HR Dashboards: Samples & Templates - Smartsheet

Human resources (HR) dashboards aggregate and present employee data in a meaningful way, and are designed to help make the most of everyone’s time, both within the HR team and throughout the entire organization. As a visual display of key metrics, HR dashboards simplify information gathering, and present data in a way that can be sorted, analyzed, and presented to management and executive teams.

Dashboards are also an efficient way to communicate with staff and stay abreast of what’s happening in your company. Here’s an example of what a clear and functional HR dashboard — in this case dedicated to hiring functions — can look like:

“A good dashboard should be simple to use and easy to understand,” notes Cornelia Gamlem, founder and President of the Gems Group, consultant, speaker, and author of four books, The Big Book of HR, The Essential Workplace Conflict Handbook, The Conflict Resolution Phrase Book, and The Manager’s Answer Book. “Being able to measure effectiveness and efficiency is critical in today’s business environment. Dashboards provide a platform to do that and to share the data as well. For example, HR can measure the effectiveness of recruitment processes or assess trends as part of its workforce planning activities and easily report to senior management.”

Dashboard Classifications

As you decide what will be most useful to support your HR efforts, consider how you’ll specifically use the dashboard. Dashboards are often classified as strategic, analytical, or operational. Many dashboards are hybrids that combine two or all three types:

• Operational: Operational dashboards provide real-time alerts to any deviations from the norm. Professionals use this type of dashboard to monitor and analyze a company’s activities in a specific business area. Generally, departmental employees use operational dashboards often to highlight issues in real-time so they can correct a situation.

• Strategic Dashboards: Also known as executive dashboards, this type of dashboard provides an overview of the data executives need to ascertain the health of the a department or the entire organization and identify opportunities for improvement.

• Analytical: To understand trends and underlying causes, and compare variables and timeframes, users often rely on analytical dashboards. Analytical dashboards are more detailed than the other two dashboard types, and hold both operational and strategic data. They offer drill-down functionality to enable data exploration and gain insights from multiple sources.

Learn more about the design and utility of dashboards by reading Best Dashboard Apps by Category.