Using People Analytics in the Talent Revolution

August 8 2022 - Rising resignations. Hybrid workforces. Diversity in the workplace. Industry leaders are navigating a talent market influx.

So how does People Analytics help? A pandemic has changed the entire workforce dynamic over the last 24 months, giving HR teams the opportunity to shine. HR teams today play a more significant role in businesses, which means they face higher expectations and have a greater thirst for data to make informed decisions to meet the demands of the C-suite. Organisations that have embraced People Analytics have access to valuable insights into understanding their employees and their expectations. From remote workers, to hybrid, and those in office, People Analytics plays a crucial role in the management and development of critical talent.

With the return to the ‘new normal’, HR has a chance to continue to innovate, using data, facts, and insights to guide the organisation = rather than relying on just intuition. Steven Atkins, Global Analytics Enablement Director at SplashBI discussed further how People Analytics contributed to retaining and attracting talent in the year following the Great Resignation.

Enhancing businesses

Business leaders are even more aware that people are their most important asset. They now look to HR in talent management for a deeper understanding of the employee experience in order to engage and retain talent. In order for an organisation to succeed, the key to attracting, developing, motivating, and retaining top talent is to understand why people are involved with what they do, how that translates into business strategy, and what can be done to improve this process. For HR to remain influential, they must understand the causes of workplace issues and pain points, and how to create a positive work environment.

The first step in effectively using analytics is to define the analytics vision. It’s critical to have objectives that align with the business’s goals, otherwise there will be too much data to navigate. Second, ensure HR teams are able to have a data driven discussion based on the evidence they are presenting. In order to drive change, HR departments must understand how to use the tools and resources available and how to use them to generate relevant strategic workforce insights. They should also be able to ask the right questions and communicate findings and metrics to business leaders. It is all about being able to tell the story related to the data.

The People Analytics tool can assist HR leaders in devising employee engagement strategies, streamlining management processes, assessing the effectiveness of employee training, and identifying areas that merit investment - all aligned with business objectives.

Overcoming quantity with quality

The data that HR information systems and digital HR tools generate doesn’t always help to answer the most strategically important HR questions such as employee happiness, productivity and welfare. Furthermore, and especially in a hybrid environment, HR analysts must understand the objectives of HR analytics, otherwise they may simply produce useless reports and statistics.

A 'data translator', who understands how to frame business problems as analytics projects and how analytics can provide actionable insights, is necessary for finding actionable insights from analytics.

Key to this is data quality. When different parts of an organisation use analytic tools in various ways, data from across the organisation may not be directly comparable. A great improvement in the quality of data and evidence will come from automating data collection from multiple sources and having data at your fingertips.

Automating these labour-intensive processes will speed up your efforts to detect and eliminate data anomalies as well as develop new procedures for data governance, preventing recurrences. Starting with improving the basics will allow your whole organisation to go on their data driven journey.

Looking ahead

Making sense of the future of work is presenting a number of challenges = but also a number of opportunities. The more progressive HR functions are already being disruptive and positively challenging themselves and their organisations in response to this.

Knowing how to act on unbiased People Analytics data to guide complex people-related decisions will save companies time and money, ultimately helping them drive business success.

Becoming a data-driven HR organisation isn’t easy or a transformation that can be made overnight. The best way to integrate into a company is to do it slowly and strategically, so that data becomes ingrained into the company's culture and benefits both the company and its employees. Whether HR can reinvent itself as a controlling force capable of guiding, advising, and leading the business on where disruptions are most likely to occur next and how to integrate them into the 'business as usual' model will be the challenge.

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