Workforce and pay analytics

Masar Holding is a fictional Saudi group founded in 2015 with head-office functions, a logistics operation in Riyadh and Jeddah, sales teams in three cities and a customer service centre. It now employs about 290 people, and the HR team has grown from two people with spreadsheets to a proper HR information system that keeps every employment record, every pay change, every performance review and every incentive payment.

The new Chief People Officer has been asked by the board for an annual workforce report. The board wants to know how the workforce has developed, how many people leave and why, whether pay is consistent with the salary bands that were redesigned on 1 January 2025, whether managers have sensible spans of control, whether pay increases actually follow performance ratings, and what the nationality and gender mix of the workforce looks like in each department.

None of these numbers can be read straight from a table. Leavers stay in the employees table, the current salary lives in a history table, salary bands have versions that changed over time, the org chart is a self-referencing hierarchy with a vacant manager seat, ratings are missing for recent joiners, and three people were rehired under a new employee number. Your job is to turn the raw records into figures that the board can trust and that HR can explain.