TALENT SCORECARDS AREN’T JUST NICE-TO-HAVE NUMBER REPORTS. THESE DASHBOARDS CAN BE USED TO PROVIDE EARLY INDICATORS OF STAFFING PROBLEMS, QUANTIFY MISSION-CRITICAL HR INITIATIVES, AND UNLOCK EXTRA OPPORTUNITIES FOR PRODUCTIVITY AND GROWTH.

Talent scoreboards can be neglected as HR teams get overwhelmed with day-to-day tasks, but this is a mistake. These visual representations of HR policies, team performance, and staffing levels can provide a unique competitive advantage in today’s tight talent markets. The key? Using the right kinds of metrics. Here, three of the top value “signal light” will be examined, along with the key metrics that bring them to life. By the end, it should be possible to see how every organization can lean on scorecards to unlock hidden value.

DASHBOARDS CAN PROVIDE EARLY WARNING OF FUTURE TURNOVER
A major concern across all industries right now is the level of turnover being experienced. Between the “Great Resignation” and the “Great Reshuffle”, turnover and churn are at multi-decade highs. However, rather than being caught by surprise, savvy HR groups can use their HR dashboards to get an early warning that turnover is about to rise.

What’s the sign? According to fresh research from MIT’s Sloan School, one of the biggest factors in the present turnover and job-hopping environment is dissatisfaction with a company’s culture. Thus, firms who notice a downtick in engagement, morale, or company satisfaction numbers can expect that they will shortly be seeing rising numbers of employees heading out the door.

Of course, armed with these early warning signs, firms can work to turn things around. According to the HR Brew newsletter, the most popular interventions of 2022 are shaping up to be unexpected raises or bonus payments, additional vacation days, flex time (particularly 4-day weeks), and wellness perks such as gym memberships or credits toward online counseling or wellbeing apps. By showing employees that they are being heard and seen with such interventions, HR teams and frontline managers use early turnover warning to keep staff from exiting prematurely.

DASHBOARDS CAN PROVIDE VISUAL PROOF HR INITIATIVES ARE DRIVING CHANGE
Another major challenge for HR teams is identifying which HR initiatives are truly driving change. This can be especially tricky to pinpoint when the workforce is geographically distributed and remote, hindering line of sight into team dynamics and workplace culture evolutions. However, smart use of dashboards can restore certain visual signs of what is or isn’t changing in the workforce.

What’s the sign? One key set of metrics to add to the dashboard is the open and click-through rates on corporate communications. Employees are reporting that even though diversity and ESG initiatives are important to them, only 13 percent are aware of what their companies are doing on these fronts. For HR teams who may be investing heavily in supply chain diversification initiatives and anti-racist hiring systems, this can be a frustration stat to learn. Further, it is hard to be agents of change when employees aren’t aware that change is happening around them.

Additional key metrics for HR to track in this area include the size and scope of talent pools, time to fill for open positions, and the percentage of roles being filled by internal candidates. These metrics help capture efficiencies in hiring and talent management, while roles filled internally helps capture the effectiveness of learning and development programming. These numbers also become useful in conversations around the utility of AI-assisted candidate screening and assessments and for justifying investments in self-directed learning platforms, dedicated coaches, or cohort retreats.

DASHBOARDS CAN HELP PINPOINT OPPORTUNITIES FOR DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH
A final deep value opportunity for HR teams with dashboards is pinpointing opportunities for additional development and growth. This can be critical for helping teams break out of reactive, “fire drill” mode to give more strategic direction and leadership to their partner groups and organizational stakeholders.

What’s the sign? For this kind of future-facing analysis, HR teams can modify their talent dashboards to include metrics around the number of individual contributors, time in role for each individual contributor and manager in the organization, and the percentage of open managerial and executive positions being filled by internal candidates.

Why these numbers? One of the biggest drivers of turnover and disengagement for workers (after a toxic culture) is feeling like there’s no opportunity for forward advancement within their current organization. Identifying where individual contributors are plateauing in their progression through the organizational ranks and making a concentrated effort to recruit managerial talent out of that group sends a powerful message to staff about the organization’s real commitment to development and upward mobility.

It’s also an opportunity to address a point of systemic bias within many organizations. People of color and other minorities tend to stay in individual contributor roles for years longer than their white (and particularly white male) counterparts. Pulling the numbers around promotion rates and time in role out onto a public dashboard can shine a light on these kinds of disparities and help jump-start movement (or the kinds of employee development plans that can create movement).

Further, by filling more managerial and executive positions from within the ranks of the organization, HR can achieve multiple victories. First, internal hiring means positions can be filled rapidly, dramatically reducing cost-of-vacancy numbers. Internal hires also – even after years of internal development investments – tend to cost much less to place in roles than external employees who may need to be sourced from a pricy recruitment group. Finally, internal hires are more likely to be a cultural fit for the organization, allowing them to more quickly get up to speed in their new roles and reducing the likelihood that they’ll exit the role prematurely.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Talent dashboards aren’t just pretty visuals in a PowerPoint deck. Used strategically, they can create multiple insights and opportunities for HR teams that can allow them to lead their firms to a competitive advantage. By using dashboard metrics to provide early warnings on turnover, assess the effectiveness of HR initiatives, and showcase opportunities for deep growth and development of existing staff, HR teams can turn these graphics into treasure chests of hidden value, even in today’s competitive talent environments.