What are the best practices for generating reports from an HRIS system?

Well, an HRIS system may or may not have the capacity to give the custom reports as per your need, but a good HRIS can. To generate reports, you need to know what is the actual thing you need to present, or the problem that you need to solve. For e.g., you need to show to the managements that on average the break time taken by a person is 1.5 hours a day compared to the 1 hour policy. Hence, it may seem a violation but comparing it with the output and performance of the employees you may be able to give a change in policy. That, if we increase the break time to 1.5 hours and then impose a strictness afterwards, it may prove a masterstroke for employee motivation without impacting the performance and can regress the break time to increase.

Expert HRIS reporting begins with a precise definition of the report's purpose, aligning closely with strategic HR objectives. For instance, a report aimed at workforce optimization should delve into specific metrics like turnover rates, employee engagement levels, and skill gaps. This targeted approach ensures the extraction of relevant data, transforming it into actionable insights. Mastery in HRIS reporting is evident when one can identify and interlink critical data points, offering a comprehensive view that informs key HR decisions.

HRIS system itself may not able to provide a good report. data as input influence the report. so proper, accurate & wide angle data may leads the best reports. employee related info required in HRIS are the basic thus number of fields required in employee info is directly proportional to reports quality. increasing more & more fields results better reports

Start by aligning data with your report's objectives. For turnover analysis, focus on tenure and exit data; for performance, consider appraisal and training records. Ensure data integrity and leverage integrations with systems like LMS or ATS for a holistic view. Don't overlook external benchmarks for context. Prioritize data consistency and standardization for accuracy. Always comply with data privacy laws. Utilize predictive analytics for forward-looking insights and establish a feedback loop for continuous improvement. The right data sources transform HRIS reports into strategic decision-making tools.

Even though Excel or CSV are my usual go-to formats because of their variety of uses, I will sometimes choose a PDF over those options because they look nicer and are easier to read. If the intended recipient does not need to import or manipulate data, PDFs are a great report format for providing easy-to-read and understandable information.

In my experience, the best way to present insights is to visualise that data into graphs, charts or useful trends that might help the management to make accurate and informed decisions.

Get in there! If you spend too much time thinking about it, you will never get it done. Start working on the report and play around with the system so you can learn your HRIS faster.

I like using an HRIS's report writer program to run specialized reports. Often, I will need to run a standard report and add data to it, so I will run a custom report in Excel and the standard report in Excel so I can create what I'm looking for. As Rachel mentioned, getting into the system and running various reports will help you familiarize yourself with the options available to get you the data you need.