In the fast-paced work environment of today, internal company decisions must be made with sustainability and efficiency in mind. Especially in business, it is key to be on top of what is happening if one is to maintain a competitive advantage over other companies. When it comes to being strategic about resources, it is of most importance to have a good handle on the internals of the company. Human resources make up the brute force that can make a business flourish or drive it into the ground. Due to various factors, it is not uncommon for employees to have a change of mind and unexpectedly inform you of their leave. This is not a rare occurrence and can become a burden to carry for other colleagues until the position is once again filled. In such situations, efficient HR management can be crucial to keep things running smooth and operational.
The Value of Top Tier Talent
Occurrences such as employees leaving can be analyzed on a company scale, but must also be given context in the larger workings of today’s business world. The hunt for top tier talent is among the most important factors of economic success. Ideally, a boss hires people much smarter than him, tailored to do specific tasks as professionally as possible. Taking into account the hyper-connected world of today, top talent is sought after not just locally, but on an international scale. Such fierce competition forces companies to be on their top game in order to attract and retain excellent workers.
According to a professor of workforce analytics, Mark Huselid, top tier talent is becoming increasingly expensive and more easily lost to competitors. Not only is global talent scouting getting more efficient, but also the mindset of young workers has been reshaping. The younger generation of professionals are becoming very aware and accepting of the fact that their career can be dynamic and global. Loyalty to just one company is becoming a thing of the past. According to a survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, younger employees tend to migrate companies far more rapidly than older professionals. Results showed that people aged 25-34 stay with an employer for an average of 2.8 years, whereas professionals aged 55-64 reported a medium of 10.1 years.
A Conducive Environment for Employees to Flourish
To keep high tier talent interested and attracted to a given company, it is of great importance to understand how to create and sustain an excellent work environment. This can be achieved through the proper use of predictive analytics techniques. By studying the various measurements of employee behavior, productivity, and motivation a company has the chance to act on them and improve. Upon efficient collection of human resource-related data, a coherent report that can be schemed out and used to adjust the many factors that play into keeping employees happy. Fulfilled employees naturally translate to a more efficient and motivated company environment. Let us take a look at what HR data analytics entails, and how your company could benefit from implementing it.
What is HR and People Analytics?
HR and People analytics is the overall study of employee-related data by using various metrics and tools. The main goal of such an endeavor is to optimize the management, quantification, and understanding of information that pertains to optimizing and keeping professional talent. This is achieved by collecting data from inside a given company, or from external sources such as the public domain. The overall goal of these analytics is to optimize the workings of a company and the value fulfillment of its professionals. The data gathered in such types of analytics can also be used to improve the process of recruiting employees best fitted to a vacant position. It is an aid in bettering the efficiency of scouting talent, as well as training them and evaluating their performance statistics.
Descriptive and Predictive Analytics
There are two types of analytics that go into obtaining insights into a company. These are descriptive and predictive analytics. Descriptive analytics focuses mainly on data that has been collected over time, as in historical events and the current circumstances. This data includes information on what Is presently happening in the company, various metrics regarding an employee’s history, their tenure, work efficiency, and overall trends of absence.
Predictive analytics is responsible for forecasting events based on current and previous data that has been collected by HR or smart computer software. It aims to answer the questions of what may happen to a given company in the near and far future to optimize the work environment and overall experience of company staff.
A Better Way to Recruit and Manage Employees
With the power of current technological services, it is possible to have HR investigate a person’s online history in order to predict certain behavioral patterns. This includes forecasting an individual’s inclination to toxic behavior like bullying, harassment, intolerance and the likelihood of various other inappropriate conduct. One of the methods by which such information can be obtained is Fama – a smart tool that employs social screening to obtain data about one’s public online history. It can show recruiters red flags that indicate an individual may be prone to unsavory actions.
Oracle HR analytics is another smart method to predict whether a given candidate might accept a job offer or not. By obtaining such information, an employer can custom tailor a job position to increase the likelihood of a potential candidate accepting an offer. Various things such as added bonuses, job compensations, and other offers can be intelligently used to tilt the recruitment process to be as beneficial as possible for both the candidate and the employer.
