7 Ways To Use People Analytics To Build a Stronger, More Productive Organization

People analytics stands at the core of optimizing production and talent management in the workplace today. Some years ago, there wasn't as much data as today. Hence, the opportunity to use data to create a better workflow, hire and retain the best talents, or even understand organizational productivity was absent.

Today, the narrative is different; the avalanche of data available makes it possible to predict both employee and organizational performance, or at least determine how best to deploy organizational resources.

When used correctly, people analytics has the potential to help organizations in many ways. Here are seven:

According to Ere, there are seven pillars of people analytics that, when rightly applied, help business leaders and HR managers use data from multiple streams to drive better business results and create lasting impacts on their organization's progress. These are called the seven pillars of people analytics:

• Workforce planning

• Talent Sourcing

• Talent Acquisition

• Onboarding Culture Fit and Engagement

• Performance Management and Employee Lifetime Value

• Talent Retention

• Employee Wellness and Well-being

According to results gathered by Ere, these pillars can effectively serve as a framework that any organization can use to build a robust talent management system. In this post, we’ll walk through how each of them works.

Workforce Planning Analytics

Workforce planning involves using data from different streams across the organization to make informed decisions. In people or HR analytics, workforce planning refers to data to determine the best candidates for specific positions and identify the right mix of skills that fit best into that particular position.

With workforce planning, you can seamlessly determine which employees are likely to stay longer with the organization and which ones might leave soon.

You can determine your company’s areas of workforce needs, ranging from current vacancies to future talent management needs and even succession planning. Workforce planning asks questions about your organization's workforce needs using analytics tools.

Questions you should be able to answer with workforce planning analytics include:

• How do our current employees' skills and experience fit into future plans?

• What are our time-to-hire and cost-per-hire benchmarks?

• What is our ideal employee profile?

• How do we identify and assess succession risks?

• What is our voluntary and involuntary turnover rate?

• What are the skills and experience of our current employees?

• How do our current employees' skills and experience fit into future plans?

• What are the skills and experience of our current employees?

• How do our current employees' skills and experience fit into future plans?

• What are our time-to-hire and cost-per-hire benchmarks?

• What is our ideal employee profile?

• How do we identify and assess succession risks?

• What is our voluntary and involuntary turnover rate?

• What are the skills and experience of our current employees?
  

Workforce planning analytics answers these questions by:

• Identifying organizational talent needs

• Assessing the skills, experience, and abilities of your current workforce

• Evaluating internal talent against future plans

• Forecasting future talent needs

• Building a case for hiring or training investments

• Creating a plan to address potential skills gaps
  

Talent Sourcing Analytics

Still based on optimizing talent acquisition, talent sourcing analytics help HR managers harness available data and information to optimize sourcing results.

Previously, job candidates could simply walk into an organization and submit a well-worded resume. Fast-forward to today, job applications, screening, and interviews have all gone digital.

Employers, too, must up their game in searching for the right talent. Talent sourcing analytics is all about using data to optimize sourcing results.

Talent sourcing analytics has two main objectives: shortening the time-to-hire and reducing the cost-per-hire. The goal is to identify, attract, and hire the best talent as quickly and efficiently as possible while spending as little money as possible.

To achieve these goals, talent sourcing analytics uses data from different sources such as job boards, social media platforms, resume databases, and even the organization's career website. This data is then analyzed to help find the most qualified candidates for specific positions.

Some of the questions that talent analytics can answer include:

• Which channels generate the most leads?

• What's our candidate conversion rate by channel?

• What's our average time-to-hire?

• What's our cost-per-hire?

• Which channels are the most efficient in terms of time and cost?

By answering these questions, talent sourcing analytics can help optimize an organization's people sourcing strategies, resulting in a shorter time-to-hire and reduced cost-per-hire.

Talent Acquisition Analytics

Choosing the wrong candidates can negatively impact your productivity and the rest of your workforce. Therefore, making the right choices when choosing employees for specific roles in the organization is crucial. This is true whether you operate a small or large organization.

