Whether you’ve immersed yourself in a career around business or not, you would have heard or learnt, that the dynamics of HR Management are in a constant state of change. It could be from your fellow friends in business or through just a casual talk (you’d be surprised that these types of topics get brought up in a conversation!). These changes to HR Management have also created other advancements in HR software and HRIS – both time and effort savers.
HR Management is all about making relationships. Relationships with employees. Relationships with employers. The shift however, is now upon using people analytics to measure and gain isight into what truly matters and, how to move it.
What is People Analytics?
Think of people analytics as “evidence-based decision making”. Other terms or sayings that you can use to describe people analytics can be:
- Data driven decision making
- Fact based decision making
From those terms above we can gather that it’s about people (employees or employers) making decisions based upon data or proven facts. These decisions are of course none other than decisions for people management. Other areas that decision making will be needed can be in all types of management or business decisions – not just HR!
What facts or data does to decision making is allowing it to be more accurate. In other words, the actions or changes to be made with people management (or other business management functions) is recommended and supported by evidence.
Think of it this way, if you’re going to propose a new idea or action that should be implemented in your company you would suggest it to the rest of the team with supported facts or data right? You’d most likely display in on a chart using some statistics of some sort. That right there is decision making driven by data analytics. In other words, data-based decision making.
So why should we look towards People Analytics?
Now that we can see a clear line of why people analytics is needed, let’s delve deeper into other reasons why people analytics should be sought after:
1. It allows employees to be innovative
How this happens is by giving employees data. When you’re asking them to work on something or to produce a new idea; data provided to them will be a stepping stone to support their work. In cases like these, think of data as resources – it’ll give them more to work with.
2. Enables employee retention forecasting
Creating data can be in line with employee retention. What I mean by this is we can now create algorithms to work out what makes employees stay and what doesn’t. When we’ve forecasted data that represents each, we can decide accurately to create or implement activities to prevent turnovers and keep retention.
3. Helps pinpoint the root causes of problems
People analytics has allowed for the root cause of problems to be identified. Problems with diversity in a company for example can be narrowed down with analytics. With this information, we can use it to devise and implement strategies to avoid it. In other words, we can improve many areas of business where we can identify the faults of problems.
4. Helps identify the value of top performers
Each employee as we all know it has their own set of abilities. Of course, some will be better performers than others in certain areas. The problem with how companies are identifying top performers at the moment is their productivity. High productivity is of course important but what’s more important is the value the employee gives the company. With analytics data as evidence to support the most valuable employees will help you see fit in proving it in activities to hire, retain and develop future employees.
5. Reveals what makes a great leader
Data has allowed us to see what qualities employees rank as great leaders. What this data can be used as a result is to let current or future leaders understand to evolve and adopt these characteristics. This type of analytics data really lets managers make personal decisions about themselves – decisions of personal development per se.
The main pivotal point in people analytics is that it allows for decisions to be made for the overall business – whether it be functions in HR, marketing, finance or executive level – that has been recommended to be made in the data itself. In saying so, data is an influential factor in decision making.
People analytics together with other changes in HR (such as HR software and HRIS) has captured HR management as a function to be carried out more effectively. It’s enabled for precise decisions supported by evidence to be made and agreed by with the whole executive team. These decisions of course are the base reason as to what will make the company grow.
We are all susceptible to doubt in nature (believe it or not – just ask yourself; does drinking 8 glasses of water a day make you healthy?). What really relieves our doubts is proof or evidence. If we apply this same notion with business by looking towards people analytics, we really relieve our doubts in our decisions as leaders and innovators.