What's the Best Way to Present HR Analytics? 15+ Expert Tips

As an HR professional, you have access to people data that can be used to transform culture and kickstart engagement. Through HR analytics and reporting, you can unite departments and empower people to do their best work. Sounds pretty great, right?

But if all that HR data lives in siloes, change will be slow and decisions will be made without all the facts.

That’s where HR analytics presentations come in. With an effective HR presentation, you can package all that good HR analysis into a powerful story that persuades company leaders and positively influences decision-making..

Read on to discover pro tips on building presentations with your HR analytics, including advice from experienced HR pros and tips from BambooHR's in-house team of expert graphic designers. Through data, reporting, and effective HR presentations, you’ll be able to secure your seat at the table when it comes to strategic decision-making.

4 Fundamentals of HR Analytics Presentations

Align The Presentation with Company Goals

Simply put, your leadership team needs to know that the HR data you’re presenting on will impact the company’s goals and overall mission. Try to connect each data point to a key objective. For example, if one of your company’s initiatives is to improve employee retention, you can speak to employee satisfaction and how it directly affects that initiative.

Include The Financial Impact of HR

Money talks. When possible, include dollars and cents as they relate to overall financial goals. What’s the cost of labor for each employee? How much could the company save on office space if more employees went fully remote?

Build The Presentation Around The Key Takeaway

HR manager Jenny Wells expressed the importance of defining key takeaways. She says, “I try to structure HR presentations by always starting with what I want the audience to take away from it.” At the end of her talk, she makes a point to circle back.

Tailor The Presentation To Your Audience

The HR analysis should be relevant to the audience you’re presenting to. Put yourself in the shoes of your audience and ask yourself these questions: Why do I care? What can I do about it? For example, your finance team may find more value in compensation trends, where your managers might want to dive deeper into performance metrics.

Best Practices for Using Visuals in HR Analytics Presentations

A picture is worth a thousand words—and that's especially true when it comes to HR presentations.

Any HR analysis is likely chock-full of people data, and people data means numbers. You’ll not only better tell the story of the HR impact by using visual strategies in your presentation, but you’ll tell it in a way that your audience can understand.

To make sure your message hits home, consider incorporating the following best practices into your HR analytics slides:

• Keep it simple. If your audience is trying to read a block of text on your slides, they’re likely not listening to the verbal part of your presentation. Keep the amount of words to a minimum, and prioritize key takeaways on your slides.
• Add visual interest. Illustrate your main points through data visualizations such as pie charts, graphs, flows charts, images, and videos. These will help engage your audience and make your HR data more digestible.
• Use visual hierarchy. The gist of visual hierarchy: Make the most important information bigger, bolder, and in contrast to less important information. You can accomplish this by using fonts, colors, shapes, and more. Read up on the fundamentals of visual hierarchy here.
• Weave in some humor. HR data may fire you up, but the standard HR analysis might not be quite as exciting to others in your organization. Adding a dose of humor can really help bring the message home. Perhaps you can kick it off by providing a funny video, image, meme, or quote that pertains to your topic. (Just be sure it’s office-appropriate.)
• Provide short snippets. Avoid providing too much information, and use bullet points and numbered lists to make your HR presentation short and sweet. You may know ten reasons why an organization should make the switch to e-signatures, but you’ll want to limit your points to four or five. When in doubt, include hyperlinks to additional information for the people who may want or need more context.

5 Methods for Engaging Employees in Your HR Analysis

It’s not always easy to get a roomful of employees involved and engaged. Try using these tips to increase audience participation and attention so your people can absorb the information they need.

Arrange Discussion Groups

“Pairing people for discussions and forming small groups really helps all people participate,” says Stan Kimer, an HR consultant with more than 30 years in the field.

Small groups allow your audience to dive deep into the HR data you’re presenting, and a discussion format encourages deeper critical thinking. Consider giving each small group discussion questions to kickstart the conversation.

Reward Participation

HR consultant Joshua Evans recommends not only facilitating participation, but rewarding it: “Work to involve the audience by asking non-rhetorical questions, playing games, or even offering prizes for participation.”

Vary Your Presentation Style

You probably don’t love the idea of staring at a screen for an hour, right? Neither does your audience. Alternate between slides, discussion, activities, and hands-on education to keep your audience engaged.

Develop Interactive Materials and Handouts

To hold the attention of your audience, consider adding a handout to your presentation where they can take notes and write down any questions. You could also incorporate some fun, short quizzes or surveys to which your audience can respond online using virtual tools such as Poll Everywhere.

Bonus Tip: Handouts double as tangible resources for attendees to look back on at their convenience.

Work The Room

One thing our experts all agreed on: stepping away from the whiteboard to engage with the audience. Moving around the room is a great way to capture attention and is much more effective than staying in one location and lecturing from a single spot.

For virtual audiences, online whiteboards like Miro, Mural, and Stormboard are engaging and Zoom-friendly.

How to Measure the Success of an HR Analytics Presentation

As with anything in work and life, understanding the success of your HR presentation will help you improve future HR reporting and pinpoint any action items that came from the presentation. Here are some strategies to measure the success of an HR presentation:

Use Surveys & Evaluations

Several experts suggest ending your presentation with a short questionnaire or evaluation. Here are some sample questions to include in your survey:

• Did you learn something new from this presentation?
• Do you have any follow-up action items after attending this presentation?
• What are your key takeaways from this presentation?

For full participation, make your surveys quick and easy. You could even conduct a brief evaluation using a mobile survey app, so everyone can use their smartphones to provide feedback on the spot.

Follow Up

Schedule time to speak with your attendees afterward to get a feel for how well they absorbed the information.

You can frame this in terms of interaction in order to give you an in to follow up: “I wanted to follow up on your question about ____ in the HR presentation. Do you have any additional questions?” or “I noticed you didn’t get a chance to ask your questions during the HR presentation. Is there anything I can dive deeper into for you?”

Seek Hard Metrics

You can also try to measure the success of your HR presentation using hard metrics. For example, if your presentation was about career development opportunities, you could measure how many employees participated in development initiatives like leadership training or tuition reimbursement.