The Key Aspects of HR Analytics

Data is everywhere. And where there is data, there is analytics. Every field has its related analytics attached to it. But what isn’t apparent is that HR is one of the most data-rich and analytics-intensive areas in the corporate world.

So what is HR Analytics?

HR analytics, also known as people analytics, talent analytics, or workforce analytics, deals with analyzing the day-to-day functioning and organization problems.

So, as HR becomes more data-driven and analytics intensive, it becomes crucial for HR leaders to understand the areas they need to consider in HR analytics.

What are the common areas that need to be tracked by managers in HR?

Employee Turnover

This is probably the most basic and the most critical area that needs to be tracked by every HR professional. Hiring employees, training them, and then finally inducting them into the workforce as professionals needs resources. That’s why leaders need to track the churn rate of their organization and compare it with the industry standards.

Understanding employee turnover rates also help HR professionals to predict future exits from the organizations. These insights help avoid a few entries and prepare the organization for the unavoidable ones. Managers can look at previous data, KPIs such as employee engagement level, employee satisfaction scores, and staff advocacy score to identify and minimize employee turnover.

Recruitment Analytics

Recruitment analytics is probably the second most popular HR analytics area after employee turnover. Managers need to identify the channels and places that optimize recruitment. They need to determine and track from where the talents are coming and what worked with the last batch of successful hires and try to do the same.

Recruitment analytics is an offset of employee turnover analytics. A great manager identifying patterns in the recruitment data can decrease the turnover rates of the organization.

Performance Analytics

Every organization needs high performers in their team for their business to grow and thrive. So it becomes extremely important to invest in employee performance analytics to assess individual employee performance.

Managers can identify the top performers and provide assistance or training for the employees who need to up their game. This makes it easier for employees to max out their performance and deliver competitive results.

But focussing on one aspect of a job is usually not desirable for optimum analysis of performance. For example, focus on only the sales numbers. However, it is the most crucial aspect of a sales executive. It might not be the ideal way to get a complete insight into the employees’ performance. Modern data capture techniques make it possible to analyze performance holistically. This is ideal because focussing on a tiny part of a job might lead to employees skewing the results in ways likely to put themselves in the limelight.

Employee Engagement Analytics

This is one of the essential and most difficult areas to measure. Employee engagement is a critical criterion in determining the engagement and productivity of employees in a workforce. Disengaged employees tend to be less productive and tend to bring a few more people down too. So it becomes essential to have proper tools and techniques at your disposal to analyze employee engagement levels properly.

But how do you measure something as subjective as engagement? One of the obvious answers is surveys. But traditional surveys aren’t going to do the job. Traditional surveys tend to be dry, and employees don’t put thought and effort into giving proper feedback through the survey.

What comes to the rescue is the new age pulse surveys. Pulse surveys are quick, frequent, and short survey systems away with complex questions and aim to increase feedback levels. It is usually done weekly or once every few weeks. It gives a proper idea of the health of productivity and engagement in the workforce, thus the name “pulse.”

Having a proper insight into the employee engagement of your workforce can be a crucial differentiating factor when it comes to the success of your organization.

Recommended Article: A Brief Guide On Employee Pulse Surveys

Corporate Culture Analytics

Corporate culture is probably the only area that is more difficult than employee engagement to collect and analyze data. Corporate culture is basically the both the explicit and unspoken rules, systems, procedures, and patterns of behavior in your organization. This subjective nature of its important aspects makes it extremely difficult to collect corporate culture data and analyze them.

One way to assess corporate culture is through the analysis of the formal internal conversation and also the customer service conversations. This provides a great deal of data about corporate culture. One more way is though specialized feedback and the participation of the same. Using unconventional techniques becomes handy in identifying corporate culture data.

Finally

With the advent of big data, it is crucial for leaders and organizations to constantly evolve with the changing times. Matrixes that couldn’t be quantified are being easily measured today and this has changed a lot in the ways an HR leader functions.

Many organizations and leaders are skeptical of how data is going to affect their industry, especially the areas which are qualitative in nature. Its time for us to adjust with the new norm and after all data is here to help not disrupt!

This article is written by Iftekar Ahmed. He works as a Content Creator and Digital Marketer at Vantage Circle. When he is not playing guitar or solving puzzles, he is often seen fussing over foods he can't eat because he is on a perennial dieting spree. For any related queries, contact editor@vantagecircle.com