Take a minute to think about how you make some of your everyday decisions. 2 When you’re deciding what to wear, you might check the weather forecast to decide between a raincoat or a pair of shorts. When you’re planning a journey, you might check the traffic to pick which route you’re going to take. Even when you go out to eat, you’ll probably look at a restaurant’s reviews to decide where to go. What do all these things have in common? Analysing data to make a good decision. That’s where HR analytics comes in – it helps you make great business decisions
I’ve written this guide as an introduction to HR analytics. Let’s dive straight in…
Where do you start?
Well, simply put, to get your answers you need to ask the right questions. But before you do that, you need to make sure you’re collecting the right data in the first place. A lot of this information will come from standard HR practices. Things like keeping absence records, annual engagement surveys, and performance data all help. And when you record all this data, you’re able to track the relationships between people’s abilities and organisational outcomes. Then you start to ask the right questions - and they should be based on things your HR department can have an impact on. Keep it simple to ease yourself in.
Perhaps you could look at which employees have the most potential for progression. Maybe you want to look at how engagement impacts absenteeism. Next, you need to select the right data from different systems. You’ll need to clean that data - that means removing old data, incomplete data, or duplicated data - before you analyse it. It’s worth noting that not all insights will be valuable or even very interesting. But the key is to ask the right questions if you want actionable insights. And the right questions can lead to outcomes you can have an influence over. If it all feels a bit overwhelming to start with, I can help, so don’t hesitate to get in touch.
How can HR analytics help the wider business?
HR analytics allows your HR department to become a strategic partner, on top of everything else they do. It makes it easier to align your HR strategy with your business goals, taking away the guesswork and really adding more value to the wider business. When you do it right, you can measure the impact of your HR on your bottom-line, often by looking at your return on investment (ROI). How valuable would that be? There are several factors you can analyse to find what will give you the highest impact and the quickest wins…
Costs:
Employee turnover
Absenteeism
Policy effectiveness
Revenue
Recruitment
Engagement / Performance
Learning & Development
Diversity
These are all your people-related drivers of business performance. If you can analyse these, it enables you to spot trends, see where you’re doing well, and crucially, what needs to change and improve. Of course, when you make those changes, in theory, you should boost engagement, productivity, retention, skills, diversity… the list goes on. And what does that lead to? Increased turnover.
Are you ready to get started with HR analytics? If this guide has inspired you to get started, what are you waiting for? And if it’s left you with more questions or you’d like some assistance getting started, get in touch. We would be happy to help,
Simply contact our team:
0208 398 6599
Download the guide here:
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