Human
resources (HR) metrics are a way to measure how human resource activities
contribute to your business performance. They calculate the cost and benefits
of people aspects of the business, such as the number of people at various
stages in the hiring pipeline, labor law compliance, employee retention,
performance management, worker satisfaction, or completion of training
programs.
What Are HR Metrics?
Human
resources metrics are data that can help you assess whether your people
activities are generating the results you want. They also help you monitor
productivity and performance of your HR team. We’ve listed 39 HR metrics in
total and chunked them into various aspects of your human resource process,
such as employee productivity, recruitment, and compliance.
Most Common HR Metrics for Small Business
Below
are human resources metrics examples that companies use to evaluate the
performance of their HR team and their HR ― people-focused ― activities. We’ve
identified these seven as the most common that you’ll want to measure
periodically, especially if your HR is outsourced.
These
first seven common HR measurements help you evaluate how your team is doing.
1. Revenue per Employee
Revenue
per employee helps you determine the value of employees to your business.
Workers, on average, should bring enough revenue to justify their employment.
To calculate revenue per employee, determine what your total revenue is for a
time frame, such as a month, and divide that by the total number of employees
you have.
Revenue per employee
= Total revenue ÷ Total number of employees
There’s
no recommended range, as it could vary from $200 per day to thousands or more
depending on your industry. What’s important is that on average, employees
bring in more than what it costs to hire them, and even that may not be true in
a startup situation when a salesperson may not make their first big sale for
months.
For
example, let’s say in March your total revenue was $80,000, and you had seven
employees. Your revenue per employee is $11,428 that
month ― $80,000/7 = $11,428. Tracking this number over time will give
you a sense of how efficient and/or productive your employees are.
2. Cost per Hire
Cost
per hire measures what you’re paying to recruit and onboard each new employee.
It may cost as much as $4,200 per worker or more.
To determine your cost per hire consider your recruiting costs, the cost of an applicant tracking system (ATS), manager’s time
interviewing candidates and your onboarding and training costs.
Cost per hire =
All
recruiting and HR staffing costs
-------------------------------------------------------------
Number of new hires
For
example, let’s say you hired an HR manager this year who spends half their time
recruiting. You also spent $600 on software, $3,500 on referral fees, and about
200 hours of managers’ time interviewing candidates and onboarding new hires.
If that added up to $36,500 and resulted in nine new hires this year. Your cost
to hire would be $4,055 ― $36,500/9 = $4,055.
3. Employee Turnover
Employee
turnover is used to determine whether your employees are happy or not. A 20%
turnover rate is average across most industries, and a good goal to strive for
would be 10% or less. To calculate employee turnover first determine how many
employees you have, and then divide that number by the number of employees who
have quit or been fired.
Turnover rate =
Number of employee terminations
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Average number of employees
For
example, if you had 88 employees in January 2018, and you now have 100
employees in January 2019, your average number of employees would equal 94
(88+100)/2 = 94. If 22 employees quit or were fired in that time frame, your
turnover rate would be 23% (22/94 = 23).
Turnover
can be calculated for any time frame: month, quarter, or year. Turnover can
also be by division, location, department, or manager to get a better sense of
staffing issues. For additional details and variations read our article on employee turnover rate.
4. Overtime Percentage
Calculating
overtime as a percentage tells how efficient your scheduling is. Most employers
would prefer to avoid paying overtime as it’s costlier by half. To calculate
overtime as a percentage, you’ll determine how much you paid in payroll per pay
period and then determine what percentage of those payroll dollars were paid as
overtime.
Overtime percentage =
Overtime pay amount
--------------------------------------
Total payroll
For
example, let’s say you pay employees every other week, and your total payroll
last pay period was $14,000, of which $2,500 was paid as overtime to complete a
job by a client’s deadline. About 18% of your payroll dollars would have been
spent on overtime ($2,500/$14,000 = .18).
5. Absenteeism
Some
businesses use absenteeism as a measure of employee health and wellness as it’s
common knowledge that unhappy employees or those with health or home life
issues take more time off. A rate
of 2.5% is typical. To calculate absenteeism, you’ll need to add up all the
missed workdays and divide that number by the total workdays scheduled.
