50+ HR KPIs & Metric Examples (And How To Implement Them)

Over the last decade, human resources (HR) has undergone a remarkable transformation—shifting from a behind-the-scenes benefits manager to a powerhouse driving organizational strategy and unlocking human potential.

Managers seem to recognize that it is now (more than ever) vital to have the right team executing company strategy. Well-known organizations and enterprises from all over the world regularly discuss how important it is to hire and retain the right talent, and this ability is often regarded as one of the greatest predictors of organizational success. But how do you measure the success of the team?

While many organizations recognize this shift in thought, not all of them are correctly measuring success with updated HR key performance indicators (KPIs).

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50+ HR KPIs & Metric Examples–And How To Implement Them

Compensation KPIs

1. Cost of Workforce as a percentage of total expenses: The cost of the workforce as compared to all costs can be measured by summing all salaries and dividing by the total company costs within a given period.
2. Salary Competitiveness Ratio (SCR): Used to evaluate the competitiveness of compensation options. Can be determined by dividing the average company salary by the average salary offered from competitors or by the rest of your industry.
3. Health Care Expense per Employee: Provides an understanding of the comprehensiveness of a company's health care plan. Can be determined by taking the total price of health care costs divided by all employees.
4. Benefits Satisfaction: This allows a company to see how satisfied an employee is with specific benefits they are offered. Can be determined through surveys, and can be used to break down each benefit individually.
5. Employee Productivity Rate: Helps to measure workforce efficiency over time. Can be determined by taking the total company revenue and dividing it by the total number of employees.
6. Return on Investment (ROI): As an organization, you want to ensure that the dollars you are putting into training your employees is paying off. Can be defined as the profit per dollar invested in social compensations/wages.

Employment KPIs

7. Number of Full-Time Employees: Keeps tabs on the growth of the company workforce over time.
8. Number of Employees Per Location: Tracks employees’ work location preferences—at home or in the office—so you can better understand your workforce and make informed decisions about your building space and company policies.
9. Number of Contractors: Examines the growth in associated workers over time. Can be compared to the number of full-time workers to better understand workforce trends.
10. Retirement Rate: This metric is particularly important for any organization developing a strategic workforce plan. Can be calculated by looking at the number of employees who retired as a percentage of the headcount.
11. Average Age of Retirement: The summed age of all retiring employees divided by the number of retiring employees. Being aware of these trends aid in forecasting retirement and planning for workforce replacement.
12. New Hire 90-Day Failure Rate: Helps determine how successful the talent acquisition process is at finding the right fit for jobs.
13. First Year Voluntary Termination Rate: Reflects on how welcoming the company is to new hires. A high percentage suggests that the right people are being hired, but not embraced.
14. Average Time to Fill a Job Vacancy: Tracks how efficient the hiring process is in terms of time resources used to fill a vacant spot.
15. Hiring Process Satisfaction Rate: Provides perspective on how well the process works from the employee’s perspective.
16. Cost per Hire: Acknowledges the amount of resources invested into acquiring the best talent. Can be determined by averaging the total marketing, hiring process, and referral (if necessary) costs per hire.
17. Effectiveness of Training: Helps the company understand how comfortable new hires feel after their training vs. before. Typically determined through a post-training survey.
18. Training Cost per Employee: Helps to measure the amount invested in onboarding new hires.
19. Percentage of Employees Trained: Helps a company see how quickly new hires are being onboarded.
20. Diversity Rate: Keeps track of how successfully the organization is creating an environment that fosters an open and accepting community.
21. Number of D&I Initiatives Implemented: The number of D&I initiatives implemented measures organizational commitment to establishing and maintaining a culture of diversity and inclusion.
22. Attrition Rate: Helps a company figure out how successful they are at retaining talent. Determined by dividing the number of employees who left the company in a given period by the average number of employees in that time period.
23. Turnover Rate For Highest Performers: Turnover of top performers in particular is negative and comes at a higher cost. This metric indicates the success of retention efforts and aids planning for talent replacement. Can be determined by dividing the number of high performers to leave in the past year by total high performers identified.
24. Average Time to Find a Hire: Helps track the efficiency of the hiring process.
25. Candidates Interviewed per Hire: Determined by calculating the total number of candidates interviewed by the total number of hires in a particular hiring period.
26. Yield Percentage: This is the percentage of candidates remaining after each round of elimination in the hiring process. A low percentage might indicate the need to update an unclear or unattractive job posting, and a high percentage indicates a larger number of qualified candidates with whom to continue the hiring process.
27. Knowledge Achieved With Training: Helps the company see not specifically the price of the training, but whether it was effective. Seeing if the individuals retained knowledge well enough to apply it is critical. Can be determined by creating an exam, and monitoring exam pass rate %, average score %, and pre/post training %.
28. Diversity Numbers In The Workforce: Workplace diversity helps to cultivate innovation and competitive advantage. Diversity of nationalities and ethnicities can be calculated by noting the differences among employee demographic segments.
29. Acceptance Rate: Dividing the number of acceptances by the number of offers allows organizations to get a sense of how successful their recruitment strategies are. Industry benchmarks can then be a helpful comparison.
30. Voluntary Termination Rate: Determined by taking the number of employee-led resignations from the company over the total number of terminations in a given time period.
31. Involuntary Termination Rate: Determined by taking the number of employer-led resignations from the company over the total number of terminations in a given time period.
32. Absenteeism Rate: Gives perspective on the amount of labor and productivity lost due to sickness and otherwise unpredicted leave. Formula: (Total number of lost workdays due to absence) / (Number of available workdays in an organization) = (Absenteeism rate)
33. COVID-related Absences: Allows you to see surges as they happen, giving you the opportunity to switch protocols or move to remote work as needed.

