They might well be part of teams who spend several hours a week meticulously recording sickness absence, diversity, retention and staff training onto spreadsheets. Yet these ‘pockets’ of data offer little value on their own, even when looking at how a single metric has changed year-on-year.
Different managers could, for instance, have developed their own ways of reporting sickness absence within their teams, making it impossible to spot problems or trends across the organisation with confidence. The value of this data only diminishes further when HR tries to align it against other metrics, such as retention.
We know that high levels of sickness absence can sometimes be a symptom of something else, such as burnout due to heavy workloads or employee disengagement. Without real-time, consistent data, you are unlikely to get to the root cause of a problem nor spot early warning signs. It is, in other words, difficult to reduce absence levels by trying to tackle it in isolation.
The problem of inaccurate and out-of-date data has become so entrenched in some organisations that around 10% of those we polled said that it was their biggest HR challenge.
On top of that, the task of manually collating vast swathes of employee information means staff are not working as efficiently as they could be. We found that just under 30% of HR teams spend 10 or more hours a week on admin and tasks that could be automated, while almost 18% lose seven to 10 hours.
So much progress has been made in recent years to break down data silos across other departments, but it seems, in some organisations at least, that HR is being left behind. Marketing, in particular, has the tools to consolidate customer data from multiple sources – including demographics, social media and website interactions and past purchases – to create a complete profile. It allows them to target each segment with messages most likely to promote a positive action and, importantly, measure ROI.
It is perhaps because of this that HR is now well aware of how they can overcome the problem of poor data. Our research shows that around 43% of professionals believe technology would address the issues surrounding people data, inaccurate/out-of-date information and excessive admin.
Inaccurate and/or out-of-date people data is invariably the result of manual processes, such as double keying information. When your confidence in this data is low, it is difficult to make informed decisions about new programmes, whether they be around health and wellbeing, training and development, rewards or something else.
Those who have invested in HR software, on the other hand, can access the people data they need to develop initiatives that meet the expectations of the workforce. So, when making the business case for investment in technology, look at the role quality data plays in supporting fast and accurate decision-making and delivering a strong ROI.
All this underlines the importance of organisations investing in the tools needed to restore faith in people data and empower HR to make better decisions. When you have that, everything follows from there.
To find out how you can use HR technology to improve your people data, download a free HR software brochure or speak to one of our friendly team to see the software in action for yourself.