Top Excel Formulas for HR

Excel might not be glamorous, but for HR teams it’s still one of the most powerful tools in the toolkit. From workforce reporting and compliance tracking to performance analysis and remuneration reviews, the right formulas can save hours and reduce risk.

This practical cheat sheet brings together some of the most useful Excel formulas for HR, covering logic and error handling, lookups, date calculations, reporting, analysis and text clean-up. It’s designed to help HR professionals move faster, build cleaner reports, and make better use of the data they already have.

Inside, you’ll find formulas commonly used to:

• Flag eligibility, missing data and compliance risks

• Track tenure, time to hire and key dates

• Pull accurate data across spreadsheets

• Summarise and benchmark workforce metrics

• Clean and combine text fields for reporting

Whether you’re an HR generalist, business partner, people analyst or leader who still lives in spreadsheets, this resource is a handy reference to keep close.

This guide was created by Academy to Innovate HR (AIHR) and is shared here as a useful learning resource for the HR community.