Absenteeism =
Workdays missed
------------------------------------------------------
Total workdays scheduled
For
example, if one of your restaurant employees missed four of 19 work shifts,
their absence rate would be 21% (4/19=.21). This rate is best tracked per
employee over time to determine patterns of behavior that may be a cause for
concern. You can also use it to determine if one manager’s employees are absent
more often than another’s.
6. Length of Service
Length
of service is another indicator of employee job satisfaction and workforce
happiness. The longer your employees stay, the more stable your business
becomes; employee longevity reduces your hiring costs as you’ll have fewer
employees to replace. To calculate the length of service, subtract each
employee’s hire date from today’s date, and then divide by the number of days
in a year.
Length of service =
(Today’s date – Employee’s hire date)
--------------------------------------------------------------
365
For
example, let’s say Jaime started June 15, 2011, and today is January 1, 2019.
When you subtract the number of days, you come up with 2,757, which you then
divide by 365 (the number of days in a year). The result is 7.55 years. To get
an average for the whole company, you would total all employees’ years of
service and then divide by the total number of employees.
7. Job Satisfaction Rate
Job
satisfaction can be measured on a survey, much like a customer satisfaction
survey. You can use any kind of scale, but the key is to measure a baseline at
some point in time and then periodically check to see if employees appear to be
more or less satisfied over time. HR managers often refer to this type of
information as employee engagement.
Job satisfaction rate =
Number of people who report being
satisfied
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Total number of employees
For
example, let’s say you have 40 employees. Using a five-point scale like an
Amazon rating, 32 of your employees say they are satisfied (four) or highly
satisfied (five). That’s an 80% job satisfaction rate (32/40=.80). To create
your own employee job satisfaction survey, check out our article on employee engagement.
The
remaining HR metrics assess the effectiveness of various HR functions, such as
recruiting and training, in addition to measuring workforce productivity and
labor costs. Finally, if you want to measure your labor law compliance or
employee engagement, which can alert you to potential problems so that you and
your HR team can address them, you’ll want to check out the last two categories
below.
HR Metrics for Employee Productivity & Performance
HR
metrics like labor costs and profit per employee can help the business gauge
employee performance and understand how staff contributes to the bottom line.
Hiring talent that’s matched to the job, conducting effective training and
managing employee workloads all contribute to how productive employees are.
Here are some ways to measure employee productivity.
8. Profit per Employee
Measuring
profit per employee can ensure you aren’t over or understaffed. You can
calculate your yearly or monthly profit and divide it by your number of
employees.
Profit per employee =
Business profit
-----------------------------------------------
Number of employees
For
example, you may have added sales team members to improve your revenues, but are
they adding dollars to the bottom line? This HR metric will let you know if
more is better, or whether your increased staffing is merely eating into your
profits.
9. Timesheet & Scheduling Match
This
helps you determine how closely the number of hours scheduled are in line with
the number of hours worked. This gives you insight into over or understaffing
and is useful for retail shops, restaurants, and other shift based sales
businesses. Add up all scheduled hours for required shifts. Then, calculate the
number of hours worked that week and notice the difference. Your goal should be
less than 5% difference.
Timesheet / Scheduling match =
Number of scheduled hours ÷
Number of hours worked
For
example, you may be understaffed if your business is busier than you expected,
and you’ve asked employees to stay late. You may be overstaffed if you’re
sending employees home early. Matching your scheduling to your business needs
saves money as well as improves employee morale as few want to lose hours or be
asked to stay late.
10. Health Care Costs per Employee
This
metric helps you understand how much of your budget is being spent on employee health insurance costs. To calculate it, sum up
what you contribute to your employees’ health care premiums over a time frame,
such as a month or a year and divide it by the number of your employees who are
using health insurance benefits.
Health care costs per employee =
Total health care costs
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Number of employees signed up for health care
For
example, you may find that few of your employees are using their
company-provided health insurance, and you’d be better off setting up a flexible spending account (FSA) that they could
use to purchase health insurance on their own. Alternatively, you may find this
data helps you when negotiating with a new health care provider.
