What’s Missing in Most HR Reports? 5 Practical Power BI Design Tips

This edition of our newsletter focuses on the best Power BI report design practices for HR – from workforce planning and org structures to workload and performance insights.

Whether you’re building reports for HR leaders, team managers, or analysts, these design tips will help you create reports that are not just pretty, but also actionable, insightful, and intuitive.

#1 Guide Attention to the Most Critical Workforce Metrics

Too many HR reports simply display raw data: number of hires, turnover %, payroll, vacation days… but don’t guide the user to what matters most right here, right now.

A great Power BI report will act like an HR advisor – highlighting patterns, anomalies, and areas that need immediate action.

💡How?

 Use a visual hierarchy that leads the user’s eyes to the most important insights. The largest and most central visuals should instantly answer questions like:

• Where are we understaffed?
• Which departments have rising attrition?
• Are we meeting our hiring goals?

Then surround them with smaller supporting visuals – like KPI cards, bar charts or others – that break down data by department, team, time, or location – to enable deeper exploration.

✨ZoomCharts tip: Reference lines or areas are incredibly useful to set targets, acceptable ranges, or show the averages and instantly spot outliers – read more about them in this blog article.

#2 Make Navigation Effortless for HR Decision Makers

Who will use your HR reports? That’s right – HRBPs, department heads, VPs, CEOs, and other stakeholders. And they often have 5 minutes or less to get an answer before their next meeting. Your report should work at their speed.

This means:

• No guesswork in clicking around. Each click should reward them with the exact insights they expect.
• No hidden filters buried behind vague icons or context menus.
• No visual overload across report pages.

💡Best practices:

• Group related controls (e.g. filters for Department, Team, Role, Location, etc.) in one place so they are not looking darting around the report to do what they need.
• Paginate your report per topic. Don’t cram every single insight into a single page; separate it into topics – for example, one focuses on payroll and the other on employee performance. Use descriptive page titles so the user knows what to expect from each.
• Ensure consistent layout. Each page should use a similar layout and userflow so that users are not confused or lost whenever they switch pages.

✨ZoomCharts tip: Interactive visuals play an important role in creating a great user experience, and our Drill Down Visuals are designed with simple on-chart drill downs and seamless cross-filtering in mind. The visuals can also act as an interactive slicer; for example, select “IT Department” bar on the bar chart to instantly filter all other visuals to data pertaining to that category.

#3 Build a Story That Supports Action

Beyond mere numbers, HR data is a story about your people. That’s why it is important to emphasize the “human” part of “human resources” and answer questions like:

• Why is this team’s workload increasing?
• What’s causing the spike in resignations?
• Can we sense patterns of burnout?
• Are we building a balanced, diverse team?

Focus your report on one objective per page. Visualize all that matters, but avoid unrelated metrics that distract the user. Here’s what to do before designing each page:

• Define the problem you’re solving.
• Identify the decision the report should support with data.
• Understand what metrics are relevant to that decision.

✅ Real-world example: Our HR Workload Overview Report (pictured above) puts the spotlight on staff capacity. The initial view shows a birds-eye overview on the entire company, but users can easily drill down by team, location, and project to instantly identify who’s overloaded, and where to take action. Try live demo and download .pbix template in our Report Gallery!

#4 Turn Granular Data into Clear Categories

HR data is full of complexity – many different roles, departments, salary ranges, performance bands, targets, training types. But complexity does not have to be confusing.

Thankfully, HR data has a lot of categories, numbers or values that can be used to simplify your data and separate it into clear buckets to quickly find the necessary insights:

• Group tenure (months, years) into “New Joiners”, “Mid-Term”, “Veterans”, etc.
• Segment performance (completion %, hours) into “High”, “Average”, “Needs Attention”.
• Classify salaries ($, €, etc.) into bands to quickly spot compensation gaps.

🪣 These buckets will:

• Act as categories for charts (pie slices, columns, etc.)
• Can be used to filter data or provide data for labels and tooltips.
• Enable on-demand drill downs (e.g., click “Needs Improvement” to reveal affected employees).

✨ZoomCharts tip: Measures and calculated columns are invaluable for bucketing. Read our blog article “12 Essential Power BI DAX Formulas” to learn more!

#5 Design for Meetings, Not Just Desktops

You built the report on a 27” desktop monitor. The HR director is reviewing it on a 14” laptop. Then, they screen share it to the COO in Microsoft Teams who’s joined from a 10.1” iPad, and afterwards it is beamed on the conference room’s 80” projector screen. Does your layout work in all these cases?

👀When designing an HR report, here is what to keep in mind:

• Use legible font sizes and simple layouts that avoid clutter or unreadable labels.
• Avoid overloading one page with too many visuals.
• Test for touch usability – many stakeholders will use your reports on mobile devices.

Design for your intended users – do not hesitate to ask them how they usually use their reports, and take notes. Then, before sharing the report with them, try it out in these scenarios yourself if possible.

Final Thoughts

HR is becoming more strategic than ever – but strategy needs insights. An interactive, intuitive and insightful Power BI report will turn HR data from reactive spreadsheets to proactive storytelling devices that will benefit the entire company by:

• Empowering smarter hiring decisions and workplace initiatives,
• Identifying potential risks before they become larger issues,
• Getting an edge over the competition.

Whether you’re designing for a global enterprise or a growing startup, these practices will help you build HR reports that truly empower your people teams.

What are your go-to tips for Power BI HR reports? Share your experience or ask questions in the comments – we’d love to hear from you!