HR+Dashboards

HR Dashboards
ABC Manufacturing: //Assumptions//


 * 15 manufacturing plants located throughout North America
 * Corporate headquarters located in Albany, NY
 * ~20,000 total employees
 * Each plant has independent HR operations on-site
 * Company performance has decreased as a result of the current recession in the economy
 * In response to this decline, the Executive Team has asked for all departments, including HR, to operate as efficiently as possible

To the HR Executive Team:

As you know in an industry as rapidly changing as yours, time is of the essence and it is important to remain ahead of the curve while evolving on all strategic levels. A healthy human resources department eases the burden of certain activities that may be overlooked in the turbulent business environment. The ability to merge technology and human elements is a unique approach and may ultimately revolutionize the business playing field. The true value of dashboards requires the merger of both human and technological elements which can be best summed up from a quote by Allan Willie “Dashboards can unlock the value of decades of IT investments by linking ERP, business intelligence and analysis tools to humans who can act on the information. But as the interface between systems and business decisions, dashboards have to accommodate human behavior to add value” (Allan, 2007).

In the case of your company, the issue is not the amount of information you have at your disposal, but how you interpret that information. The biggest selling point of any Human Resource Dashboard is that it makes sense of the quantitative information that may normally bog down the business. An HR Dashboard not only gives information on important business indicators, but also can improve productivity throughout the organization as a whole. Not only does this move make sense for your operations, but it also is a smart financial investment. As a reference for a human resource dashboard we have provided a sample dashboard below: (Shadan, 2007) Obviously this is a simple example of what a dashboard can bring to the table for your organization, but it is important to recognize that a dashboard is as simple or as a complex as the company wants to make it. It is important to note that with any new technological breakthrough there are both opportunities as well as pitfalls. Let’s next take a look at some of the strengths of your potential HR dashboard.

The HR Dashboard is fully customizable which allows each business to focus on areas of success and improvement. For example, a consulting group built a dashboard that plotted blinking lights in the corners of the dashboard, simply to remind them to continue to schedule time to discuss areas of vulnerability (Meyer, 1994). This would be a great example of using the dashboard in its simplest capacity, but may ultimately generate great benefits for the company as a whole. With a company that has 15 different manufacturing plants, which operate independently of each other, it is difficult to collect a comprehensive view of how the company is performing. With that said, the HR dashboard provides a central location for your company’s information. As mentioned, this can get as broad or as narrow as ABC wants, but by providing a live snapshot of the company as a whole it allows the individual HR representatives to get a view from above and subsequently compare to the individually operating facilities.

The dashboard cannot make decisions for you, but can offer you the necessary information to make an educated decision. We hope that by investing in a HR Dashboard you realize that it will pay for itself immediately.

The first and most important thing about a HR Dashboard is that it provides a single spot for many of the metrics that influence your business. Currently, ABC’s operations are split into 15 silos rather than one unified company. The benefit of the HR Dashboard will be seen as it closes the gap on many of your lagging facilities. Another important facet of HR dashboards is that they can provide warning to situations that have not yet gotten out of control, but may soon be headed down that road. This is a small price to pay to avoid a potentially catastrophic meltdown in any particular business. We’ve talked about tailoring the dashboard to your needs, but with escalating situations you have the option to give each facility personal touches based on each situation. As we’ve mentioned this is a larger investment up front in both time and money, but will ultimately pay dividends as you learn the idiosyncrasies of your dashboard. We understand that it is impossible to truly predict supply and demand, but with all the appropriate information found in one location it allows for you to prepare yourself for the peaks and valleys in the demand forecast.

Conversely, with each emerging technology comes the potential for issues. With HR Dashboards, the amount of information you can produce is limitless. This can present a problem with reading a HR Dashboard. Many HR managers will try to squeeze too much information on the dashboard, which can lead to clutter and confusion (Shapiro, 2009). Consequently, this can lead to misreading the dashboard in high-pressure situations, and can result in impulsive or irrational business decisions. Below we’ve attached a HR Dashboard that should act as an example to avoid bogging down your HR managers with an overload of information.