11. Billable Hours per Employee
If
you have a small project management firm, or marketing firm, or another
business where you bill out to clients, you will want to use this metric to
figure out if your staffing is in alignment with your client needs. Law firms
also commonly use this HR metric and have a minimum number of hours they expect
each lawyer to bill for each month. To calculate it, first determine your time
frame: week, month, quarter, or annual. Then, take the number of hours you
billed out and divide it by the number of your employees.
Billable hours =
Billable hours
-----------------------------------
Total hours worked
Target
about 35 billable hours per week for full-time employees. Any less and they may
be spending too much time on internal time-wasters like email or nonvalue-added
projects.
12. Average Time Until Promotion or Pay Increase
This
HR metric measures how long it takes for an employee, on average to be promoted
or receive a pay increase. It sounds like an odd metric until you consider
whether you’re losing employees around the two- to five-year mark after not
getting a promotion. To calculate it, take your employee base and determine how
long it took for any of them to be promoted or receive a pay raise. Then,
divide the amount of time by the number of employees that were promoted or
given a raise.
Average time until promotion =
Date of pay increase or
promotion – hire date
The
result will be in the number of days, but you could convert it into months or
years by dividing by the appropriate number of days (30 or 365, respectively).
For example, If you have 10 employees, three of whom have been promoted, and
these three on average waited 18 months to get a promotion, then 18 months
would be your average time until promotion.
13. Cost of HR per Employee
If
you have an HR rep or more than one person who manages HR activities such as
recruiting, conducting new hire orientation and managing training, then this is
how much you pay the HR team vs how many total employees you have. To calculate
it, add up the total salary and benefits package of your HR team and divide by
the number of employees.
Cost of HR per employee =
Total HR salary and benefits
-------------------------------------------------
Number of employees
This
is an efficiency metric. For example, if you have all salaried, full-time
employees, you may need an HR person by the time you hit 50 people. However, if
you run a restaurant with a part-time hourly staff, you might not need a
full-time HR staff person until you have closer to 100 workers as you may not
need to manage benefits.
Using
an HR and payroll system like Zenefits, you’ll know each pay period what your
HR salary and benefits cost. You’ll also know how many employees you have,
making this metric easy to calculate. In fact, with Zenefits, you may not need
HR staff at all as it provides labor law compliance and HR onboarding in one
platform. Try it free for 14 days.
HR Metrics for Training & Development
Since
effective training and coaching often result in more productive employees, many
organizations track HR metrics related to employee development costs and
training effectiveness.
14. Training Spend per Employee
This
metric determines how much money you spend on employee training. You calculate
it by determining the cost of employee training, and some businesses include
the labor cost of employee hours spent in training classes as well. Also
include the travel costs, course fees, the cost of your learning management
system, and the time spent administering employee training, such as setting up
courses and printing certificates.
Training spend per employee =
Total training costs divided
by
--------------------------------------------
Number of employees
For
example, sending each of your service employees to an out of town training
class can be costly due to travel, meals, and time away from work. That’s in
addition to the cost of the workshop. Knowing what you’re spending on training,
can help you determine if it’s worth it, using the next metric below.
15. Training Return on Investment
While
this requires a bit more number crunching, it answers the question, “is our
training paying off?” To calculate it, you’d determine employee productivity
based on performance metrics which could range from sales performance to customer satisfaction, or net promoter scores. You’d then compare those
before and after results with your training spend to determine how much more
productive employees are vs how much money you spent on training.
Training return on investment (ROI) =
Cost of employee
training
--------------------------------------------
Value of increased performance
For
example, let’s say you choose to send five of your customer service reps to
training. Consider measuring their results before and after training to see if
they now have fewer complaints, spend less time on routine issues, answer more
calls per day, or enter data more accurately into your CRM system. That lets you know your training
whether your training is paying off.
16. Time to Productivity
Time
to productivity is an HR metric that’s calculated as a time frame: number of
days, weeks, or months. You’d need to use a performance management system
like Zoho Perform, and then
track how long it takes for a new hire to get to full productivity.
Time to productivity =
Date new hire hit the target (as defined in your performance management system) – New hire start date
For
example, if a fully productive salesperson earns $500 a day on revenues, how
many days, weeks or months does it take a newly hired salesperson to hit that
target? Alternatively, if the average wait staff can handle six tables during
the rush, how long until your newly hired wait staff can manage six tables at
once?
