How to Create an HR Dashboard in Looker

Tracking your organization's people data in a spreadsheet is a good first step, but it’s a pain to update and nearly impossible to get real insights from. A dynamic HR dashboard transforms that raw data into clear, actionable information about your most valuable asset: your people. This guide will walk you through creating a powerful HR dashboard in Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) to monitor headcount, analyze turnover, and optimize your hiring process.

First, Which HR Metrics Should You Track?

Before you even open Looker Studio, you need to decide what you want to measure. A dashboard is only as good as the metrics it displays. Overloading it with vanity numbers will only create noise, so focus on KPIs that directly impact business goals. What gets measured gets managed.

Here are some of the most critical HR metrics to include:

Headcount: The total number of employees in your organization. You can break this down by department, location, or full-time vs. part-time.
Hiring vs. Departures: A simple comparison showing how many people are joining versus leaving the company over a specific period.
Turnover Rate: The percentage of employees who leave the organization, either voluntarily or involuntarily. Tracking this helps you identify potential issues with company culture or management.
Recruitment Funnel & Time to Hire: This tracks the efficiency of your hiring process, from the number of applications received to the average time it takes to fill a role.
Diversity & Inclusion Metrics: Analyzing workforce demographics (e.g., gender, ethnicity, age) helps ensure you’re fostering an equitable and inclusive environment.
Absence Rate: The rate of unscheduled employee absences. A high rate might indicate burnout, low morale, or health issues.
Employee Engagement Score: Typically gathered from surveys, this metric is a key indicator of morale and employee satisfaction.

Step 1: Get Your HR Data in Order

Your dashboard is powered by data, and Looker Studio needs that data to be organized. For most HR teams, this data lives in siloed platforms like an HRIS (Human Resources Information System) like BambooHR or Workday, an ATS (Applicant Tracking System) like Greenhouse, and maybe some survey tools.

The easiest way to get started is to consolidate the critical information into a single Google Sheet. While not a permanent solution for large enterprises, it's a fantastic and flexible starting point for most teams.

Organize Your HR Data in Google Sheets

Create a Google Sheet with your core employee data. Each row should represent an employee, and each column should be a data point. Aim for a structure like this:

Employee ID: A unique identifier for each person.
Full Name: Employee's full name.
Department: Their current department (e.g., Marketing, Sales, Engineering).
Job Title: Their specific role.
Start Date: The day they joined the company.
End Date: The day they left (leave this blank for active employees).
Status: Active or Former.
Manager: The name of their direct manager.
Location: Office or remote location.
Demographic Data: (Optional and anonymized) Gender, Ethnicity, Age Group.

A quick tip: Format your dates consistently (e.g., YYYY-MM-DD), and keep your text fields (like Department) clean and standardized. Little inconsistencies like "Sales" vs. "sales" will be treated as separate categories by Looker Studio.

Step 2: Connect Google Sheets to Looker Studio

With your data prepped, it's time to connect it to Looker Studio. This process is refreshingly straightforward.

Go to lookerstudio.google.com and click on Blank Report to start a new dashboard.
You'll immediately be prompted to add data to the report. In the search bar, look for and select the Google Sheets connector.
You may need to authorize Looker Studio to access your Google Workspace account. Once authorized, a list of your spreadsheets will appear.
Select the HR data spreadsheet you just prepared. Then choose the specific worksheet containing your data.
Make sure the options "Use first row as headers" and "Include hidden and filtered cells" are checked.
Click the Add button in the bottom right corner. You'll see a confirmation pop-up, click Add to Report.

Looker will create a basic table for you on the report canvas. You're now officially ready to build!

Step 3: Build Your Key Visualizations

This is where your dashboard comes to life. We’ll build out charts and scorecards for some of the core HR metrics we identified earlier.

Building Core KPIs: Scorecards

Scorecards are perfect for displaying single, high-level numbers like Total Headcount. To see just your active employees, we need to create a filter.

Select the sample table Looker created and delete it.
Go to Add a chart in the top menu and select Scorecard. Place it at the top left of your canvas.
With the scorecard selected, look at the Setup panel on the right. Under the Metric section, select Record Count. This counts every row in your spreadsheet.
Now, let's filter for just Active employees. In the Setup panel, scroll down and find the Filter section. Click + Add a filter.
Name your filter "Active Employees". Choose Include, select the Status field, select the condition Equal to (=), and enter the value Active. Click Save.
Your scorecard now shows your current headcount! Under the Style panel, you can customize the font size and color. Finally, right-click the scorecard and rename it "Active Headcount" for clarity.

Visualizing Trends: Turnover Over Time

A time series chart is perfect for spotting trends. Let’s track your monthly departures.

Click Add a chart and select Time series chart. Place it on your canvas.
In the Setup panel, set the Dimension to your End Date field. This will be the horizontal x-axis. Looker Studio is smart enough to handle the date aggregation.
For the Metric, use Record Count. This will count the number of departures for each month.
Change the chart's name so you know this represents departures, not overall turnover rate (which requires a more complex calculated field).

Understanding Composition: Headcount by Department

A pie chart or donut chart is a great way to show how your workforce is distributed across different departments.

Go to Add a chart and choose Donut chart.
In the Setup panel, set the Dimension to your Department field.
Set the Metric to Record Count.
Finally, make sure you apply your "Active Employees" filter to this chart, so it only shows the departmental breakdown of your current team. You should now see a clear visual representation of your company's structure.

Step 4: Making Your Dashboard Interactive

A static dashboard is useful, but an interactive one is invaluable. Controls allow you and your stakeholders to slice and dice the data without needing to edit the report.

Add a Date Range Control

This lets users view data for specific periods (last quarter, last month, etc.).

From the top menu, select Add a control, and choose Date range control.
Place it prominently at the top of your dashboard.
That's it! This control will now automatically govern all date-sensitive charts on the page, like your departures time series.

Add a Department Filter

This allows managers to drill down and see the data for their specific team.

Go to Add a control and select Drop-down list.
In the Setup panel, set the Control field to Department.
Place this control next to your date range control. Now users can select "Engineering," and every chart on the dashboard will instantly update to show data for only the Engineering department.

Final Thoughts

Building a robust HR dashboard in Looker Studio transforms your people-analytics from guesswork logged in spreadsheets into strategic decision-making. By visualizing key metrics like headcount, turnover, and hiring efficiency, you create a single source of truth that empowers the entire organization to understand and improve its workforce.

The main headache in this process often comes from the manual data wrangling - exporting CSVs, cleaning them up in Google Sheets, and configuring each chart one by one. If you’d rather skip the tedious setup and just get to the insights, that’s where we built Graphed to help. We connect directly to your HR and recruiting platforms, and you can generate an entire dashboard just by asking for it in plain English. This turns hours of building into a 30-second conversation, giving you more time to act on the data instead of just getting it ready.