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Employee Experience KPIs

34. Employee Satisfaction Index: This is a key metric underlying talent retention. Using a company-wide survey can be helpful in gauging employee happiness.
35. Number of Employee Satisfaction Surveys: Helps understand how much effort is being put into maintaining and improving employee happiness.
36. Percentage of Employees Trained in Company Culture: Evaluates the importance and understanding of company-wide organizational culture.
37. Percentage of Vacation Days Used: Helps show the company attitude toward a healthy work-life balance. Determined by observing the number of vacation days used as compared to those unused.
38. Employee Net Promoter Score: Measures how likely an employee is to recommend their organization as a place to work. This is determined by the difference in percentage of promoters and detractors.
39. Average Tenure: The average length of time that an employee spends with the company helps determine employee satisfaction and talent retention.
40. Learning & Development Score: Reveals whether your employees are satisfied with the development and continuing education opportunities afforded by your company, which impacts the overall employee experience.

Performance KPIs

41. Percentage of Job Candidates Who Meet Job Criteria: Helps in evaluating the effectiveness of job postings in reaching top candidates.
42. Rate of Internal Job Hires: Shows the effectiveness of organizational talent development.
43. Rate of Internal Referral Hires: Allows managers to see the value added when current employees help to identify and acquire talent.
44. Performance of New Hires: The performance of new hires can be compared to that of other employees. Typically done by evaluating performance reports.
45. Internal Promotions Vs. External Hires: This ratio measures how many people already working at a company are considered for internal promotion versus the number of externally attracted people. Can be particularly effective when looking at organizational succession planning.
46. Internal Promotion Rate: Internal promotions indicate successful retention and growth of top performers. Can be determined by dividing the number of promoted individuals by the total number of employees.
47. Suggestions per Employee: Evaluates employee engagement in improving business processes, and reflects on the openness of a company to employee input.
48. HR-to-FTE Ratio: The number of HR full time equivalents divided by the total number of full time equivalents. Helps determine HR's ability to provide services. Larger organizations typically have a smaller ratio, but more HR staff overall, than small businesses.
49. Cycle Time To Process Payroll: Shows timeframe of process, giving projection if assistance/updated process is needed. This is the number of business days in the payroll process from start to finish.
50. Cycle Time To Resolve Payroll Errors: The number of business days it takes to resolve payroll errors reported by employees. A high number of days could indicate the need to review your payroll process.
51. Percentage of Workforce Below Performance Standards: Keeps tabs on the amount of low-performing employees in an organization.

Turn Your HR KPIs Into Action

Once you’ve defined your human resources KPIs, it’s time to start implementing them by creating a Balanced Scorecard. A scorecard is a cluster of data that helps your leadership team critically analyze the effectiveness of your HR strategies in relation to developing a competitive advantage, improving skills, managing your culture, reducing costs, etc. It provides the means to monitor workforce indicators, analyze workforce statistics, diagnose issues, and calculate financial impacts.

Important note: You don’t need to use all of the above KPIs in your scorecard. Take time to identify which HR metrics will bring the most value to your organization and department.

Learn everything you need to know about Balanced Scorecards in this article.

Your Job’s Not Done Yet

Once you’ve successfully aligned your human resources KPIs with the organization’s goals in a scorecard, you’ve still got work to do. Don’t forget to make these steps a routine part of your job:

1. Conduct regular meetings to review HR KPI progress

Take time to consistently review your departmental scorecard to ensure it stays relevant and top of mind. My own ClearPoint team meets monthly to talk about where we might be underperforming; annually, we discuss possible metrics to change or remove.

Visuals are especially helpful for departmental meetings because they make it easy to see performance at a glance. Dashboards, for instance (like the one created below in ClearPoint), capture a wealth of KPI data and allow you to present it meaningfully to the group. Everyone can quickly see where they’re falling behind target, and you can focus the conversation primarily on the problem areas.

2. Review your HR Scorecard with the leadership team

Make sure progress is aligned with the company’s strategic plan, and that it stays that way continuously. If ever organizational goals change, you may need to edit your own scorecard to maintain alignment.

