Codebook

https://rpubs.com/rhuebner/hrd_cb_v14

PLEASE NOTE — I recently updated the codebook – please use the above link. A few minor discrepancies were identified between the codebook and the dataset. Please feel free to contact me through LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/in/RichHuebner) to report discrepancies and make requests.

Context

HR data can be hard to come by, and HR professionals generally lag behind with respect to analytics and data visualization competency. Thus, Dr. Carla Patalano and I set out to create our own HR-related dataset, which is used in one of our graduate MSHRM courses called HR Metrics and Analytics, at New England College of Business. We created this data set ourselves. We use the data set to teach HR students how to use and analyze the data in Tableau Desktop – a data visualization tool that’s easy to learn.

This version provides a variety of features that are useful for both data visualization AND creating machine learning / predictive analytics models. We are working on expanding the data set even further by generating even more records and a few additional features. We will be keeping this as one file/one data set for now. There is a possibility of creating a second file perhaps down the road where you can join the files together to practice SQL/joins, etc.

Note that this dataset isn’t perfect. By design, there are some issues that are present. It is primarily designed as a teaching data set – to teach human resources professionals how to work with data and analytics.

Content

We have reduced the complexity of the dataset down to a single data file (v14). The CSV revolves around a fictitious company and the core data set contains names, DOBs, age, gender, marital status, date of hire, reasons for termination, department, whether they are active or terminated, position title, pay rate, manager name, and performance score.

Recent additions to the data include:

• Absences
• Most Recent Performance Review Date
• Employee Engagement Score

Acknowledgements

Dr. Carla Patalano provided the baseline idea for creating this synthetic data set, which has been used now by over 200 Human Resource Management students at the college. Students in the course learn data visualization techniques with Tableau Desktop and use this data set to complete a series of assignments.

Inspiration

We’ve included some open-ended questions that you can explore and try to address through creating Tableau visualizations, or R or Python analyses. Good luck and enjoy the learning!

• Is there any relationship between who a person works for and their performance score?
• What is the overall diversity profile of the organization?
• What are our best recruiting sources if we want to ensure a diverse organization?
• Can we predict who is going to terminate and who isn’t? What level of accuracy can we achieve on this?
• Are there areas of the company where pay is not equitable?

There are so many other interesting questions that could be addressed through this interesting data set. Dr. Patalano and I look forward to seeing what we can come up with.