How to Create an Employee Dashboard in Google Sheets

Building an employee dashboard is a fantastic way to turn mountains of performance data into clear, actionable insights, but you don't need expensive, complex software to get started. You can create a powerful and dynamic dashboard using a tool you already know and love: Google Sheets. This guide will walk you through setting up a functional employee dashboard from scratch, helping you track performance, manage projects, and make better data-driven decisions for your team.

First, What Is an Employee Dashboard and Why Use Google Sheets?

An employee dashboard is a visual report that centralizes and displays key performance indicators (KPIs) and other important metrics related to your team’s work. Instead of digging through different reports and spreadsheets, a dashboard gives you a high-level, at-a-glance view of everything from project progress and task completion to individual performance against goals.

So, why Google Sheets? For many teams, it's the perfect starting point.

• It’s free and accessible: Most businesses already use Google Workspace, so there are no extra costs or new tools to learn.

• It’s collaborative: Team members and managers can view or update the dashboard in real-time from anywhere.

• It’s surprisingly powerful: With functions like charts, pivot tables, slicers, and a bit of formula know-how, you can build a highly effective and interactive tool.

• It’s customizable: You can tailor the dashboard to track exactly what matters most to your team, without being locked into the rigid formats of other software.

Planning Your Dashboard: Decide What to Track

Before you type a single formula, you need a plan. A great dashboard isn’t about tracking everything, it's about tracking the right things. Start by asking yourself: What are the most important goals for my team, and what metrics tell me if we’re on track to hit them?

Brainstorm the KPIs that align with your team's objectives. It's better to start with a few critical metrics and expand later than to create a cluttered dashboard nobody understands. Here are a few examples to get you started, broken down by category:

Performance Metrics

• Sales/Revenue Generated: The total revenue attributed to an individual sales rep.

• Leads Contacted or Qualified: The number of potential customers a team member has engaged.

• Key Tasks Completed: A simple count of completed tasks or project milestones.

• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): Feedback scores tied to a specific employee's support interactions.

• KPI Achievement Rate: The percentage of goals met over a specific period (e.g., 4 out of 5 monthly goals hit = 80%).

Project & Productivity Metrics

• Number of Projects Assigned: The current workload of an employee.

• Tasks Completed by Deadline: The percentage of tasks finished on time vs. late.

• Hours Logged vs. Budgeted: Useful for agencies or teams tracking billable hours.

• Status of Projects: A high-level view of tasks categorized as "Not Started," "In Progress," or "Completed."

HR & Engagement Metrics

• Attendance Rate: A simple tracker for presence can highlight potential burnout or engagement issues.

• Training & Development: Track completion of required courses or certifications.

• Team Tenure: How long an employee has been with the company.

• One-on-One Feedback Sessions: Simple tracking to ensure regular check-ins are happening.

Choose 3-5 of the most impactful metrics for your team. This focus will keep your dashboard clean and easy to interpret.

Step-by-Step Guide to Building Your Employee Dashboard

Now for the fun part. We’ll build the dashboard using a three-tab structure: one for raw data, one for data analysis, and a final one for the dashboard itself. This keeps everything organized and easy to manage.

Step 1: Create a 'Raw Data' Tab

This is where all your source data will live. Think of it as the engine of your dashboard. Every piece of data you want to visualize should start here. Create a new tab and name it something like RawData.

The key here is structure. Every row should be a single record, and every column should represent a field. Let’s imagine we’re building a dashboard for a small marketing team to track project tasks.

Your columns might look like this:

• Task ID: A unique number for each task.

• Task Description: What needs to be done.

• Assigned To: The name of the employee responsible.

• Project: The larger initiative the task belongs to (e.g., "Q3 Product Launch").

• Status: Not Started, In Progress, Completed.

• Due Date: The deadline for the task.

• Completion Date: The actual date the task was finished.

• KPI Met? A simple "Yes" or "No" if the task contributes to a specific KPI.

Pro Tip: Use Google Sheets' Data Validation feature for columns like "Assigned To" and "Status." This creates a dropdown menu, which prevents typos and ensures your data is consistent and easy to analyze.