17. Above Average Performance Management Ratio
This
is a measure of how many people are performing at a high level per your
performance review system. Unless you have a performance management system in place with a
quantified scoring system like using rating scales of one to five or one to 10,
this is somewhat subjective and hard to calculate.
Above average performance management ratio =
Number of
employees rated above average
-------------------------------------------------------------
All employees
If
you have a performance management system that rates employee performance using
points, you will want to figure out the cut off for an above average performer
like 70 out of 100 points, and then determine how many employees meet that out
of the total number of employees.
18. Innovation
If
you want your team to develop new products, new ways to excite customers, or
better ways to manage internal processes, you’ll want to measure your
innovation pipeline in terms of the number and quality of ideas. Consider
providing a way to gather and measure new ideas, such as with a software tool
like monday.com.
Innovation =
Number (or value) of successful product or
process ideas
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total number of suggestions
You
might measure innovation success by determining how many successful product or
market launches you had last year based out of all the product ideas that were
sourced and evaluated in your pipeline. If you’re just beginning an innovation
pipeline, you may start by tracking the percent of employees contributing ideas
or the total number of ideas contributed.
HR Metrics for Recruitment & Hiring
If
you have an HR team that manages your recruiting function, you can use several
metrics to determine how well they’re doing. In larger firms, these HR metrics
are tracked by individual recruiter so that you can see which hiring team members
are doing a better job at sourcing, selecting and onboarding new hires.
These
HR metrics home in on recruiting and performance. If you are a
performance-driven company, such as a company with sales or client quotas, this
section should be useful for you.
19. Time to Hire
Recruiting
processes can take far too long at some companies, and it can mean that you
lose talent. Having a recruitment process that takes less than four-to-six
weeks to fill positions is best to save time and money. To calculate time to
hire, you’ll subtract the date of the employee’s first interview from their
start date or hire date.
Time to hire
Start date – Date of first interview
For
example, if Susan had her first interview on February 15, and was hired April
15, it took 60 days to hire her. If you want the average, sum the number of
days that each job you offered took to be filled from the time the candidate
started interviewing, and then divide by the number of jobs.
20. Annual Recruiting Costs
Similar
to tracking your cost per hire, you may also want to manage what you are
spending on recruiting, such as the cost of your recruitment software and the cost to sponsor job posts. You also should include the
work hours your HR and management team dedicated to recruiting, such as
reviewing resumes, phone screens, and interviewing. To calculate it add up all
the time and expenses for recruiting in one year.
Annual recruiting costs =
Total off all hiring expenses the
year (software + advertising + fees)
21. Offer Acceptance Ratio
This
is a simple metric showing what percentage of people you offer jobs to accept
them vs how many decline them. This may indicate whether your job offer is
on target or too low and whether your benefits and culture are in sync with
what candidates want. A good target is to have 70% to 90% of your job offers
accepted. To calculate it, divide the number of offers accepted over the number
of offers extended.
Offer acceptance ratio = Number of offers accepted ÷ Total
job offers extended
22. Ghost Rate
Ghosting
is when job candidates accept an offer but don’t show up the first day for
work. You should strive for a rate of zero or no ghosting. However, businesses
that hire a lot of people, entry-level staff, or part-timers may find they
sometimes have no-shows.
Ghost rate =
Number of candidates who fail to show up on the
first day
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total hires
For
example, if you confirm 10 jobs for server positions in your new restaurant and
four fail to show up, your ghost rate is 40%. This may be an indicator you’re
not hiring the right staff, not paying enough or you may need to stay in closer
touch with applicants and candidates between the time they accept the offer, and the day they are scheduled to start
work.
23. New Hire Fail Rate
The
new hire fail rate shows how many employees voluntarily leave, or quit, your
company after starting. You can calculate it based on a target, such as new
hires completing 90 days of training, or by their first performance review.
Similar to the ghost rate, it can indicate whether a change is needed in your
selection process to clarify job expectations better. Perhaps your business
needs to improve its onboarding and training process to help new hires
feel welcome and productive.
