This HR Balanced Scorecard should be aligned with your organization's overall business strategy, ensuring that every metric you track reflects a clear contribution to your strategic objectives.
How to Use This Calculator
Getting Started
- Fill in your organization name, reporting period and your name at the top before entering any figures.
- Use the Load Sample Data button to see a worked example before entering your own numbers.
Selecting Your Metrics
- Each perspective has two rows. Use the dropdown in each row to select the metric most relevant to your organization.
- Each perspective offers four industry-standard metrics to choose from. Select a different metric in each row to avoid duplication.
Entering Your Data
- For each metric, enter your Target (what you planned to achieve) and your Actual (what you actually delivered).
- Assign a Weight % to each metric within its perspective based on its strategic importance to your organization. Weights must add up to 100% within each section.
- Leave the Weight % blank if you prefer a straight average. The calculator will handle it automatically.
Reading the Results
- The performance status updates instantly. On Track means your performance is at 90% or above of your target, Warning means your performance is between 80% and 89% of your target indicating it needs attention, and At Risk means your performance has fallen below 80% of your target.
- The Variance column shows the percentage gap between your target and actual, colour coded so you can identify issues quickly.
- The Contribution column shows how many points each metric is adding to its perspective score based on its assigned weight.
- Each perspective scores out of 100. The Overall Score at the top is the equal average of all four perspectives, consistent with the Kaplan and Norton Balanced Scorecard framework.
A Few Things to Keep in Mind
- A score of 90% or above indicates strong performance across that perspective. Scores are capped at 100% per perspective regardless of how far actuals exceed targets.
- Review this scorecard in line with your selected reporting period (quarterly, bi-annual or annual).
- Use the Clear All button to reset everything and start a fresh reporting period.
Disclaimer: This calculator is provided for informational and planning purposes only. Results are based on the data entered by the user and should not be relied upon as a substitute for professional HR advice or formal organizational reporting.
HR Balanced Scorecard Guide
Introduction
The HR Balanced Scorecard is a management system that aligns HR activities to the vision and strategy of the business, improves internal and external communications, and monitors HR performance against strategic goals. It translates business strategy into a set of HR performance objectives that are measured, monitored, and adjusted to ensure strategic goals are met.
Key Terms
The following terms are essential to understanding and using the HR Balanced Scorecard.
The Four Perspectives
The HR Balanced Scorecard follows the same four perspectives as the overall company balanced scorecard, since HR is a function within the organisation. Each perspective focuses on a different dimension of HR performance.
Financial Perspective
- How can we quantify the financial impact of HR over the next year?
- What do we do that directly impacts the bottom line?
- Think of things like recruitment spend, training budgets and reward management.
Employee Perspective
- What can we do that directly and positively affects our internal customers (and will, in turn, affect the external customer) and how can we measure it?
- Employee engagement or satisfaction surveys are common here, as well as measuring the internal impact of HR supporting the business with recruitment or performance management.
Internal Process Perspective
- Often the HR sweet spot, but how can we measure the effectiveness of these systems put in place to serve the business need?
- Consider the speed of hire, uptake of performance management software or absence management.
- This category focuses mainly on how your business is improving its culture, how you are developing and retaining staff, and how you are attracting quality candidates.
Learning and Growth Perspective
- How are we supporting the future capability of the business? Viability of succession plans; take-up of suggestions schemes or leadership training would all fit in this category.
- For these metrics, you are looking at how you are developing your workforce, the techniques and training that can help you improve your processes.
Goals versus Objectives
Understanding the distinction between goals and objectives is essential before building your scorecard. Goals define the long-term direction; objectives define the specific, measurable steps that get you there.
SMART Objectives
All objectives in the HR Balanced Scorecard should meet the SMART criteria. Objectives that are not SMART are difficult to measure and report against.
Recommended Resources
- Not quite sure how to measure the targets you're setting on your scorecard? Try our HR KPI Calculator to find the formulas and data sources you'll need.
- If you need to figure out your current baseline numbers before setting new targets, try our HR Metrics Calculator to quickly estimate your recruitment and training metrics.