Overview

The 2025 second edition of the human capital reporting standard, setting out requirements and recommendations for internal and external human capital reporting and disclosure (HCRD). It replaces the withdrawn ISO 30414:2018.

ISO 30414:2025, Human resource management — Requirements and recommendations for human capital reporting and disclosure, is the current edition of the standard. It is the second edition, published in August 2025, and it cancels and replaces ISO 30414:2018, which is withdrawn. Organizations and reports still citing the 2018 edition are citing a withdrawn document.

The standard outlines a baseline for global and comprehensive internal and external human capital reporting and disclosure (HCRD). It is applicable to organizations of all sizes and sectors, and it focuses on measuring factors that are within an organization's control. Its stated benefit is quantifying the sustainable drivers of organizational value creation using generally accepted metrics, in a way that is comparable and consistent both internally and externally, and consistent with governance expectations.

What changed from the 2018 edition to the 2025 edition. According to ISO, the revision introduces: guidance on productivity and performance disclosures across the for-profit, not-for-profit and non-profit sectors; a reorganisation of the human capital areas (HCAs) to align contexts and to prioritize impact and workflow; a recommended disclosure reporting format based on the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) framework of governance, strategy, risks and opportunities, and metrics; the addition of metrics covering human rights, labour relations, productivity, ethics and well-being; enhanced guidance on responsibilities for data collection, privacy and security; updated guidance on the business acumen needed for human capital reporting and disclosure; enhanced guidance and recommendations for small and medium-sized enterprises; and expanded examples of human capital reports. The change of title is itself significant — the 2018 edition was titled "Guidelines for internal and external human capital reporting", while the 2025 edition is framed as "Requirements and recommendations".

Internal and external reporting. The standard addresses two audiences with different needs. Internal reporting supports the governing body, executives and managers in workforce decisions, and can be more granular and more frequent. External reporting serves investors, regulators, customers, prospective employees and other interested parties, and prioritizes comparability, consistency of definition and appropriate aggregation. The TCFD-style disclosure format introduced in 2025 is aimed squarely at the external audience, aligning human capital disclosure with the structure that financial audiences already recognize from climate reporting.

Why organizations use it. Human capital disclosure expectations have expanded through securities regulation, sustainability reporting frameworks and investor engagement, and the social dimension of ESG reporting depends heavily on workforce data. ISO 30414 provides an internationally agreed set of metric definitions so that disclosures are consistent between reporting periods and comparable between organizations. Definitions of the underlying terms come from ISO 30400, and organizations commonly use ISO 30415 for diversity and inclusion practice and ISO 30409 for workforce planning alongside it.

Certification. ISO 30414 is a reporting and disclosure standard, not a management system standard, and ISO does not operate a certification scheme for it. There is no accredited ISO 30414 certification of an organization in the way that ISO 9001 or ISO 45001 certification works, and no Stage 1 / Stage 2 audit cycle. Various consultancies and private bodies offer ISO 30414 "certification", assurance or attestation of human capital reports; these are commercial services operating outside ISO's accredited certification framework, and buyers should understand what is actually being attested. Independent assurance of disclosed metrics is a legitimate and increasingly common practice — it is simply not ISO certification.

Implementation in practice. Organizations typically begin by selecting the human capital areas and metrics that are material to their sector, size and stakeholders rather than attempting the full set at once; agreeing calculation methods and data sources with HR, finance and IT; establishing data quality, privacy and security controls, which the 2025 edition strengthens; producing internal reports first to test data reliability; and only then moving to external disclosure, ideally structured around the recommended governance / strategy / risks and opportunities / metrics format.

Purpose

To set out requirements and recommendations for internal and external human capital reporting and disclosure, so that organizations can measure and communicate the workforce factors within their control using consistent, comparable metrics aligned with governance expectations.

Key Benefits

• Current 2025 edition replacing the withdrawn ISO 30414:2018
• Internationally agreed metric definitions improving comparability and consistency
• Recommended disclosure format aligned to governance, strategy, risks and opportunities, and metrics
• Coverage extended to human rights, labour relations, productivity, ethics and well-being
• Applicable across for-profit, not-for-profit and non-profit sectors
• Specific recommendations for small and medium-sized enterprises
• Stronger guidance on data collection responsibilities, privacy and security
• Supports the social dimension of sustainability and ESG reporting

Key Requirements

• Determine which human capital areas and metrics are material to the organization
• Apply consistent definitions, drawing on ISO 30400 vocabulary
• Establish data collection processes with defined ownership and calculation methods
• Apply privacy and security controls to workforce data
• Distinguish internal reporting needs from external disclosure needs
• Structure external disclosure around governance, strategy, risks and opportunities, and metrics
• Report metrics covering areas such as human rights, labour relations, ethics and well-being
• Include productivity and performance disclosures appropriate to the sector
• Ensure comparability between reporting periods and transparency about methodology
• Review and improve reporting practice as data quality and stakeholder needs evolve

Who Needs This Standard?

HR and people analytics teams, chief HR officers and governing bodies, sustainability and ESG reporting teams, investor relations and corporate reporting functions, investors and analysts assessing workforce data, and small and medium-sized enterprises beginning structured workforce reporting.

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