Learning in Small Bites

General
Extra
Technical

General

In reporting we can use simple text and some tabular data. This appeals to people who have a preference for numbers, logic and mathematical computations. At the most basic, level deliver this and you have produced a report.

To recognise the different preferences of audiences receiving our information we should also respect the fact that some people find that visual imagery and colour help them make sense of what they see. In this respect we include charts to help give further context to the information we are delivering.

In short we must remember that reporting is about conveying information and reports should do as much as possible to engage readers.

You will notice that we have used both 2D pie charts
image of 2D pie chart
and 3D pie charts
image of 3D pie chart .

We credit CyberMick for reminding us that, whilst being pleasing to look at, 3D pie charts can distort the perceived size of each slice of the pie. We have included both forms of chart so that you can see the difference in the visual representation of the slices. For anyone interested in reading further on the case for being wary of 3D charts please visit the page linked below:
The Case Against 3D Charts in Dashboards

Extra

Being in charge of people's data is a very important responsibility and exceptional care must be taken over how it is used. In publishing profiles of an organisation it is important to mindful that no individual should be able to be identified from a public profile.

To avoid this it is important to only publish groupings that are above a certain minimum size. For example it might be agreed that areas will be aggregated so that all groupings contain more than 10 people.

From looking at our organisation chart you will see that for reporting purposes we have chosen to report on the top levels of the organisation. It is easily possible to publish information on smaller units but at some points the numbers become so small in teams that it is easily possible to identify private information on people. This must be avoided as in the UK it can breach data protection legislation

Technical

Creating charts from scratch requires a reasonable knowledge of mathematics, in particular geometry. Remember things like the size of a circle is proportionate to the square of its radius multiplied by π or the area of a rectangle is length x breadth?

It turns out that there is a use for those things.

If you loved geometry at school, and have a basic knowledge of programming, it is possible to produce your own library of charts for your own personal use.

If you don't want to spend the hundreds of hours it would take to make your own chart library then you can always use some charting software. This ranges from using the charts in a spreadsheet package to spending thousands of pounds on a licence for specialist charting software.

We started building a library and got as far as our own bar charts for displaying salary reviews . Now we use the fantastic package pChart. If you do not have access to more expensive commercial charting packages then we can recommend pChart. You can visit the pChart website at http://www.pchart.net/.

The package is free if your use is not a commercial one (eg: you make no money by redistributing your work). We have found pChart really excellent for developing this free site.

Key Legislation Underpinning Employment Contracts

The Employment Rights Act 1996 underpins contracts of employment in the United Kingdom.

The terminolgy to use is a written statement of particulars of employment. This summarises the main particulars of the employment relationship and must according to the legislation be given within two months of the person's first day of service.

Whilst the law states two months it would actually be poor form to encourage a person to give up an existing job or prior state of affairs without actually presenting them with the contractual terms of their new role until two months after it has started. The law is quite flexible but if we are truly focused on the quality of the engagement with the prospective member of staff the written statement of particulars really should be issued as soon as possible after the decision to appoint has been made.

Issuing the written statement of particulars at the earliest point means the person is aware of what they being contracted to and can clarify any uncertainties before accepting. Starting a relationship in this manner where possible helps ensure a more harmonious contract.

The key aspects of a written statement of particulars are as follows:

The names of the employer and employee.
The title of the job which the employee is employed to do or a brief description of the work for which they are employed.
Where the employment is not intended to be permanent, the period for which it is expected to continue.
Either the place of work or, where the employee is required or permitted to work at various places, an indication of that and of the address of the employer.
The date when the employment began.
The date on which the employee’s period of continuous employment began (taking into account any employment with a previous employer which counts towards that period). The continuous employment date is often the same as the start date. Where it is earlier this may give the new starter certain employment rights that come with longer service.
The scale or rate of remuneration/pay or the method of calculating this.
The intervals at which remuneration is paid (that is, weekly, monthly or other specified intervals).
Any terms and conditions relating to hours of work.
Entitlement to holidays, including public holidays, and holiday pay.
How incapacity for work due to sickness or injury will be handled, including any provision for sick pay.
Pensions and pension schemes.
The length of notice which the employee is obliged to give and entitled to receive to terminate his contract of employment.
Any collective agreements which directly affect the terms and conditions of the employment. In large organisations trade unions negotiate with the employer on behalf of staff, the agreements they reach with the employer are called collective agreements.

Key to the Organisation Chart

An explanation of the symbols used

	This icon represents a unit that has child units. Click it to see the child units.
	This icon means that a unit has its child units visible. Click to close the child units.
Unit name	Click on a unit to get more information on it. If the unit has child units it will open a page showing them too.
	Clicking this icon takes you to some basic theory on organisation charts and structure.
	This button is Collapse All and when clicked closes all units that have been opened up.
	This button is Expand All and when clicked opens all units so you will see every aspect of the tree.

Welcome to Learning in Small Bites

Welcome to the free website for people who want to learn about the technology used for keeping staffing details in offices. Using this site you can learn as much from the comfort of your arm chair as you could in two years at work. Here is your chance to practice with systems that you may only have heard about. Get a behind the scenes view of what happens with your information and how it is stored.

This site is aimed at people from school leaving age and above who may be interested in working with what are known as Human Resources (HR) information systems.

If we can help even one person to secure a job in HR or specialise in HR systems as a result of using our free development site then the creators of HRMISolutions and Learning in Small Bites will have achieved what we set out to do.

Prerequisites

You will get the best out of this site if you have:

A little experience of using a computer, a tablet or a smart phone.
A desire to help people to use less effort to achieve more.
An interest in office systems (don't worry if you are not sure at the start).

About

About

Reporting, Metrics and Statistics

Administrators will store a lot of information in systems. In this section we will work with some tools that can be used for getting information out and using it for management decisions.

There will be opportunities to try out some basic reporting and also to design some reports online. This will help administrators to become familiar with adding statistical information to their work and will hopefully take some of the mystery out of compiling statistics.

The table below helps show what information managers deal with.

Reporting Historical	Analytics Historical	Monitoring Current	Prediction Future
What happened	Why it happened	Where we are now	What is likely to happen next

The historical and current do not tell much more than what is going on at present. It is interesting to note that business leaders probably place highest value on being able to predict what will happen next.

Below are links to some pages for you to make your own example charts and also review ones we prepared earlier.

Make Simple Charts

Example Profiles

Example Dashboards