Visualising Organisational Metrics from Web-based Organisation Charts
Posted by Rod Bishop | Filed under Organisational charting
Salary Rollup Metric
Figure C summarises employee salary expense by company, division and department. Salary rollup is usually reported separately for employees and long-term contractors — and is further broken out into direct salary, bonuses and other compensation line items that make up total employee compensation.
The cost of human capital is normally the largest single expense item for most organisations — and it is critical that executive management and line managers have visibility into their employee compensation budgets and current commitments. The Salary Rollup Metric forms the basis of many other reports and calculations, such as Cost to Manage, Performance to Budget, Product Line Profitability and many others.
Figure C: Organization Chart Showing Annual Salary
Performance Metrics
Performance Metrics communicate individual employee performance — as well as aggregate performance metrics and trends for each department, division and line manager.
Individual Performance Metrics are widely used to objectively measure employee performance against defined company, department and individual objectives. An employee’s performance can be compared against other employees, and used to identify employees who are ready for promotions, raises or management rotation programs.
Aggregate Performance Metrics for each department, division or line manager can be used to identify managers who create and foster high-performing teams, as well as those managers who may need additional training.
Beyond Metrics
In Figure D, we can see how the use of centralised organisation charts can provide a natural user interface for the delivery of many kinds and types of critical and highly secure information. Now let us explore how we could use this platform to deliver truly “dashboard” type functions.
One prominent U.S. services company uses an organisation charting platform to ensure HR support goes to the departments that need it the most, not just to those that provide the highest volume of “activity.”
To do this, they employ the formula and conditional formatting features of their organisation charting platform to deliver an “Early Warning System.” Simple in design, this application provides analytical data that would be difficult to convey by any other means.
Figure D. The Natural User Interface of the Organization Chart
The “Early Winning” System at Work
Five critical organisational metrics are calculated for customer contact organisations:
- Turnover,
- Worker performance reviews,
- Absenteeism excluding paid time off,
- Training compliance, and
- Worker injuries including worker compensation claims.
Each of these five metrics is calculated historically as a monthly moving average. In essence, each department is being compared to itself over time. The current month is then compared to the moving average for each metric element. If the current month differs from the moving average by half of a standard deviation, a “yellow alert” is issued to the HR generalist supporting this department. If the current month differs from the moving average by one standard deviation, a “Red Alert” is issued to the supporting HR generalist. The alerts are delivered to the generalist via e-mail with a link to the chart for the target department.
These metrics are visualised within the HR generalist view of the organisation via the organisation charting platform. The “Manager’s Box” for all departments is green, yellow or red depending on the organisation’s “Early Warning” status.
An Early Warning Alert does not necessarily mean that bad things are happening within the organisation, only that a change has occurred, which merits an HR generalist review.
The Early Warning system was developed using the standard features of the organisation charting platform and did not require an expenditure of millions of dollars or the investment of years in implementation.
In conclusion…
Tags: HR, metrics, org charts, Organisational charting, OrgPlus, visualisation, workforce modelling
