The Importance of Data - Part 1: Businesses

“Employee data might be your organisation's most underused tool” (Business.com 2022). We know data is a buzz word at the moment and it has become important when it comes to recruitment for both parties - hiring managers and job seekers. This two part blog will address how hiring managers and job seekers can use data to drive success.

Sales has previously been understood as an intuition-driven profession. However, in this day and age of technology, businesses must make sales decisions based on a number of factors, such as: customer trends, competitor activity and changes in the market (Hubspot 2020).?

So how can businesses use data to their advantage?

HIRING MANAGERS:

If you are looking for a high value candidate, you need to be a high value business. What is one way in which you can do this?

When recruiting, you need to understand what it is employees are looking for. Therefore, implementing tools and processes that monitor employee happiness not only shows you care, it also creates new indicators for factors that could impact overall success.?

One thing we do at Pace every quarter is an employee engagement survey which helps management report on feelings surrounding: belonging and unity, general satisfaction at work, improvements, social aspects, training and development as well as our actual roles.?

We use this as an ADDED tool, to our regular weekly reporting which tracks activity and performance. I know this may sound over the top, or like a lot of work, however, looking at the opportunity cost, if you collectively have employees who are happy at work, they are going to naturally perform better than those that aren’t.?

Have you ever seen someone who hates their job or their manager or the business, put in the longer hours to exceed results? Probably not. Happy employees look after the business.?

These processes need to be done regularly to improve the quality and accuracy of your data year on year.?

Failing to track elements such as training quality, employee access to necessary tools to do their job well, workplace happiness and feelings of purpose and belonging can mean poor business performance is being attributed to the wrong factors. In my opinion, if you’re not tracking, you’re not trying!

Not to mention, once you have your data, this directly supports your recruitment strategy.

It is still important of course, to ask candidates you interview what their motivators are, but now you can also share with them your current employees’ ACTUAL feelings and thoughts about the business and their roles.

Stay tuned for part 2 about how job seekers can best use data!?

References:?

https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/data-in-sales?

https://www.business.com/hr-software/employee-data/