Top KPIs in HR: Examples & Explanations

September 20 2021

Stories

In recent years, KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) have become increasingly important in human resources management, and for good reason: they allow for simple and reliable measurement of HR performance throughout an organization.

Thanks to numerous indicators and associated parameters, KPIs offer visibility on the status, evolution and efficiency of HR performance in a company.

You may already have perceptions of this performance, but it is difficult not to miss essential information without accurate analysis. Human Resources KPIs support these perceived situations with reliable data over a period of time, therefore allowing you to set strategic goals to optimize your HR strategies.

What are these statistics, and what HR performance indicators should you use to improve your practices? If you feel a little lost, don’t panic! This article presents the 5 most important indicators to use in your company, with all the arguments and information you need to quickly become a KPI professional!

Why use KPIs?

Before you ask yourself what examples of KPIs are essential to your company, you may simply ask yourself why you should use KPIs in your Human Resources department.

Here’s a list of benefits that Human Resources KPIs have to offer:

Save time and efficiency;
Help you make decisions or shape your HR decisions;
Support your insight with numbers;
Obtain clear statistics and put them to good use;
Get a comparative vision of indicators over time (evolution and efficiency over a period of time);
Optimize recruitment, training, and many other HR tasks;
Identify HR management problems in your company.

KPIs are therefore a valuable daily help and a powerful tool for human resource metrics and management.

How can I use KPIs in my company?

Are you beginning to be convinced of the importance of KPIs but have no idea how to use them? Here are the answers to all your questions.

First, let’s talk about implementation. Rest assured; you don’t have to come up with all the performance statistics by yourself: KPIs can be effortlessly implemented within your organization. Choosing a Human Resources Information System (HRIS) for your company will allow you to set up the indicators immediately. The calculations will start as soon as they are implemented and evolve over a period of time. In addition, our HRIS offers a dashboard that provides a global view of your performance indicators, all in a few clicks. We can only recommend that you choose an HRIS like Folks to benefit from the many advantages of KPIs!

Afterwards, it will be up to you to use the statistics obtained to establish or optimize your HR plans and make strategic decisions to improve your business model. Furthermore, using these indicators over the long term will allow you to measure the effectiveness of HR actions over a reference period and to continually improve your strategic goals accordingly.

It’s as simple – and as convenient – as that!

Which indicators are the most important?

We have gathered the most critical HR performance indicators that you need to use daily. These KPIs reveal issues that have a profound impact on the functioning of an organization and address various concerns such as employee retention, workplace safety, recruitment issues, etc.

1- Turnover rate

The staff turnover rate corresponds to the number of employee departures in relation to the total number of employees in the company, all over a specific period.

It is a key metric that allows you to identify the reasons for employee departures and to identify voluntary departures. In addition, some HRIS like Folks indicate more precisely the specific reasons for employee departures in a dedicated module. Therefore, all these indicators are crucial to identify problems related to the loss of workers in your company and act strategically to stem the tide of departures.

To go even further in this analysis, we can also identify key employees (who have more strategic positions in the organization and are therefore more difficult to replace) and their voluntary turnover rate. Since the departure of these experienced employees is extremely costly and time-consuming for a company, this KPI will quickly become a pillar of your HR performance optimization plan.

Therefore, the voluntary turnover rate is an essential and strategic performance indicator to improve your business model, especially in the current context of labour shortage in Canada.

2- Absenteeism rate

Suppose you perceive situations of absenteeism in your company. In that case, this indicator is made for you, and it will support your impressions with clear statistics so that you can make the best decisions to solve these problems. It is an excellent indicator to quickly obtain data on days of absence and frequency of absences per employee.

Even if you don’t think you have a high absenteeism level in your organization, this performance indicator will offer you, in addition to a statistical value, a clear vision of the reasons given by employees to justify their absences. Absenteeism is always a consequence of others problems that will be easier to solve later on.

This KPI will therefore lead you to work on other notions strategically, but in the meantime, you will have saved time in identifying the problems and the employees concerned.

3- Workplace accidents

This KPI is useful in the construction and manufacturing fields. It makes it easy to track work-related accidents and store information related to their severity and the days of absence they cause.

Workplace accidents are a source of loss for the company and can indicate material or safety concerns in the workplace. If they are numerous and frequent over a specific period, it will be detrimental to employees and the organization. Some KPIs can even tell you the frequency rate of these accidents to identify the seriousness of the situation. Once again, this KPI will become a great help to save you time in strategic human resources management by centralizing relevant data to draw valuable statistics for you.

4- Retention rate

The retention rate corresponds to the percentage of employees who remain employed over a specific time and is currently a hot topic in the HR world. Labour shortages and the cost of losing qualified employees are factors that make this KPI essential to good human resources management in companies.

Retention rate encompasses both the ability to retain employees over the long term and the success of an organization’s recruitment process. It also allows you to track your ability to retain new employees and determine whether your company is attractive to newcomers. Using this KPI will lead you, depending on your situation, to rethink your onboarding processes for new hires, as well as your talent management and recruiting strategy. In a world where good employees are hard to find and even harder to keep, it is crucial to know the retention rate statistics in your company.

Do you perceive talent retention issues in your organization? Do you want to identify sources of staff dissatisfaction and improve employee engagement? The perfect solution would be to survey your teams in a confidential and dematerialized way.

Do you want to discover the impact of KPIs on your HR management?

Improve your HR strategic goals with Folks!

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5- Demographics

Demographics aren’t KPIs per se, but they give you a clear picture of who your employees are and what categories they fall into (job categories, diversity rate, for example). The purpose here is not to categorize your employees and their personal data for no apparent reason, but to access information that is essential for making organizational decisions.

It will be a useful indicator to complete annual insurance reports, government reports, etc. From a more strategic perspective, demographic data can also help you make decisions about your business organization. Although it is not a management indicator, it will help you weigh some of your HR decisions.

KPIs are valuable tools for optimizing your strategy and helping you make relevant decisions that are adapted to your company’s needs and issues. These indicators are becoming more and more important in modern organizations and are bound to diversify and widely spread in the future.

No need to be a maths fan: everything is simplified to offer you precise and reliable statistics. In addition to saving time, you will undoubtedly be much more efficient in all your daily HR practices!

So, what are you waiting for to try it out?

Top KPIs in HR: Examples & Explanations

Why use KPIs?

How can I use KPIs in my company?