Acquisition analytics integrates artificial intelligence into the selection process, helping you weed out unsuitable talent and picking out the ones to schedule an interview with.

With this, you can also analyze the correlation between a candidate’s performance during interviews and what their performance would be in a particular role.

In a nutshell, talent acquisition analytics uses data to make better decisions when hiring employees. By analyzing data from different sources, organizations can identify patterns and trends to help them make more informed hiring decisions.

Some of the questions that talent acquisition analytics can answer include:

• What are our top-performing employees like?

• What are our most common job openings?

• Which channels generate the most qualified candidates?

• What's our candidate conversion rate by channel?

• What's our time-to-hire?

• What's our cost-per-hire?

• Which channels are the most efficient in terms of time and cost?

By answering these questions, talent acquisition analytics can help organizations make more informed hiring decisions, resulting in a more productive workforce.

Onboarding and Engagement Analytics

Do you have a budget for talent onboarding? Are you concerned about employees' impression of your organization while they’re being onboarded? Do you have all the tools and resources to facilitate a seamless onboarding process?

New hires will look forward to the best experience as they join your company. Onboarding analytics help HR ensure that new hires have the best experience.

It plays a role in addressing the training, mentoring, and coaching needs of the new hire and in introducing them to the company’s core values, vision, and workplace culture. Essentially, HR can use this to address all onboarding needs and concerns of new employees.

Engagement analytics, on the other hand, is crucial for creating a fulfilling environment for employees, whether they're new or old. It is a continuous process aimed at improving employee performance in their roles and customers’ expectations.

This means that you want to keep an eye on the engagement level of your employees. Are they enthusiastic, motivated, or laid back and unchallenged? Keep in mind that employee satisfaction plays a significant role in boosting productivity.

When combined, these two types of analytics can help create a productive and engaged workforce.

Employee Lifetime Value and Performance Management Analytics

Performance management analytics plays a critical role in employee management. Employers can access employees’ performance regularly and provide timely feedback aimed at helping them improve their performance and delivery on the job. Leading companies and enterprises leverage analytics to enhance productivity and customer satisfaction.

HR can also calculate the lifetime value of an employee in a specific role, similar to how a customer's lifetime value is calculated. Understanding your employees’ lifetime value helps you optimize their performance.

The same applies to independent contractors and ad-hoc employees. Generally, employers can use this strategy to improve employee retention.

Organizations focusing on performance management and employee lifetime value are usually more productive. After all, they know how to get the most out of their workforce.

Talent Retention and Attrition Analytics

This involves using data gathered from employee attrition and surveys to address and improve employee retention strategies. It asks questions like ‘Why are employees leaving?’, ‘When are they most likely to leave?’, ‘Who are the top performers at high risk of quitting?’, and ‘What could be done to improve the company’s employee retention capacity?’

All of this involves carefully collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data — all of which leads to improved employee retention.

To summarize, talent retention analytics is a data-driven approach to talent management. By understanding what makes your employees stay, you can keep them longer and improve your organization's productivity in the process.

Employee Wellness, Health, and Safety Analytics

Crucial to the success of every organization is the level of its focus on the health, well-being, and safety of employees. Employers must allocate resources, including benefits, to support employees, especially the top-performing ones.

Employee wellness analytics addresses how benefits will help to boost employee performance. Employee wellness programs impact workers' productivity. It also investigates the impact of employee satisfaction on customer satisfaction and the company’s retention and acquisition metrics.

This analytics approach is not just concerned with the number of days an employee takes off. Instead, it focuses on understanding and measuring employees' health, well-being, and safety while on the job. Organizations that prioritize employee wellness usually have a higher level of productivity.

About Mission

At Mission, we look forward to using our HR and analytics insights and expert guidance to help businesses like yours improve their business results by sourcing, training, and retaining the best employees.

Also, as leading partners in the PEO, HR, payroll, and benefits outsourcing marketplace, we provide result-oriented services for small and medium-sized organizations and government contractors, serving as a trusted partner in integrated human resource compliance, risk management, employee benefits, employment practices liability insurance (EPLI), and payroll processing.