London Councils HR Metrics Benchmarking Club on InfiniStats

Originally developed for London, the HR Metrics Benchmarking Club uses the InfiniStats online platform to provide a rich source of HR Metrics to share, benchmark and use to identify areas for improvement and innovation.

The Club was the winner of the PPMA’s 2019 Excellence in People Management Best Effective Partnership Initiative Award and is currently the subject of a CIPD case study titled Valuing your talent. London Councils work with InfiniStats was also awarded the 2025 PPMA Award for the Best Use of Data and Technology. 

The Club provides benchmarking and analysis for the data collected to enable councils to:

• Compare and assess their performance across a range of HR measures (including pay)
• Work collaboratively to develop and progress best practice
• Tackle new challenges that require data insights

Membership of the HR Benchmarking Club is available via InfiniStats to all councils in England by subscription through their Regional Employer. 

InfiniStats is specifically designed to meet the needs of Local Government. The metrics are relevant, relatable, collectable (from typical Local Government HR/Payroll systems) and useful to councils.

Data is easy to upload to InfiniStats and is secure and easily accessible in a range of outputs that enable benchmarking against comparable councils and facilitates evidence-informed decisions. 
 

What is InfiniStats?

InfiniStats is a user-friendly online tool used by over 150 local authorities, where councils enter their own HR Metrics data and can access a range of outputs including scorecards and detailed benchmarking reports that are tailor-made for each council with their own logo and colours. Councils can also add commentary and action plans to their own reports for local use. 

What data can I share?

• Chief Officers Pay & Benefits
• Pay & Benefits for a range of other jobs, including Social Workers, key roles, and more.
• Human Capital Metrics – workforce size, diversity (ethnicity, gender, age, disability), sickness by reason, leavers by reason and turnover
• Terms and Conditions – a comprehensive list of T&Cs for benchmarking across councils in your region
• HR Teams – casework, recruitment, training and appraisal metrics and size of HR Teams
• HR systems/apps, outsourcing and sharing – see which council is using which apps, plus which HR services are outsourced where, and shared.
• Access to reports, charts and benchmarking of Gender Pay Gap data and the DfE annual Children’s Social Worker census data sourced from Gov.uk (reports cover all councils using published data – but can be generated only by Club Members).
• Quarterly survey of Agency Children’s Social Workers
• Plus conduct your own surveys with Pulse surveys on InfiniStats, get ready-to-use online results with charts and tables.

All surveys are voluntary.

How is the data collected? 

The data is collected using secure data uploads directly onto InfiniStats by Club Members. Uploads are simple and quick. Once a council has provided its data for an InfiniStats survey, it can access results for that survey on InfiniStats.

How often is the data collected?  

Most of the surveys are annual. Survey questionnaires and guidance are available on InfiniStats and there is a timetable that spaces the surveys out over the year. Deadline dates are provided, and reminders are provided. Councils can see on InfiniStats which surveys they have completed. 

What do members of the HR Benchmarking Club say about it?

InfiniStats is a fantastic resource! Having the ability to access a wealth of data and people metrics from numerous local authorities in a centralised repository really helps us in benchmarking our performance and making informed decisions.  It is really easy to use, and I especially like how the data can be tailored in different formats including PDF reports, scorecards and dashboards.

The system is so easy to use and the reporting is brilliant. It’s so easy to download a benchmarking report, often with analysis such as the “Human Capital Metrics” reports, to benchmark and compare ourselves for reports such as our Statutory Public Sector Equality Duty and our annual workforce report.

As well as being able to input and edit data easily, we can compare our workforce profile with other local authorities through automated reports, charts and scorecards.  Benchmarking data can be exported in raw format, which gives us the option to produce bespoke analysis using tools such as Power BI.  The surveys cover a broad set of useful metrics, and we have the added flexibility to define our own Pulse surveys.  These features help us to understand our workforce and to set realistic targets for internal scorecards.

For more information and details on how to join, visit Regional employers’ organisations | Local Government Association 

Contact: tessa.mapley@londoncouncils.gov.uk