Are You Missing out on the Benefits of HR Analytics?

Financial advisors and marketing managers track key analytics and data to make informed business decisions, and ultimately move their company forward.

While the use of analytics is common for such roles, HR professionals are also jumping on the analytics bandwagon in recent years. Leading companies have been investing resources and time into data management for years; HR has not yet used these insights to their full potential.

Today, there is a wealth of insights for HR professionals to unlock.

Surprisingly, not every organization’s HR department will explore the potential of analytics. In fact, Deloitte finds only 26% of HR professionals report using analytics and data. The wide range of data and the challenges that come with analyzing it means most HR teams won’t take advantage of the resource.

How can HR teams decide which analytics matter? Once they narrow it down, how can HR teams use analytics to their advantage?

Understanding common analytics types

On the topic of HR data, people analytics usually comes to mind first. In its simplest form, people analytics is the application of employee insights and data to people management and decision-making. With people analytics, insights can be broad and specific. For example, you can look at demographics, skills, and education at the same time.

These analytics allow HR professionals to identify trends in their workforce behaviour and performance, then make informed decisions about their organization. Analytics like these fall under the HR umbrella, which revolves around data like people, programme, and performance analytics.

Let’s break analytics down into clear categories.

People Analytics: People analytics involve data elements such as demographics, skills, and engagement.

Programme Analytics: Data can include absenteeism, participation in training and development initiatives, talent management, leadership programmes, and so on.

Performance Analytics: Performance analytics views data such as talent assessment, achievements and goal attainment, onboarding programmes, and more.

So now that we understand common types of analytics, what’s next?

Determining which analytics matter most

Companies use analytics to extract in-depth insights into the health of their businesses.In turn, HR teams grow more adaptive, agile, and proactive. For example, 69% of companies either already have or are implementing a people analytics approach. Other studies reveal that 69% of companies with 10,000 or more employees have a proactive people analytics team.

LinkedIn discovered that 45% of large companies and 51% of mid-size companies are increasing their spending on HR technology and analytics.

Given that 58% of executives feel having better insight into talent could improve profitability, and 60% say it could help improve revenue per employee — these statistics are compelling.

But how are these companies determining which analytics they need to focus on to drive success?

The first step is to identify your organizational objectives, then answer any lingering  questions to meet those objectives

Consider your existing objectives and pain points. You may have questions like…

• Which areas of our organization’s practices or operations could use improvement?
• What’s hurting our company the most right now (internally or externally)?
• Which teams or departments require assistance?
• Do we risk losing our top talent, and why?
• How does our compensation model connect to our employees’ engagement and performance levels?

The next step: collecting the data

Often, this step is where HR teams stumble.

Collecting data and assessing it is difficult, because of all the tools and applications HR must juggle in between.

You may feel compelled to create a ‘warehouse’ or ‘database’ for all your analytical resources, but storing them can become difficult to organize, costly to maintain, and time-consuming to analyze.

Implementing focused solutions with valuable and actionable information is a better investment of time and resources.

Within the Kudos® application, we developed an in-depth analytics dashboard that provides HR teams with easy access to the insights they need.

Now, you can answer your most pressing questions

Comprehensive data leads to comprehensive solutions. Get specific; use the analytics data to answer your questions in detail.

Then, share the results with leadership and fellow HR professionals

Leadership must know where improvements can be made, so they can make better decisions on everyone’s behalf.

On that note...

Remember to involve leadership

More organizations are using analytics to better approach talent recruitment and retention. With analytics, they have a deeper understanding of what keeps prospective employees invested in their organization. 71% of companies see analytics and data management as a high priority.

Insights and analytics can and will continue to provide HR with valuable information they need to make strategic decisions. But without leadership buy-in, analytics are fruitless. Leadership has to support the employment of analytics, just as they do for engagement or recognition.

Deloitte finds that 21% of HR executives feel HR technology and analytics were one of the top three challenges their organizations faced before 2019.

Interestingly, while analytics is one of the most sought after skills by HR professionals, only 7% of companies feel their organization has sufficient people analytics and data skills .

It’s evident that HR professionals want to learn how to proactively use analytics; they simply need the support and tools to do so.

The landscape of both HR and the global workforce is changing drastically; four generations coexist in the workplace, and remote and contract work is dominating the mainstream workforce. By bridging the gap between analytics and HR, organizations will see a significant turnaround.

You might be missing out on the benefits of analytics

Mainly, HR teams prioritize recruitment and retention.

Both are no easy feat, especially given the many factors impacting successful recruitment, onboarding, and retention.

It’s so important to retain talent, and HR professionals carry this weight on their shoulders.

Employee compensation typically represents up to 80% of an organization’s budget, which means high attrition and turnover rates present a key problem and significant cost. HR is left to solve these problems; fortunately, analytics is a great tool to mitigate them.

McKinsey finds that harnessing analytics as part of key decision making, causes up to an 80% increase in recruiting efficiency, paired with a 25% rise in business productivity and a 50% decrease in attrition rates. Clearly, analytics is key for any retention strategy.

17% of HR professionals who use analytics and data to address retention, culture, and diversity in the workplace also have backgrounds in market research and analytics.

Organizations that have an advanced capability in people analytics benefit from 30% higher stock prices, 56% higher profit margins, and a 79% higher return on equity. Not to mention, they financially outperform their peers.

It’s fair to say – analytics can be both a driver of retention and growth, and a critical tool for HR teams. Those same teams can use data collected from analytics to see if their existing strategies are effective, and find patterns that impact the organization’s business processes.

Analytics as a tool isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon. In fact, it is only continuing to evolve as HR further embraces it.