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Key HR metrics for chief human resources officers
Five insights to maximize HR data and people analytics
The life of a chief human resources officer (CHRO) isn’t easy. One of the biggest challenges is having access to key HR metrics, data, and analytics—all crucial for driving important decision-making for the organization and its people. Learn about the five critical areas every CHRO needs insights on to propel their workforce forward.
The challenge of accessing HR metrics, data, and analytics
More than one chief human resources officer has walked away from their CEO’s quarterly business review with a sense of frustration and envy. Having watched the chief financial officer engage the senior leadership team in a spirited discussion about financial performance and insights, the CHRO is often left wondering why they don’t have the same quality and consistency of data—and the same depth of analysis—as their counterparts in finance, supply chain, customer, sales, and marketing functions.
HR organizations often struggle with defining, organizing, and embedding key metrics, analytics, and insights into the larger decision-making processes of their organizations. This is due to many factors—from a lack of data standards to disparate systems that produce inconsistent metrics, to a shortage of analytical skills and capabilities needed to interpret data, identify trends, and translate them into digestible insights that tell a compelling story. As a result, CHROs often find themselves at a disadvantage when using workforce data to influence key decisions within their organizations.
Five key areas of insights and metrics for CHROs
There are five critical areas where CHROs need access to key HR metrics, data, and insights on demand to provide a snapshot of the current state of the work, workforce, and workplace:
Taking a deeper look into these areas, we examine the key HR metrics, types of segmentation and analysis to support the “drill down,” and the practical realities that come into play when trying to build and implement these analytic capabilities within an organization.
While there will be variations depending on your industry and the priority issues facing your organization, these five areas represent a foundational capability we believe every senior HR leader should have. Some of the metrics within these five groups may already exist within your organization. However, from our experience, it is rare for a CHRO to have all of these in a single platform that is easy to use, understand, and share with others in the organization.
Endnotes
1 Joseph B. Fuller et al., Managing workforce risk in an era of unpredictability and disruption, Deloitte Insights, 2023.
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