Game for some charting awesomeness?
Off late, I have been doing a lot of data analysis and visualization on performance ratings, salary hike, gender pay equality etc. Today let me share you an awesome way to visualize massive amounts of data.
Scenario: Your organization of 3,686 people recently went thru annual performance ratings & review process. At the end of it, everyone was offered some salary increase (from $0 to $24,000 per year). You have 7 business groups. How do you tell the story of all these salary hikes in one chart?
How about this one?
Ready to know how to create this in Excel? Read on.
Tutorial: Creating jittered scatter plot in Excel
That is right, what you are seeing above is good old scatter plot with a bit of jitter (random noise added to X values). This way, when too many dots are at a single point, we spread them apart to show more.
Let’s look at data:
Here is a sample of 3,500+ employee’s ratings and salary hikes (randomly made up), with the usual columns:
Convert rating and group names to numbers:
Since we can’t use rating and group names in XY plot (we need numbers, not text), let’s convert these in to numbers using simple MATCH() formula.
We get two new columns, like below:
Creating X & Y values from data:
Next up, we need to generate the X & Y values for our plot.
Y value: This is easy. It is the amount of salary increase with two twists:
- If employee got $0 hike, we want to omit them in the plot. This will remove many of dots from the plot (less clutter)
- If an employee is unrated (even if they got a hike), we want to omit them too. This is because our plot has only 4 rating levels per group. There are very few unrated people and they are not the focus of this chart.
We can create Y value using a simple IF formula like below:
- =IF(OR([@[Salary Increase $]]=0,[@[Rating 17 (number)]]=5),NA(),[@[Salary Increase $]])
X value: This is the tricky bit. Since there are 7 groups, each with 4 ratings (excluding the unrated), we have 28 possible X values. We want to space these out so dots for one group + rating combination don’t encroach other combination.
Let’s say we give 10 units of space per group.
That means, we have 2.5 units of space per rating in that group (and total of 70 units of space).
Now, the dot needs to plotted at the center of this 2.5 unit of space (ie at 1.25)
The basic formula would be: =[@[Business Group]]*10+([@[Rating 17 (number)]]-1)*2.5+1.25
But what about the jitter?
Aah, right. We need to add random noise to X value. Since each rating has 2.5 of space, how about noise between -0.7 to 0.7 ? This still leaves plenty of space on both ends thus keeping the plot clear.
We can use below formula to generate the noise.
=RANDBETWEEN(-700,700)/1000
The final formula for X value goes like this:
=[@[Business Group]]*10+([@[Rating 17 (number)]]-1)*2.5+1.25+[@Noise]
Here is how our X,Y looks at this stage:
Data prep done, let’s move to the plot.
Creating jittered scatter plot
- Select both X & Y values and insert XY plot. We get this.
- Set X axis limits and remove title: As all our dots are between 10 to 80, let’s set them as limits for X axis. Also, let’s remove the chart title.
- Add vertical gridlines: Although our dot towers are separated from each other, adding grid lines makes it easy to read the chart.
- Format the markers: Set fill to solid color and 25% transparency. This makes the dots look nice and shows the density when there are too many people at some co-ords.
- Set Y axis limit: So that we can focus on people getting salary increase of up to $10,000. This zooms the chart to meaty part while showing plenty of outliers. We get this:
- Last step: Remove plot and chart borders, so we can add extra info, labels etc.
Ok, now our chart is almost ready. Next step, making it a story.
Create a wireframe in 10 column area, as shown below:
Next place the chart inside the red box. Adjust plot area size so it fits in to 7 columns. Hold ALT key when adjusting so chart’s plot area would fit in to 7 columns. You need to repeat this step every time you fiddle with the chart. So do it at last.
Add extra story points:
- A clear and descriptive title
- A sub-title explaining what is going on and how to read the chart.
- Group names and rating names. You can use the below trick to align the rating labels inside cell nicely.
- Show some more stats like median hike, median new pay (if you have it), head counts and unrated counts.
- Add any footers, disclaimers (about excluded people in the plot etc.)
- Add a border around this entire wire frame so it all looks like one piece.
- Shade alternative columns in some dull color. This improves the readability. As our chart is transparent, cell fill colors will show up nicely.
We are done.
Inspiration for this – R
That is right. You can create a similar plot quicker and better using R. ggplot, an R library has built-in support for jittering dots on XY plots. So using that, you can create below chart with just 7 lines of code. This is what you get (yes, you can show each rating dots in different color, and yes, you can order the groups by number of people in them).
Here is the R script if you want to experiment.
Download Excel Chart
Click here to download the workbook containing this chart, tutorial and raw data. Try re-creating it in Excel (or your favorite visualization tool) to learn more.
How do you like this chart?
I had lots of fun making and tweaking this chart. It shows some interesting patterns about how salary hikes are distributed across groups and where everyone is.