Step 2: Create a 'Calculations' Tab

Never build charts directly from your raw data. That tab is for input only. Instead, create a second tab named Calculations or Analysis. This is where you’ll summarize the data from your RawData tab into clean, chart-ready tables.

Let's create a few summary tables.

Table 1: Tasks by Status

This simple table will count how many tasks are in each stage. In one column, list your statuses: "Not Started," "In Progress," "Completed." In the next column, use the COUNTIF formula.

This is an example where RawData!E:E is the "Status" column you want to count.

Table 2: Tasks Completed per Employee

Let's see how many tasks each team member has finished. List your employee names. Then, use the COUNTIFS formula, which lets you count based on multiple criteria (employee name AND status).

Here, RawData!C:C is the "Assigned To" column and "Sarah" or "David" are the employees you're analyzing for that row.

Table 3: KPI Achievement Rate

This is great for a high-level performance metric. Let's calculate the overall percentage of tasks that met their KPI.

This formula counts all the "Yes" values in your "KPI Met?" column and divides it by the total number of tasks (excluding the header row with H2:H) to get an accurate total count. Format this cell as a percentage.

The QUERY function is another incredibly powerful tool. It's like a mini search engine for your data. For example, to get all completed tasks just for Sarah, you could use:

This function searches the data in columns A through H of your RawData tab and returns all rows where Column C is 'Sarah' and Column E is 'Completed', including the header row.

Step 3: Build Your 'Dashboard' Tab

Now we visualize! Create a new tab named Dashboard. This is your final presentation layer. Keep it clean and easy to read. Click Insert > Chart and use the summary tables you created in your Calculations tab as the data source.

1. Create a Pie Chart for Tasks by Status

• Select your "Tasks by Status" table in the Calculations tab.

• Go to Insert > Chart.

• Google Sheets will likely default to a Pie Chart, but if not, you can change it in the Chart Editor.

• Customize the colors and title (e.g., "Project Status Overview").

• Cut and paste this chart into your Dashboard tab.

2. Create a Bar Chart for Tasks per Employee

• Select your "Tasks Completed per Employee" data.

• Go to Insert > Chart and choose a Bar Chart or Column Chart. This is great for comparing performance across team members.

• Give it a clear title like "Tasks Completed This Month."

• Move it to your Dashboard tab.

3. Use Scorecard Charts for Key Numbers

Scorecard charts are perfect for displaying single, important numbers. Let’s make one for our KPI Achievement Rate.

• Click on a blank cell in your Dashboard.

• Go to Insert > Chart. This time, find Scorecard chart in the chart type selector.

• For the data range, select the single cell containing your KPI Achievement Rate from the Calculations tab.

• Now you'll have a big, bold number showcasing one of your most important metrics.

Arrange these charts neatly on your Dashboard tab. Use clear headings and maybe some background colors to separate sections and create a clean, professional look.

Make Your Dashboard Interactive with Slicers

An interactive dashboard is far more useful than a static one. Using Google Sheets' Slicer tool, you can filter all your dashboards' charts at once without messing with formulas.

1. Go to your Dashboard tab.

2. Click on any of your charts.

3. In the menu, go to Data > Add a Slicer.

4. A slicer menu will pop up. For the data range, select your entire data set in the RawData tab (e.g., RawData!A1:H1000).

5. For the "Column," choose one you'd like to filter by, like "Assigned To" or "Project."

Now, you'll have a dropdown filter on your dashboard. When you select a specific employee, all the charts will automatically update to show data just for that person. This is an incredibly powerful feature for managers who want to drill down into individual performance during one-on-ones.

Final Thoughts

You’ve now built a functional, insightful, and interactive employee dashboard entirely within Google Sheets. By separating your data, calculations, and visualizations, you've created a scalable system that can track team progress and translate raw numbers into clear performance insights.

As your team grows, keeping that Google Sheet updated by pulling in data from various other platforms - your project management tool, CRM, time tracker, and more - can quickly become a manual, time-consuming task. At Graphed , we designed our platform to eliminate this data-wrangling process. Instead of manually exporting CSVs and pasting them into Sheets, you can connect your data sources directly and ask our AI data analyst in plain English to build real-time dashboards for you. It turns hours of reporting busywork into a 30-second conversation, giving you back time to focus on what the data actually means.