Gartner Research

2022 HR Budget and Efficiency Benchmarks

Published: 06 April 2022

Summary

This research contains benchmarking insights from our HR Budget and Efficiency Benchmarking survey to help human resources leaders compare their HR function’s performance against peers, assess optimization strategies and prioritize future HR investments.

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Overview

Key Findings
  • HR receives one of the lowest investments of all organizational support functions. The average HR functional spend as a percentage of revenue is 0.74%.

  • HR operating expenses are less subject to external volatilities and remain more consistent year over year. On average, HR accounts for 1.42% of organizational operating expenses.

  • On average, HR functions spend $2,441 per employee annually,with two-thirds (67%) of total HR function cost being HR-personnel-related.

  • HR budget is primarily allocated to key HR activities such as recruiting (19.7%), L&D (13.8%) and total rewards (13.1%); 9% of the HR budget is allocated to HR technology.

  • On average, HR functions deploy

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