An HR dashboard is one self-refreshing screen holding the people figures you steer on: absence rate and absence frequency, turnover, headcount against budget and payroll costs. What separates it from an HR report is not the figures but the purpose: a report accounts for last quarter, a dashboard points at where you need to step in this month.
Most HR overviews are built around whatever the HR system happens to export. Headcount per department. Leave balances. Last month’s absence. All of it correct, and nothing changes in the meeting.
Sound familiar? It is rarely the data. It is that nearly every figure on that list looks backwards, while HR has to decide forwards: where to recruit, which team needs a conversation now, and how many positions to budget for next year.
That gap shapes the rest of this article: which kpis belong on an HR dashboard, how to define them so HR and finance see the same number, what GDPR rules out on a screen like that, and when your HR software is already enough.
What is an HR dashboard?
An HR dashboard is an interactive overview that pulls its figures straight from the systems where they are recorded: the HR system, payroll and time tracking. You see at a glance where absence, turnover and headcount stand, and you click through to a department as soon as a figure raises a question. You will also see it called an HRM dashboard or an HR analytics dashboard. That second name mostly comes up when there is analysis inside too, such as which teams carry a higher risk of people leaving.
An HR dashboard does not replace your HR reports. The quarterly report to the board or the works council is still needed, with commentary and context. But if you wait for that report to discover that absence in one team has been climbing for three months, you are a quarter late.
The difference with a management dashboard is depth. The board screen holds two people figures at most, usually turnover and absence. The HR dashboard is the layer underneath, where you see per department and per month where those two numbers come from.
Which kpis belong on an HR dashboard?
Six figures cover the questions nearly every organization asks about its people:
- Absence rate. The share of available working days lost to illness. In the Netherlands it was 5.4 percent over 2025, but according to Statistics Netherlands (in Dutch) it ranged in the first quarter of 2026 from 2.8 percent at companies with fewer than ten employees to 6.8 percent at companies with a hundred or more.
- Absence frequency. How often people call in sick, regardless of how long. Ten short absences call for a different conversation than one long one.
- Voluntary turnover. Who leaves by choice, kept apart from who goes because a fixed-term contract ends.
- Headcount against budget. How many FTE you employ, set against how many you budgeted for.
- Open vacancies. How many roles are open and how long filling them takes, known as time-to-fill.
- Payroll cost per FTE. Ideally next to revenue, so you can see whether people costs are growing faster than the business.
What stands out: half of that list looks backwards. A turnover figure tells you exactly how many people have left, but not who is leaving next quarter. By the time turnover climbs on your dashboard, the leaving card has usually already gone round.
So next to every figure that looks back, put one that looks ahead. Next to turnover: the contracts ending within three months, and the people who have gone a year without a development conversation. Next to absence: anyone calling in sick for the third time within twelve months, which in many absence policies is the trigger for a conversation. Next to vacancies: roles open for longer than eight weeks. Those are figures you can still act on this week.
Also compare absence with the same period last year, not with last month. People are off sick more in winter than in summer, so a rise from October to January is usually season rather than signal.
Define it first, then calculate it
An absence rate looks like one number, but there are at least four choices inside it. Do you count calendar days or working days? People or FTE? Does absence lasting longer than a year count, and maternity leave? Statistics Netherlands uses a fixed definition: long-term absence counts, pregnancy and maternity leave do not, and for part-timers the days lost are multiplied by their part-time factor.
You see what that last choice does most clearly in a small team. Ten employees, four of them half-time: eight FTE in total. One of the part-timers is off sick for twenty days in a thirty-day month. Count people and that is 20 out of 300 days: 6.7 percent. Calculate in FTE, as Statistics Netherlands does, and it is 10 out of 240 days: 4.2 percent. Same team, same absence, two and a half percentage points apart.
Turnover has the same problem. Do you divide by headcount on 1 January or by the average over the year? And do agency workers count?
So for every kpi, pin down what goes in the numerator, what goes in the denominator and what explicitly does not count, before a single chart exists. Do it together with finance, because payroll cost per FTE on the HR dashboard should be the same number as in the budget. Otherwise the meeting is about whose number is right, instead of what you are going to do about it.
Example: who sees what on an HR dashboard?
Take an organization of 120 employees across five departments. Not everyone who looks at the HR dashboard asks the same question, and that decides what goes on each page.
- The managing director wants to know whether people costs are keeping pace with revenue. They see totals and trends per department, without names.
- The HR manager wants to see which team’s absence is climbing structurally, before it turns into a long-term case. They see every department, with the signal lists attached.
- The team manager wants to know who is out next week and which contracts in the team are ending. They see only their own team, but by name.
Four tiles sit at the top: absence over the last three months against the same period last year, absence frequency, voluntary turnover over twelve months, and headcount against budget. Below that sits absence per department per month, going back thirteen months, so a rising line stands out from the seasonal swings. At the bottom are the signal lists: contracts ending, third sick calls and vacancies open too long.
