Next in our top 10 HR trends in 2022 is the subject of people analytics.
Data, data everywhere but where do I start?
Do you ever feel like you collect a lot of data whether it be a survey, a focus group, an interview, a performance review, or benchmarking activity and are not sure how you can turn this information into useful insights that will help you to make a change or keep up with the competition?
People analytics is here to help!
In a factsheet published in May 2021; CIPD spoke about the importance of people analytics in an organisation’s success.
People analytics (which is also known as HR or workforce analytics) is quite simply, as stated in the factsheet, about getting and analysing data about people in the workforce.
People data is valuable as it enables an organisation to use insights to contribute to a strategy by which to drive change. It uses descriptive, visual, and statistical methods to interpret the data.
The factsheet sets out five reasons for using people analytics:
1 – It can be used to measure a workforce, for internal and external stakeholders in a range of areas such as performance, wellbeing, inclusion & diversity.
2 – It enables more effective, evidence-based decisions for improving workforce and organisational performance.
3 – It can demonstrate the impact of HR policies and processes on workforce and organisational performance.
4 – It can be used to estimate the financial and social return on investment of change initiatives.
5 – Analytics and creating value is a core knowledge element in the CIPD profession map.
People analytics can also enhance employee morale through the measurement of employee experience and drivers of employee engagement and improving retention, which as we know, is a key hot topic in the field of HR.
There are a number of maturity levers of people analytics capability in an organisation which ranges from Level 1 to Level 3. Level 1 being descriptive data which covers things like absence and annual leave, attrition, and recruitment rates. This data is a snapshot point in time or trend data. Level 3 is prescriptive analytics which uses the results of descriptive and predictive analytics to recommend options.
This data can be in the form of:
Quantitative – data that can be described in numbers i.e., the number of employees or average age and salary range.
Qualitative – this describes the qualities observed by someone and is subjective. Useful for understanding what, why and how of something.
Correlation – this is when two or more things that happen around the same time that might be associated with each other i.e., linking together employee perceptions of social community and work engagement. This cannot prove that the perceptions may result in high engagement but that there is a link between them.
Causation – when something happens as a result of something else i.e., people that have school age children will take more leave during school holidays. To prove causation data will need to be analysed from different points in time i.e.,during term time.
Once you have your data, there are a number of people analytic tools that are useful – some of the most popular ones being:
Tableau – this is a data visualisation tool which allows you to pull data from various sources to create real-time dashboards and visuals.
Visier – This tool allows organisations to understand everything about their people across the employee life cycle.
Power BI – another data visualisation tool which is part of the Microsoft suite.
R – software for statistical compiling and graphics which can be linked with other tools.
For an organisation to be successful today and in the future, it is essential to ensure that people analytics are present in every part of the business
Here are a couple of case studies who have successfully used people analytics:
Uber – Uber used people analytics to help drive employee engagement and improve their business outcomes. They did this by giving their people managers access to the data they needed. They empowered the managers to come up with solutions together with HR. They asked the leaders what they needed and designed their people analytics solutions around that. They optimised their data dashboards to provide clear insights into a specific question. By removing unnecessary information, it made it simple for people to interpret. By having real time, useable data at their fingertips they were able to make decisions and improve effectiveness.
Microsoft – Microsoft being a tech company Microsoft were able to create and launch a tool called “Manager hub”. This is a one stop place for managers to get information. The platform also gives suggestions for managers to take specific actions.
So, how can you start to build people analytic capabilities in your organisation?
For me this should begin by defining your people analytics strategy. This should be aligned with your business strategy so that you can understand what insights you want to know.
Ere suggests that there are 7 pillars of people analytics and that these can be used as the building blocks to enable people analytics capabilities in the workplace:
- Workforce planning analytics
- Talent sourcing analytics
- Talent acquisition/hiring analytics
- Onboarding & engagement analytics
- Employee lifetime value & performance management analytics
- Talent attrition & retention analytics
- Employee wellness and health and safety analytics
Once you have built the strategy you should undertake an exercise to understand your team’s capabilities and begin to fill where there are gaps. These skills should include:
Data governance and architecture
Data science
Behavioural science
Business acumen
Change management
Having a people analytics function in your organisation is going to be part of the key to success as you will be able to:
- Get data that will enable real-time decisions
- Predict employee turnover
- Predict future talent and what it will look like
- Use AI to match people in the organisation to the right role
- Make every moment on the employee lifecycle matter by understanding employee experience and measuring employee engagement
- Save people managers time to enable them to work smarter by clearing the fog of data and providing them with what they need.
@Karen