Predicting Employee Turnovers with Innovative Technologies
Recent technological advancements allow for an incredible leap in predictive analytics when it comes to analyzing employee turnovers. In an example, by using smart algorithms that take into account up to 200 factors, a workforce analytics company named Experian managed to decrease their global attrition significantly. Experian built a computer-based platform to address and resolve the increased rate of their talent migration. This problem cost them 3 million dollars with every 1% of increased turnovers. The software created to solve the issue analyzed various aspects of employee behavior such as their overall lifestyle, financial habits, and trends in consumption. Having taken into account the attained data, over a span of two years, it ended up saving the company 14 million dollars. Due to the incredible success of its platform, Experian started offering its services to other companies as well.
Steps For Implementing Software Based HR Analytics
Define the Relevant Metrics
Firstly, you must define what you want to achieve by monitoring your workforce. To start using various systems of analytics efficiently, there has to be a definite goal in mind of the company. By formulating the right questions, you will have a clearer vision of what the answers might look like and what metrics need to be taken into account to provide specific results. Once the metrics are settled upon, specify their values, method of calculation, the source these need to be measured from, and the frequency of measurement.
In order for custom reports of analytic data to be efficient, a given computer program will need to learn precisely what to calculate. Overall metrics must be specified to data that is legally and morally acceptable to measure. Examples of metrics that measure workforce efficiency could be things such as commute time, tenure, posts on social media, overtime hours, work chat messages, vacation days used, the regularity of absence, and so on. Such measurement classification will define what a given program needs to look out for and what capabilities it can provide in the future.
Establish Sources for the Specified Metrics
Once you know what metrics you are looking for, the following step is to establish where they will be obtained from. In a large part, this will most likely be company software that is used by employees regularly, such as training systems, skill-testing software, efficiency tracking software, social media, e-mails, google and excel files, and so on. In case you are going to collect social media data of your employees, make sure to have a right for the proper, legal access to them.
Choose Your Operational Platform
Once you have defined the required metrics and sources where these need to be coming from, you will need to pick a system that will automate the process. Here you can take two routes. Either you can go with a pre-made solution or build a custom-tailored system that suits your needs.
Pre-Built
Pre-built solutions for HR analytic platforms come fully functional and can save you a lot of nitty-gritty problems. They mostly have inbuilt systems for tracking employee engagement, benefits management, onboarding, and recruitment. Popular solutions to look at would be Gust, Namely, and Cezanne HR to name a few.
If you would like to take it one step further, there are online solutions that promise to provide the benefits of AI in the assessment, scouting, and recruiting of employees. Such platforms will provide you with additional benefits of virtual assistants that can help in the organization of company meetings, scheduling of individual employee interviews, and more. Popular choices to look at include IBM, SAP, and Ideal.
Custom
In case you have specific needs for your platform and need custom analytic reports tailored to your company, you will need to hire a team of developers to create the platform. Custom operations are generally fairly complex and take significant time and money, however you can make it suit your needs to the fullest. In case you think that you may need a custom-tailored HR analytics platform, it is wise to hire a development assistant to get an overview of what the process entails. In custom solutions, it is generally known that system security is of utmost importance and can not be overlooked in the stages of development.
Set up an infrastructure
In order to reap the results of the many stages that go into HR analytics, you must create a worthy funnel to collect the data. In other words, you need to make sure that all the collected information is stored efficiently to allows for easy analysis and reporting. This will include establishing a data integration tool and a place for data to be stored, such as online servers or physical hard-drives.
Make a UI
The last step in the process is to make sure people with no data engineering knowledge can easily access and understand the reports that the systems produce. This step may include funneling data into visual charts and interfaces that simplify the gathered data into workable and effortlessly understandable terms. If you opt for a pre-built HR analytics platform, it is likely that such an option will be included.
All in all, In the current business climate it is clear to see that companies must use what they can to try and work as efficiently and sustainably as possible. To any human operations manager, analytics which is simplified and workable can make a world of a difference when it comes to great decision making. Innovative HR analytics solutions provide exactly that. Bringing trusted software solutions to your business may just be what gives your company an update that propels it to the next level of success.
If you have any experience with the implementation of HR analytics, we would love to hear your opinion on the matter. We would highly appreciate it if you tell us what you learned along the way and whether it has helped you achieve an improved work environment. Please leave your comments below!
