cause.  
The data on absence you collect can assist you in developing a plan for managing attendance and leaves . For instance, if you determine that stress is a significant cause, you might consider what aspects of the job might be contributing to this and what solutions the company can provide. Finally, each company should be aware of the costs associated with absence, including lost productivity and sick pay.  
HR reports: best practices  
Any firm must have HR reporting in order to monitor the performance of the human resources department and identify areas for development. Additionally, it ensures adherence to numerous laws and regulations and assists in the making of data-driven decisions.  
Here are some best practices for HR reporting adoption:   



C adence is the key!  


You must frame your findings appropriately for them to be useful. Choosing the appropriate reporting cadence—weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually—means doing just that. It’s also essential to think about the format in which you want your product to be. How will you use the report and what information do you require from the data? When creating your reporting structure, the answer to this question will help you stay focused on making it as functional as plausible.  


Right metrics onboard  


Many indicators can be monitored on a weekly, monthly or annual basis, depending on the objectives of your reports and the conclusions you wish to draw from them. You should pick your measurements well in order to achieve this. Your HR reports should have a range of effective KPIs that, when combined, can enhance data storytelling and promote improved decision-making by offering a more detailed overview of all facets of your human resources department.  


Digitalization, automation, disruption


It is considerably simpler to create and generate reports with the help of tools like people analytics software. Your team will save hours by automating the data gathering process, freeing up that time to evaluate the data and develop ways to make your business better. Additionally, automation will compile all of your outcomes and reports in one location using real-time dashboards that make it simpler to discover the crucial aspects.  


The way ahead  


Building structures and methods for using your results to change or develop future strategies is crucial because carrying out your HR reporting is merely a means to an end. Before and after making a substantial change, consider how you’ll keep past data for comparison or to assess your performance. Evaluate your findings, come to conclusions and take the necessary steps to enhance the performance of your organization.  
Role of analytics in HR reports  
Human resources reporting has become an essential part of HR management in today’s business world. The practice of analyzing data to make more informed decisions, known as analytics, has also become increasingly popular in HR. By utilizing analytics in HR reporting, organizations can gain valuable insights into employee behavior, performance and engagement, which can be used to drive business success.  
It can provide HR professionals with a wealth of information, including data on employee turnover, retention rate, absenteeism, recruitment costs and more. HR leaders can identify trends and patterns that can be used to create more effective HR policies and programs.  
HR analytics can also help organizations forecast future HR needs, such as the number of employees needed to meet business goals, skills required, and recruitment and training costs. This information can be used to develop more accurate HR budgets and staffing plans, ensuring that the organization has the resources it needs to achieve its goals.  
5 key types of data analytics  
Data analytics is a powerful tool for any organization looking to make data-driven decisions. Organizations can optimize their use of structured and unstructured data by selecting the appropriate form of data analytics. There are five primary types of data analytics that can be used:  
Descriptive analytics  
The first type of data analytics is descriptive analytics, which aims to answer the question of what happened in the past. This involves processing raw data from multiple sources to provide valuable insights into historical trends and patterns. However, descriptive analytics signals only whether something is right or wrong without providing an explanation of the why. Therefore, our data consultants recommend that highly data-driven companies should not rely solely on descriptive analytics but instead combine it with other types of data analytics.  
Although descriptive analytics is valuable in identifying historical indicators and trends, it often lacks a clear call to action or explanation of why something occurred. This limitation leads us to the next type of analytics, diagnostic analytics.  
Diagnostic analytics  
During diagnostic analytics, historical data are compared with other data to provide an explanation for why a particular event occurred. This type of analytics provides in-depth insights into a specific problem. However, it is important for companies to have detailed information readily available to avoid the need for individual data collection for each issue, which can be time-consuming.  
The diagnostic analytics stage is often overlooked despite being highly valuable. Unlike predictive analytics, diagnostic analytics tends to be more accessible and applicable to a broader range of use cases. It is crucial to understand why a particular event occurred before attempting to predict what will happen in the future.  
For instance, if a company cannot infer why sales decreased by 20% in 2020, jumping directly to predictive analytics and attempting to predict sales for 2021 may not be the best way to advance towards a higher level of maturity in analytics.  
Predictive analytics  
Predictive analytics is a method that uses insights from descriptive and diagnostic analytics to identify patterns and anomalies and make predictions about future trends. This advanced analytics technique has many benefits including the ability to perform sophisticated analysis with machine or deep learning and a proactive approach to decision-making based on predictions.  
Nevertheless, data consultants emphasize that forecasting is only an estimation, and its accuracy is heavily influenced by the quality of data and the stability of the situation. As a result, careful handling and ongoing optimization are essential.  
Organizations that have a strong foundation in descriptive and diagnostic analytics are better positioned to adopt predictive analytics. The aim is to gain value rapidly and there is no better starting point than an area where the data are well-defined and of high quality.  
Prescriptive analytics  
The objective of prescriptive analytics is to provide recommendations on the most suitable course of action to address future issues or maximize potential opportunities. This intricate analytics approach employs advanced tools and technologies such as machine learning, business rules and algorithms, making it complex to implement and oversee. Additionally, this method requires not only internal historical data but also external information, given the nature of algorithm.  
The primary objective of prescriptive analytics is to eliminate guesswork or subjective assessment from data analytics and simplify the decision-making process.  
Cognitive analytics  
Cognitive analytics, as the name suggests, aims to replicate human thinking in data analysis. Humans can comprehend the relationship between different columns in a dataset, and when computers emulate this kind of thinking, cognitive analytics comes to fruition. The applications of cognitive analytics are virtually limitless, with the HR industry being particularly interested in its potential impact in the future. In recent years, HRs have shown a greater fondness for technology and expect cognitive analytics to create new possibilities.  
The objective of cognitive computing is not to replace the HR but to augment their capabilities by handling vast amounts of data that humans may take months to process and analyze. By doing so, it provides a potential solution to HR challenges.  
The bottom line  
As the world increasingly adopts a data-driven approach, HR reports and analytics are becoming essential in guiding talent management and recruitment decisions for organizations, big or small. The aftermath of HR reports, which is data analytics, has significantly enhanced the accuracy of reports and improved the efficiency of their functions.  
Keka is a powerful HR reporting tool that can revolutionize the way HR operates in your company. With its secure system, Keka can enhance HR departments’ productivity by generating insightful reports that highlight process gaps, streamline future planning and effectively track employee performance.