HR Analytics

What is HR analytics?

?Human resources analytics is a field that deals with analysing employee data and applying analytical processes within HR.

?Gartner ?defines this technique, also known as HR Analytics as the collection and analysis of a company’s employee data to improve performance and business results.??

?This allows the organisation to measure the impact of a set of HR metrics, such as the time-to-hire or retention rate, on the commercial objectives.

The benefits of HR analytics

?HR analytics can help an organisation’s management process data that they were previously unaware of, implement new measures and, in general, make better business decisions.

?Improve employee retention:?analysing certain metrics and obtaining a deeper understanding of employee opinion through staff satisfaction surveys, can provide many clues as to why workers decide to leave a company voluntarily. This can help us put certain preventative measures in place to try to lower the leaving rate.?Nielsen?managed to retain 40% of its “flight risk” employees and increase the chances of employees staying with the company by 48%.?

Increase worker output:?thanks to data, team leaders and the HR department can find out what motivates the staff and identify what is stopping them from reaching their full potential. It’s a case of going one step further than the performance review to detect patterns and design an improvement plan.?

Help create better remuneration and incentive programs: a detailed data analysis can reveal if the benefits the company is offering translate into better performance or increased retention. They can even tell us, for example, if wage increases make little difference to certain groups (which can save the organisation a lot of money).

Improve employee engagement:?with data we can find out how people are feeling and adapt workspaces to create a pleasant experience for individuals.

Facilitate HR planning:?predictive HR analytics lets us make fairly accurate projections on staff fluctuations. If we can estimate when critical roles will be leaving, we will be more prepared to intervene. In the same way, it will be much easier to identify staff excesses or shortages in a specific area.

Cost savings:?clear, objective information lets us make better decisions and undertake practical actions, impacting in turn on company finances.?

The process of an HR analytics project?:

?If you want to get results you can use, the HR analytics process should be approached meticulously, following a series of steps.??

?1. Identification of the problems to be resolved:?the starting point must always be the company’s requirements or the questions they want the data to answer.

?2. Design the investigation:?the next step involves deciding how we will extract these data, from where, and what analytics we want to explore.?

?3. Data identification:?we need to find reliable data sources that give us the information we need for our research.?

?4. Advanced statistics:?we can calculate the metrics we want using statistical formulae.

?5. Automation:?the last step involves automating the whole process, from extraction to data calculation.?

How to implement HR analytics in your department?

?If you want to start using data to derive information and improve your organisation’s performance, you can introduce HR analytics into your department by following these steps:?

?1. Make a plan

?Identify the company’s requirements or commercial objectives to determine how analytics can help improve these aspects.

?It is important to identify which metrics can provide valuable information, so you achieve the results you want and harness the strategic weight of HR within the organisation.

?2. Involve a data scientist

?Data scientists have the required expertise to evaluate and find the best analysis solution. They can help monitor the quality and accuracy of the data and support HR professionals to use them in the most beneficial way. Moreover, they can provide training for the team involved so they have a better understanding of the process.

?3. Start slow

?Establishing a data culture in a company is not an easy task. Neither is persuading all parties to see the business value of analytics. Therefore, start slowly with small projects. You can see these as “quick wins”, that generate tangible short-term results that also have a significant impact on the organisation.?

?4. Guarantee compliance with data protection laws?

?Get up to speed on the legal situation regarding data protection and avoid issues with your employees’ privacy. In this aspect, it is also essential to be transparent about how the company will collect and use the data. If you think it is necessary, consult a legal expert to help you comply with the current legislation.

?5. Use HR analytics software

?The best way to coordinate HR analytics is via custom software which simplifies, consolidates and automates the processes. In this way, the team responsible only has to focus on analysing and interpreting the information. The tool takes care of extracting and visualising the data.