People Analytics
People analytics can be defined as the deeply data-driven and goal-focused method of studying all people processes, functions, challenges, and opportunities at work to elevate these systems and achieve sustainable business success. People analytics is often referred to as talent analytics or HR Analytics as well. Essentially, gathering and assessing people analytics leads to better decision-making through the application of statistics and other data interpretation techniques. Smarter, more strategic, and data-backed talent decisions are thus closer at hand, and this is applicable throughout the employee lifecycle – from making better hiring decisions and more effective performance management to better retention. People analytics has evolved considerably from when it was first used in organizations in the mid-1900s. There has been a clear transition from prescriptive analytics to predictive analytics, with which organizations can now be better prepared to face the dynamism of their operational environment and be proactive rather than reactive. For example, sophisticated data science, interactive data visualization, and machine learning – all integral parts of people analytics today – were nowhere a part of the process until a few decades ago.
Four Key People Analytics Trends
1. Transforming what HR is and does
Bersin research points out that a meager 2% of HR organizations have mature people analytics competence to bank on. There is thus quite a heavy first-mover advantage for innovative, intelligent organizations that are trying to tap into this space. With people analytics changing how recruitment is conducted, how performance is measured, how compensation is planned or growth is mapped, and how learning and retention can be managed better, people analytics is quickly changing how HR operates. According to recent studies by Deloitte, increasing job offer acceptance rates, reducing HR help tickets, and optimizing compensation are just a few ways in which people analytics is quickly becoming the new currency of HR. Moreover, with HR processes evolving to keep pace with business needs, people analytics is moving from being a one-time initiative to becoming a real-time, easily modifiable tool that HR has immense benefits to draw from.
2. Transforming HR business interactions
With recent trends in the work ecosystem, the interaction between HR and business stakeholders (both internal and external) has been undergoing a transformation as well. People analytics needs to change in keeping with the latest trends in leadership. More transparency is a key trend emerging here, and intelligent insight is the need of the hour. Businesses today need to be able to make sense of seemingly unrelated data streams and find meaning, correlation, and maybe even interdependence between one or more factors to predict and manage work better. People analytics has the potential to provide actionable recommendations to enable strategic planning and execution processes.
3. Transforming the HR-employee relationship
Employee expectations today are consumer-grade. People analytics is providing organizations with the ramp to upgrade the employee experience. Every interaction that a candidate or an employee has with an organization is a data point and could be utilized to glean interesting insights. The idea is the need to transform the relationship that the HR has with employees – to help HR become and be perceived as more than just a support function.
4. Transforming the quality of insights
The quality of insights that are expected on a daily basis has changed over the course of the last couple of years. People analytics can live up to these expectations if you focus on two key aspects: analytics literacy and data security. More employees will need to become analytics literate to decrease dependence on technical staff and to allow more perspectives to flourish. As people analytics becomes a staple at organizations, data integrity and data security will need to be upgraded and maintained for all listening channels and pulse checks. We discussed legal compliance, but data security should ideally go deeper than that and become a cultural trait within the organization rather than being superficial check just for the sake of being compliant.