New hire fail rate =
Number of new hires that quit or are
fired
------------------------------------------------------------
Total new hires in that time frame
For
example, if 20% of your new hires are fired within the first month, or 10% of
them quit, it may be that your hiring process is not robust enough, and you’re
bringing in mismatched or unqualified candidates. You can also measure this
based on source, hiring manager or HR recruiter to determine if most of the
ineffective hirings are coming from one or more pipelines.
24. Employee Referral Program Success
If
you have an employee referral program as one of your recruitment strategies, you’ll want to make sure
it does what it’s supposed to ― create a pipeline of qualified employees. To
calculate it, determine how many roles you’ve had open and the number of
referrals you’ve interviewed and found qualified.
Employee referral program success =
Number of referrals
----------------------------
Number of open jobs
For
example, if 10% of your new hires are coming from referrals, that’s great!
Those candidates cost less to recruit and are typically hired faster. However,
they don’t have to make it all the way through to hire. It depends on what you
define as a successful referral. If you’ve had none, you might want to rethink
your referral program.
Human Resources Metrics Focused on Employee Engagement
These
human resources metrics are broad categories focused around what we call “soft
skills.” These are employee satisfaction metrics that can measure employee
morale and culture and how they correlate to the bottom line.
25. Communication
Communication
should be strong, respectful, transparent and consistent with the company
culture you are trying to create. A high level of communication means there are
very few incidents of miscommunications that result in stress, tension or a
call to HR. You can determine how well your organization is communicating
across verbal, electronic, and written channels using survey tools like SurveyMonkey.
26. Environment
Environmental
metrics identify the kind of workplace your office has. Is it one that people
enjoy working in? Some companies prefer quiet office spaces while others thrive
on loud, open office floor plans. Neither environment is bad nor good ― it
depends on who is working there, and whether they’re satisfied with that
environment. To calculate it, you’ll want to conduct an employee survey, or you
can also go with a general gut instinct, such as on a one to 10 scale, how
happy are people working in this environment and their workspaces?
27. Collaboration & Teamwork
A
classic goal for improvement is for companies to be more collaborative and use
teamwork more wisely. However, how can you measure this? Perhaps you
implemented a collaboration tool like Slack to improve teamwork. Has it been
effective in fostering a team environment? Have conflicts reduced? Are projects
getting done faster? Ask your managers and your employees what they think.
28. Mission & Vision Alignment of Work
One
of the most important components in employee engagement is connecting an
individual and team performance to the mission, vision, and goals of the
business. Before you can calculate alignment, you will want to have a top-down
goal setting session and cascade the subgoals to inform what people do. A
performance management system can help.
Alignment =
Number of goals aligned
----------------------------------------------------
All work activities
and goals
29. Employee Wellness
To
keep productivity up, you will want to evaluate how well your environment
allows employees to take care of themselves in physical, mental, emotional and
spiritual senses. You can measure everything from the number of employees who
smoke to the number of sick days taken or frequency of EAP visits. How you measure it depends on what
behaviors you’re trying to improve.
Critical HR Compliance Metrics
Depending
on the size of your organization, you’ll want to gather HR metrics that need to
be reported to various government entities such as the Equal Opportunity
Employment Commission (EEOC) and Affordable Care Act (ACA), that are required
when your business reaches a certain size, such as 50 or 100 employees.
30. EEOC Metrics
Employers
with more than 100 employees need to provide a report each September to the EEOC. The data is based on how your employees and
applicants self-identify into the protected classes, like race and sexual
orientation, across your employee base. However, no one is obligated to
self-disclose his or her identification.
To
calculate it, prepare a confidential survey on the basic protected classes for
every employee. Here is a good resource if you have to file an EEOC report, but
smaller businesses can also use it as a sample for what you should ask in your
survey.
31. Benefits & ACA Compliance
Once
your business has 50 or more full-time-equivalent (FTE) employees, you’ll need
to provide metrics to support ACA reporting and prove that you’ve offered
health insurance to your team. Here’s information on how to complete your ACA
reporting, which may be completed by your benefits provider. For example, Gusto is an HR or payroll provider that helps you
obtain benefits and provide mandatory ACA reporting.
32. Pay Equity
Pay
equity is a way to measure that your employee compensation is fair. You
calculate it by comparing variables like worker performance, education,
experience, and management or supervisory levels to ensure that employees in
like jobs are being paid equitably across gender, for example. To learn more
read our article on pay equity.