3. Evaluate scorecard metrics periodically to ensure they are still valid

It’s almost inevitable that your measures will change at some point, and it will benefit you to get ahead of this. KPIs should be reevaluated whenever you complete an objective, as well as when your initiatives change. You might also discover that another KPI is a better performance indicator than a metric you’re currently using, which should also trigger a switch.

4. Share your HR metrics and progress with the entire organization

The HR KPI dashboard would also be useful here, to help communicate your department’s contribution to the strategic goals. Don’t be afraid to share both positive and negative results with the group—your department’s efforts to be transparent will generate employee goodwill, even if outcomes are different than expected.

You now have more than 50 HR KPI examples and know how to put the metrics into play with a balanced scorecard. Your next step is to choose the KPIs that will bring the most value to your organization and create your scorecard.

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Ready to transform your HR strategy? Book a demo with us today and discover how ClearPoint Strategy can help you implement and monitor effective HR KPIs.

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HR KPIs & Metric Examples FAQ:

What are key performance indicators (KPIs)?

KPIs are measures used to evaluate the success of an organization. KPIs can be quantitative or qualitative in nature. Quantitative KPIs include metrics such as sales revenue per employee, number of customers served by each call center agent, or revenue. Qualitative KPIs, on the other hand, may include customer satisfaction scores, quality ratings, or product reliability rates.

What is a SMART KPI?

Organizations often use SMART criteria to create a good KPI. A SMART KPI is: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound.

Why are KPIs important?

KPIs are important because if you don't know how you're progressing in certain areasm you don't actually know where you're going as an organization. You have no insight into if you're making progress towards your strategic goals, or if you're headed in a direction you want. KPIs act as a 'pulse check' of your strategic plan.

What should I include in a KPI report?

What you include in your report depends heavily on your audience. There are, however, a few pieces of information every KPI report should include. It's important to show the linking goals of your KPIs, the KPI measure data and calculations, and visuals showcasing the data in an easy-to-digest format.

How do I pick which KPIs to track?

It's easy to convince yourself that you need to measure everything for your organization. Remember, though, that KPIs stand for key performance indicators. You want to only measure the most important and influential metrics. To bes identify the right KPIs, tie your measures back to your strategic goals. Make sure they relate to what you hope to achieve in your organization.

FAQ:

What are the KPIs for the HR department?

KPIs for the HR department include:

- Employee Turnover Rate: Measures the rate at which employees leave the organization.
- Time to Hire: The average time taken to fill a vacant position.
- Employee Satisfaction and Engagement: Metrics derived from employee surveys and feedback.
- Training and Development: Number of training hours per employee or completion rates of development programs.
- Absenteeism Rate: The frequency and duration of employee absences.
- Retention Rate: The percentage of employees who remain with the organization over a specified period.
- Cost per Hire: The total cost involved in hiring a new employee.
- Diversity and Inclusion Metrics: Measures related to workforce diversity and inclusivity.

How do you measure HR KPIs?

To measure HR KPIs:

- Data Collection: Gather relevant data from HR information systems, employee surveys, and performance management systems.
- Define Metrics: Clearly define what each KPI measures and how it will be calculated.
- Set Benchmarks: Establish benchmarks or targets for each KPI to measure against.
- Analyze Data: Regularly analyze the data to track performance against the benchmarks.
- Reporting: Use HR dashboards and reports to present the KPI data to stakeholders.
- Continuous Monitoring: Continuously monitor KPIs to identify trends and areas for improvement.

What are some HR KPIs?

Some HR KPIs include:

- Employee Turnover Rate: The percentage of employees who leave the organization within a certain period.
-Time to Hire: The average duration from job posting to hiring.
- Employee Satisfaction Score: Derived from regular employee satisfaction surveys.
- Training Effectiveness: Measured by pre- and post-training performance metrics.
- Absenteeism Rate: The total number of days employees are absent divided by the total number of workdays.
- Retention Rate: The proportion of employees who stay with the organization over a specific period.
- Cost per Hire: The average cost involved in recruiting and onboarding a new employee.
- Diversity Ratio: The percentage of employees from diverse backgrounds.

What are HR KPIs?

HR KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are specific metrics used to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the Human Resources department. They measure various aspects of HR activities, such as recruitment, employee engagement, training, and retention, to help align HR strategies with the overall goals of the organization.

Why are HR KPIs important?

HR KPIs are important because they:

- Track Performance: Help monitor the effectiveness of HR initiatives and strategies.
- Improve Decision-Making: Provide data-driven insights to inform HR decisions and policies.
- Enhance Accountability: Ensure HR activities align with organizational goals and objectives.
- Identify Areas for Improvement: Highlight areas where HR processes can be optimized.
- Support Strategic Goals: Align HR efforts with the broader strategic goals of the organization, enhancing overall performance.