The answer is surprisingly simple; forward-thinking organisations have a vision, a plan to become more than they are today, both in size and in profitability. But who will deliver this vision and how will they do this? The answer, as ever, is people, from the employee driving the van, answering the phone or delivering our solution, to the manager ensuring that their project will be delivered on time and so on, all the way up to the CEO. At every point in this chain we need the right number of people, with the right skills, making decisions that ensure that the vision will be delivered. A vision may well be the future, but the future starts today and every action we take today has the ability to move us closer to, or further from, the vision.
HR Analytics for decision making
HR workforce analytics inform what workforce is needed to deliver the future. Having the right people on board is vital for growth and success so once we know what our vision is, HR can provide the necessary information to turn the vision into an organisational structure with headcounts and skills profiles. We can then put in place measures to deliver that workforce, and here HR analytics are absolutely paramount in importance, but only if they are relevant.
Making HR analytics relevant
I think this is the crux of the issue, modern systems make data so much more available than ever before. But just because data is available does not make it useful.
The issue of irrelevant data has greatly increased in recent years with the advent of Dashboards, huge white spaces crying out to be filled, and fill them we do, with charts, graphs, listings etc. But how many HR dashboards and reports exist simply to inform us of headcounts, no’s of leavers, days lost through sickness etc? Whilst headcount may be of interest, what is more useful is understanding what the headcount needs to be in, say, 12 months and the factors that will influence our ability to deliver this.
So let’s replace data with KPIs, focusing, for example, not on numbers of leavers but on Monthly Turnover Rate (No. of employees left in mth/avge number of emps in mth x 100). Add in the findings from Forbes ‘People leave Managers not Companies’ and let’s change this to Monthly Turnover Rate by Manager. Now we have data that clearly identifies where we may have issues with employee retention in the organisation.
Another essential factor is talent acquisition and retention. The effectiveness of our hiring policy and onboarding software can be assessed by analysing the percentage of new hires leaving within the first six months. Employee engagement can be measured using Net Promoter Scores applied to the responses to surveys.
Driving strategic value
These metrics can all then be addressed by an HR department that is no longer spending it’s time simply creating and reporting on data but is now informing and driving the delivery of the company vision.
These are just a few examples of how HR analytics can be used to deliver meaningful insight but there are many others. Analytics in HR is a very good source of ideas if you are interested. Analytics exist across all areas of HR, recruitment, onboarding, performance management, employee engagement, staff training and development etc. If we apply KPIs to these areas and present them back to the organisation, that future skilled workforce is going to become a reality and at a much lower cost.