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

So how does People Analytics help? HR teams have had the chance to shine over the last 24 months as the whole workforce dynamic has changed in response to the pandemic. HR teams now have an elevated role in today’s businesses, which means increased expectations and a thirst for data to drive decisions to meet the demands from the C-suite. Organizations 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 organization – rather than relying on just intuition. Steven Atkins, Global Analytics Enablement Director at SplashBI, discusses further how People Analytics contribute toward retaining and attracting talent within the year of the Great Resignation’…

How can it help?

Business leaders are even more aware that people are their most important asset. To engage and retain talent, they are now looking to the role of HR in talent management for a deeper understanding of the employee experience. Understanding why people are engaged with what they do, how that translates into business strategy, and how companies can improve to attract, develop, motivate, and retain top talent can transform business. 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 have a comprehensive understanding of the tools and resources available and how to use them to generate relevant strategic workforce insights, as well as the ability 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.

With this in place, People Analytics can be used by HR leaders to develop strategies to improve employee engagement, streamline management processes, assess the effectiveness of employee training programs, and identify areas that warrant investment – all the time aligning to the business objectives and impact the bottom line.

Quality over quantity

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, an organization should have a clear understanding of what it wants HR analytics to accomplish, otherwise HR analysts may simply end up churning out useless numbers and reports.

Identifying the actionable insights that can be gained from analytics requires ‘data translators’, who know how to frame business problems as analytics projects and identify the actionable insights the analytics can provide.

Key to this is data quality. When different parts of an organization use analytic tools in various ways, data from across the organization may not be directly comparable. Being able to automate data collection from multiple sources and have data at your fingertips will lead to a great improvement in the quality of the data and the evidence it brings.

Being able to automate these labour-intensive efforts will speed up your efforts to clean up data anomalies and introduce new data governance procedures, preventing their reoccurrence. Starting with improving the basics will allow your whole organization 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 organizations 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 organization isn’t easy or a transformation that can be made overnight. Rather than integrating into a company suddenly, it’s better to integrate slowly and strategically, so that data becomes ingrained into the companies’ culture, and in turn, the business and its people benefit over time. The challenge will be how quickly HR can reinvent itself as a controlling force to lead, advise and ultimately guide the business on where disruption will occur next and how best to integrate it into ‘business as usual.’