That bottom layer is the only one with names in it, and that is exactly where the hardest part of the design sits.
What GDPR does not allow on an HR dashboard
Health data is a special category of personal data, and the Dutch Data Protection Authority is clear about it: as an employer you may not record what is wrong with someone or what caused it, not even when the employee tells you themselves or consents to it. What you may record includes the expected duration of the absence and whether it involves a workplace accident.
For a dashboard that means three things:
- No field for the reason of absence. When you connect your HR system, also check which free fields and notes come along, because that is exactly where “back problems” tends to turn up.
- A percentage is not anonymous by default. In a team of four with one colleague on long-term sick leave, everyone knows who it is about. Pick a floor, say five employees, and show no team percentage below it.
- Limit who sees names. In Power BI you do that with row-level security, so a team manager only sees their own team. It only applies to viewers, though: anyone who is an admin, member or contributor in the workspace sees everything.
If you have a works council, put the dashboard in front of them first. In the Netherlands the works council has a right of consent over arrangements concerning sickness absence, and a screen on which managers track absence per employee quickly touches on that.
HR software, Power BI, or nothing yet?
Most HR packages come with their own reporting module, and as long as your questions stay inside your HR data, that is enough. Absence per department and contracts ending are already in there, inside the permissions you have set up anyway.
Power BI only becomes worthwhile when you want to combine people figures with something outside the HR system: payroll costs against revenue, headcount against planned project hours, or absence next to the output figures of the same department. An HR package cannot do that, because half the data isn’t in it. If you run AFAS, our article on connecting AFAS to Power BI explains how that connection works and how AFAS permissions carry through into it. What building a model like that costs is covered in our article on getting a Power BI dashboard built.
And sometimes the honest answer is: nothing yet. Below thirty employees, percentages are mostly noise. One person leaving a company of twenty-five is already four percentage points of turnover. A list of names and a fixed conversation will do more for you there than a chart that swings in every direction each month.
How do you build an HR dashboard?
Six steps, and the order matters:
- Step 1: pick the decisions. Two or three decisions HR currently makes too late or on gut feeling, such as where to recruit or which team’s absence needs stepping in on.
- Step 2: pick two figures per decision. One that looks back and one that looks ahead.
- Step 3: pin down the definitions. Numerator, denominator and exceptions, together with finance.
- Step 4: decide who sees what. Roles, the floor for team percentages and the conversation with the works council.
- Step 5: connect the sources and build the model. The HR system and payroll, and where needed time tracking or the accounts.
- Step 6: test with the team managers. They are the first to notice when a figure doesn’t match what they see on the floor. Then tie the dashboard to a fixed meeting, or nobody will open it after a month.
In most projects step 4 comes at the very end, when the dashboard is already finished and someone asks whether this is actually allowed. You then build access control around a model that was never designed for it.
Does your HR steer on last year’s turnover, or on the contracts ending next quarter? Want to know which people figures belong on your dashboard, and who should be allowed to see them? Get in touch, and we’ll go through them together.
Frequently asked questions
What is an HR dashboard?
An HR dashboard is one self-refreshing screen holding the people figures you steer on, such as absence, turnover, headcount and payroll costs. The figures come straight from your HR system and payroll, so nobody has to assemble them by hand every month.
Which kpis belong on an HR dashboard?
Start with absence rate, absence frequency, voluntary turnover, headcount against budget, open vacancies and payroll cost per FTE. Next to every figure that looks back, put one that looks ahead, such as the number of contracts ending within three months.
What is the difference between an HR dashboard and an HR report?
An HR report is a periodic document with commentary, used to account for the past to the board or the works council. An HR dashboard is there to steer: it refreshes itself and shows where you need to step in now. You need both.
Can the reason for sick leave appear on an HR dashboard?
No. According to the Dutch Data Protection Authority, an employer may not record the nature or cause of an illness, not even when the employee volunteers it or consents. The expected duration of the absence and whether it involves a workplace accident may be recorded.
From how many employees does an HR dashboard make sense?
Below thirty employees, percentages mostly move by chance: one person leaving a company of twenty-five is already four percentage points of turnover. A list in your HR software does the job there. A dashboard starts adding something once you have several departments, each with its own manager.
Do you need Power BI for an HR dashboard?
Not as long as your questions stay inside your HR data, because then the reporting module of your HR package is enough. Power BI becomes worthwhile once you want to combine people figures with other sources, such as payroll costs against revenue or headcount against planned hours.
How often should an HR dashboard refresh?
Once a day is enough for almost every people figure. You discuss absence and turnover monthly or quarterly, and compare them with the same period a year earlier, because people are off sick more in winter than in summer.
