Six key categories of human resource objectives are:

Employee engagement and involvement

Objectives might focus on:

• Maximise reported levels of engagement
• Extent of satisfactorily completed appraisals

Talent development

Objectives might focus on:

• Investment (level) in employees training
• Staff retention rates
• Percentage of job vacancies filled by internal candidates

Training

Objectives might focus on:

• Spend in total and per employee on training
• Measures of training effectiveness

Diversity

Objectives might focus on:

• Diversity in senior management positions (gender, experience, ethnicity etc)
• Diversity in external recruitment (gender, ethnicity etc)

Alignment of values

Objectives might focus on:

• Recruitment & induction training; extent focused on core values
• Employee awareness of core values

Number, skills and location of employees

Objectives might focus on:

• Labour turnover
• Staff retention
• Recruitment targets
• Training budgets
• Extent of skills gaps in the workforce