The Big Question: Do You Have People Data?

Picture this: You’re responsible for employees spanning several offices. Your CEO walks in unexpectedly, greets you warmly and then asks a simple question. "How is New York doing?"

You fidget a moment and try to think of your last conversation with a senior leader from New York. You’re stumped.

This scenario isn’t uncommon. Leaders often struggle to find concrete answers and insight into the performance of a particular geography, department or team. The good news is that with the right tools in place, you’ll get immediate access to “people data” that will give you and your CEO an immediate 360-degree view of your organization.

So how do you start gathering such analytics?

Measure Every Type of Engagement

For years, other departments have been using big data to drive business decisions. Finance, marketing and sales teams (among others) use analytics to uncover opportunities for improvement. Now, HR can finally catch up.

Today, analytics are empowering HR with the same holistic view into employee engagement. Engagement solutions offer visibility into three major areas:

• Performance Management – Organizations that move toward a frequent cadence of performance development get richer data. When conducted faster than traditional annual or even quarterly reviews, you get much better insight into progress toward goals and organizational objectives. Engagement tools also empower goal-setting and coaching so both the employee and manager can collaborate and shift priorities if necessary. The entire process is captured and measured in one place so you have insight into where your organization stands in its movement toward business objectives.

• Recognition & Rewards – It’s common for companies to give service awards or monetary recognition to employees, but there’s little understanding of whether or not those drive engagement – especially if they’re only given annually. Engagement platforms empower peer-to-peer, top-down and external recognition. With everything captured in one place and activity driven by employees themselves, HR and leadership can more easily identify top performing individuals, departments and locations.

• Surveys & Sentiment Tracking – Formal surveys can be both costly and ill-timed if the data is not received, analyzed and acted upon quickly. If surveys are built into the same solution as performance management and recognition tools, it’s easier for employees to participate and give honest, candid feedback. With a nimble and robust solution, organizations can move toward frequent, shorter surveys that measure mood, as well as benchmark surveys and polls that yield rich data and insights into organizational health.

With these three buckets measured in one place, you now have a 360-degree view of your organization’s engagement. You have formal evaluations (performance management). You have mood (surveys and sentiment tracking). You have social collaboration and productivity (recognition and rewards). You also have reports by department, geography, managers and more.

Answering the Big Questions

With all of this information at your fingertips, it's hard not to look forward to our original scenario, where your CEO asks for a status update.

An employee engagement platform like HighGround can provide a dashboard where you immediately see that morale is high, sales is exceeding its goals, and performance reviews are tracking well. You can quickly discuss the impact on retention or recruiting, collaboration growth, and the best practices that are making your organization thrive.

With an employee engagement tool in place, HR is empowered and prepared for whatever that next question might be.

What are you doing to gain insight into your people data and organizational health? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Follow Michael on Twitter: @michaelhcarlson