How do you like this? Do you plan to add some jitter to your busy scatter plots? Please share your thoughts in comments section. And if you want some inspiration, check out more such charts.
Jittery about charts?
If you love story telling and beautiful visualizations but not sure how to get there, consider enrolling in our Excel School or 50 ways to Analyze Data programs. In these powerful courses, I teach you all about awesome data analysis and visualization techniques.
27 Responses to “9 Box grid for talent mapping – HR for Excel – Template & Explanation”
Great stuff! I can understand how to add a slicer to the pivot table, but how do you implement the departmental selector on the 'Filter' formula scheme?
Just saw this on your Youtube channel, and it’s areat idea...!
An easy way to overcome the "ugliness" of pivot tables and get it to look nice (in the format of the Output sheet), would be to simply build a sheet with the nice map at the top, a pivot underneath it and a slicer next to formatted map and then reference each of the 9 cells in the formatted map to the “related” cell in the Pivot.
Keep up the good work!
/Claus
Thanks Claus. That is a great idea 🙂
Hi Chandoo,
This is great! Curious how to make additional columns operate the same as the Department column (ex. have a "manager column") that would allow you to sort a 9 box by manager, area, or team in addition to department?
Feel free to email me if needed! mfry01@minnetronixmedical.com
Happy New Year
Madison Fry
I am curious about the smae thing. I would like to populate the 9 box with other views as well by adding additional columns. IE., I would like to add location, region, etc. Thank you.
This is great, thank you!
How can i see the whole data set of all the teams in the output table. Need a formula that will pick up all the employees
Hello,
Love the template. Thank you. Question - the drop down to pick a department on the Output tab does not seem to work on the downloadable template. Am I doing something incorrectly?
Thank you!
Hi Heather... Thank you. I am using Excel 365 to make the calculations. If you are using an older version of Excel, then the drop-down filter won't work.
Hi
I was able to follow your 9 box grid and modified based my needs. However, you tutorial did not show how to you create the filter for the "Pick a department. Can you kindly share how to create that filter that updated the grid. Thank you.
I am working on this project but I am struggling with the data validation for the department. I copy the worksheets data entry and output as the managers want to see different tabs for each managers.
I updated the source reference for each tab but It does not update the grid based on the new source. The list was updated but it does not populate the grid based on the performance and potential listed.
In addition the hyperlink Update Data and View Talent Map no longer works. Can you please help me.
I keep getting this error message in the pivot table:
This formula is invalid or incomplete: 'The expression is not valid or appears to be incomplete. Please review and correct the expression.
The following syntax error occurred during parsing: Invalid token, Line 1, Offset 14, ‘.
Hi, I used your 9-box excel template with excel 365. First off, thank you so very much. It is incredibly helpful!! My only question is that the boxes aren't big enough for all of the employees (specifically the middle which we call 'Core Employee'). Is there a way to make the boxes larger? Even though it is in excel, I am not able to increase row height (like I normally do in a speadsheet). Any ideas? Thanks again, Jody
Hi Chandoo,
Thanks for the great content. Re. 9 box grid, pls advise how do I increase the size of the box to accommodate more names?
Hi Chandoo,
I figured it out. Excel 365 has the format row height on the ribbon. Thank you
Merci Chandoo pour le modèle proposé,
j'ai une question et un souhait est il possible de développer davantage ce modèle en insérant la photo de chaque employé.
Hi Chandoo!
Great tutorial and tool, thank you! Your tutorial didn't include how to create additional filters on the "Output" tab. Could you please share how you did it?
Can this be done exactly in google sheets?
Hi Chandoo,
Thanks for the video it was really helpful. Is there any way to multi select the dropdown to display multiple or all departments rather than just one at once?
Hello Prish
I have Microsoft 365 and I am struggling to make the boxes larger/unable to increase row height; any idea how you made this work? Specifically in the Output tab where the map is?
Many thanks
Hello Jody, I have Microsoft 365 and I am struggling to make the boxes larger/unable to increase row height; any idea how you made this work? Specifically in the Output tab where the map is? Many thanks
Is there a way to change the 9 box wording descriptions, i.e. Work Horses, to our own internal langauge?
You can edit the file. The descriptions are textboxes.
Hi Chandoo, this is awesome and has worked perfectly. Due to a big organisation the 9 box grid on the output file is too small. I tried adjusting using the row/width ribbon under the format ribbon however it doesn't seem to work. Is there an easier way to adjust this?
Thanks!
When I drag the formula, it doesn't work, and the order I use with the data changes. In the beginning, the order is it is " candidates," " potential," and " performance," but when it goes to another column, it is " Potential," Performance," and "Candidates."Can you help me? Thank you very much, sending love from vietnam
Hi- I am working on the 9 grid project and I am trying to expand the box since I have over 100 names on a few of the columns. How do I do that?
Hi, Thank you this is great stuff and really useful.
As well as department as demonstrated on your clip, how can I display all candidates on the grid at once?
Many thanks in advance