Clever HR Metrics Used by Small Business Pros
We
found business experts using creative HR metrics to improve their employment
brand, support a healthy work culture and measure workplace performance. While
these may not be the standard metrics used by all HR professionals, you may
find that they supply exactly the kind of data you need to create a great
workplace environment.
33. Employee Net Promoter Score
“Tracking the right HR metrics is vital to
small business success. Sadly, it seems many small business HR leaders talk the
talk, but can’t walk the walk, when it comes to being a data-driven
organization. A 2017 survey from software vendor Sage found that while
83 percent of HR leaders agree that all people decisions should be based on
data, only 37 percent of them used data to solve people management problems.
“I
think if small businesses have to start somewhere, they should start with this
HR metric to not only gauge the health of their business but also to
communicate to leadership the value that HR brings to the organization. The
eNPS [employee net promoter score] is the simplest, quickest way to measure
employee engagement. It tells you how much of your workforce is enthusiastic
about their work, committed to the company and championing your organization to
others. Consider a pulse survey tool or an employee engagement system to
monitor this.”
―
Brian Westfall, Senior HR Analyst, Capterra
34. Diversity & Inclusion
“More than ever, diversity and inclusion are
(or should be) areas of focus within an organization. Having data on diversity
is essential to ensure the appropriate programs are in place to recognize and
support a diverse workforce. Organizations should also be able to talk about
their diversity initiatives during hiring campaigns. Much of this information
is collected at time of hire; however, using a survey tool can help collect
data that is not stored in an HR or payroll system.”
―
Richard Pummell, Human Resources Lead, Develop
Intelligence
35. Percent of New Hires Who Leave Within 90 Days
“The one metric that Jobvite provides that
startles many HR managers is that around 30% of job seekers have left a job
within 90 days of starting.”
―
Matt Singer, Vice President of Marketing, Jobvite
Source:
Jobvite
To
calculate this, divide the number of new hires who quit in the first 90 days by
the total number of new hires in that same time frame.
Percent of new hires that leave in 90 days =
New hire quits
(within 90 days)
-----------------------------------------------------
All new hires
36. Employee Engagement Survey Data
“Twice a year we partner with Gallup
― a national research and consulting firm ― to track employee engagement and
suggest ways to help attract and retain top talent. Once someone is hired, our
engagement scores measure how well company leadership treats our employees and
provides a positive and supportive working environment.”
―
Marshall Staton, Director of Human Resources, Aeroflow Healthcare
37. Executive Perceptions vs That of Employees
“Turnover data from Paycor shows a mismatch
between what execs think matters and what employees think matters. Paycor
recently surveyed more than 700 CFOs [chief financial officers], CEOs and HR
leaders about their people management practices. Here is a summary of the
findings.”
―
Alex Harrell, Business Compliance, Paycor
Source:
Paycor
38. Human Capital Supply Chain Survey Data
“Operations teams already sufficiently quantify
production output. HR can and should be tracking the efficiency and
effectiveness of the internal human capital supply chain. Survey tools are more
important ― and should be leveraged more ― than iterative performance review
tools. Surveys enable us to collect business intelligence about employees’
experiences while they are learning. How that information and those learnings
do/do not allow employees to thrive tells us where to invest further, where to
abandon efforts and, lastly, how to train managers to continue to develop
talent efficiently.”
―
Charles Rodriguez, Vice President of Human Capital Management, Adams Keegan
39. One-on-One Management Meeting Frequency
“Metrics are all the age … and all too often
occupying too much of HR’s time. Want to know what’s happening? Talk to your
employees. The best metric I use as an HR exec is asking my managers how often
they have lunch with their employees? When the number is zero, I know they are
not engaged in their staff.
“We
have plenty of metrics to review, turnover, absenteeism, high OT not correlated
with sales volume … all tell you a picture. But, my managers that spend time
with their employees never show up on my radar. The breaking bread metric is
the best predictor of highly engaged and productive workers.”
―
Peter Langton, Executive Vice President & Chief HR Officer, Pierce Aluminum
& Adjunct Professor of Management, Stonehill College
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