Constant updates seem like a luxury to have for any manager, but in reality these streaming updates can be misleading. When having the day-to-day updates at your fingertips it is important to not lose sight of the weekly, monthly, and yearly statistics that dictate the success of the company. By having these constant updates it may create a rift between HR managers and those managers directly above them. You may ask yourself, why would this be the case? The reason is simple, micromanaging. If a manager has to constantly check the status of certain managers it may undermine the ability of that manager to lead his department. These issues can be avoided if the HR Dashboard is used correctly and can lead to a competitive advantage for the organization.

In recent times HR Dashboards have been proven useful to various organizations in different capacities. For example, The Naval Sea Systems Command, or NAVSEA, has been utilizing a Human Capital Digital Dashboard (HCDD) since 2004 and has seen significant results (Tropiano Jr., 2005). With a very complex and layered organization, the HCDD has enabled NAVSEA to take a comprehensive look at their employees’ experience, demographics, leadership skills, critical vacancies, or even upcoming retirements. This HCDD displays all this information enabling the commanders to make important staffing decisions. We have also seen success with an HR Dashboard with Quantum Corporation; a CA based technical testing and manufacturing firm (Tropiano Jr., 2005). Quantum was realizing problems with scheduling and forecasting their demand. Managers within the company complained that they could not detect problems and issues early enough, which led to delayed testing and manufacturing bottlenecks. When Quantum began using their customized HR Dashboard, performance throughout the organization was revived. Staffing needs were addressed well in advance to meet their production goals. Employee satisfaction levels were addressed in which they found that unhappy employees would just not work at a level that could achieve an ambitious schedule. The HR Dashboard allowed Quantum’s decision makers to address their company hurdles by giving them a more real-time update.

ABC Manufacturing should undoubtedly make the investment for a HR Dashboard system. As previously mentioned, the benefits for this system are plentiful. ABC can have a real-time look at the organization by tracking all HR metrics, information, analysis, and any trends that may emerge. Specifically, we would like to mention a couple HR areas of ABC’s concern and how the HR Dashboard can serve as a corrective measure. First, a majority of ABC’s manufacturing plants are struggling with absenteeism and even retention among their line staff. More than ever ABC needs to attract potential long-term employees that will remain loyal. The HR Dashboard application we propose will allow the HR department, as well as management, to look at specific HR metrics such as workforce planning, absence management, turnover rate, recruiting cost, retention rate, and average employee lifetime (Brown, 1999). By taking an analytical look at these metrics combined, ABC’s plant leaders will now be able to make better-informed staffing projections and decisions.

A second issue ABC Manufacturing is looking to address in the immediate future is being able to accurately evaluate and compensate their remote sales force. With such a geographically diverse sales staff, ABC allows the majority of these employees to work from a home office. While this is helpful for recruitment as a perk for the job, this means Sales Managers need to keep a close eye on each one’s productivity and performance to ensure they are maximizing their sales territory. For this matter, the HR Dashboard can monitor employee time, productivity, and commissions. This again will help managers make tough decisions easier. One of the major struggles in any industry is maintaining comittment from your work force. This constant updating will ensure the force that they will remain focused and continue to be an asset to the organization (Johnson, 2006).



Finally, we know ABC Manufacturing is concerned with the scale of this investment. While some HR Dashboards for this size of a company can cost upwards of $75,000, we are proposing a software program costing $30,000 for 20 concurrent users with a subscription fee of $15,000 for every three-year term(Fitzgerald 2008). This service is priced at a significant value and will be accessible to everyone in ABC’s HR Executive Team. An HR Dashboard for ABC means they can stop departmentalizing HR tasks such as employee recruitment and employee retention, which normally results in employee dissatisfaction and high turnover. Instead, by committing to the investment of an HR Dashboard, ABC Manufacturing will be able to monitor employees, maximize the value of their workforce, and increase overall performance.

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