Steve Foster from RebusHR advises on how to get an e-HR system to help with
human capital reporting
Problem: My firm is thinking about investing in a major e-HR system.
How can it help with human capital reporting?
Solution: The DTI’s Accounting for People Task Force along with other
similar initiatives are raising awareness of the need for timely, reliable HR
management information and you are right to be thinking about this now.
Organisations investigating how an existing or planned e-HR system can help
them with human capital reporting should consider the following:
1. Plan your information requirements early as part of an e-HR project
2. Information is only as good as the source – design business processes
that support good practice and ensure data reliability
3. Don’t measure everything – understand the key performance indicators
(KPIs) that drive your business, make them relevant to your sector, culture and
business (there is no single accounting formula or generic people measures).
What will external people need to know?
4. Can HR information be combined with information from other systems?
Consider a ‘data-mart’ combining HR, financial, customer and production data
from across the organisation
5. Use web technology to let managers view HR KPIs directly
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6. Display metrics in a ‘dashboard’ format by exception – shown only when
measures fall outside agreed parameters. This focuses the user on what is
important. Consider a balanced scorecard approach to set and display metrics
7. Why are you measuring? The real value of KPIs is that they bring about a
greater understanding of the people dimension of an organisation. Interpret
metrics in a meaningful way, using them as the basis for strategy and policy,
and to support managers when KPIs reveal a problem. This is just as important
as the technology used to derive the information.
