What Is an HR Score Card?

An HR scorecard is a visual representation of key measures of human resource department achievements, productivity and other factors important to the organization. Factors measured include costs, hiring, turnover, training, performance management and alignment with corporate goals. Most HR scorecards are tied to corporate goals or strategic plans and are designed to track and measure the efficacy of human resource activities and enable managers to make targeted investments in HR and organizational structures. Scorecards include current data and comparisons to previous time periods, such as the previous quarter or year, and historical data to show improvements toward goals.

Human resources costs that are measured and reported on through scorecards include adherence to budgets, recruiting costs to attract and hire staff and costs of benefits such as group health insurance. Tracking costs through scorecards enables managers to plan human resources goals and expenditures and control costs in specific areas and set realistic budgets.

Hiring is tracked in human resources scorecards by numbers of employees hired by department, business unit or location. Hiring goals, position vacancies and time to fill positions are other hiring indicators tracked in scorecards. This information gives managers a way to see how well human resources fulfills the company’s need for new personnel, and where HR may benefit from extra resources to increase or improve hiring practices.

Turnover is the rate at which a company gains and loses employees and is commonly compared to the rate of industry turnover. Turnover costs companies money to recruit staff and in lost productivity and low morale amongst other employees. High employee turnover indicates employees are unhappy due to issues such as work environment, lack of opportunities, management conflict or compensation. Low employee turnover indicates employee satisfaction, making lowering turnover a significant goal.

Businesses use human resources scorecards to measure human resources processes and effectiveness, and to align human resources with corporate goals and strategies. Human resources scorecard practices involve both financial and nonfinancial aspects, measuring actual costs as well as other areas of value such as turnover rate and what it means and performance management data. Scorecards must measure elements that are in corporate goals and strategy to be a tool for alignment. For example, if a key corporate goal is to improve customer service in the upcoming year, customer service training and customer service staffing should be part of the human resources scorecard.