Your company has its unique difficulties to face, but there is one challenge we all share—our people.
Their work environment, home life, and the people around them shape their attitudes and actions. Each success or failure, on or off work, can change them.
When those factors affect their work, they impact your business—anything you can do to manage those challenges matters to your success.
You will face workforce issues throughout the employee lifecycle and your company journey. People analytics can give you the knowledge and tools to meet those challenges.
Use People Analytics to Drive Your Workplace Strategy
People analytics can help you become proactive in managing your workforce.
Most HR software vendors now provide commonly used analytics. There are also many skilled practitioners to help you identify, predict, and preempt influences to help your people become more productive.
If we were to give you only one thought to help you improve your operations with people analytics, it would be this:
Every successful people analytics project
starts with a critical business need.
If you are still unsure how to start in analytics, we’ve given you ten specific use cases for people analytics, each driven by a business need.
We invite you to read our ten cases and solutions to see where you can start your people analytics journey.
1. You want a smooth, efficient hiring process.
The longer a position remains vacant, the more it costs in lost productivity. Metrics such as time-to-hire, cost-to-hire, and new hire turnover will tell you how your recruiting process is performing.
If you want to attract high-performing people that stay long-term, you can use assessment data to identify the right attributes to look for in candidates. You can also gather data and feedback on your onboarding and training processes to reduce new hire turnover.
2. You want to maximize the return on your training investment.
To measure the impact of learning, you will want to connect learning to business outcomes. You can measure which courses or types of learning drive higher performance.
Metrics in your toolkit will include:
- Learning effectiveness: effect on performance. (What moved? By how much?)
- Training expenses per employee: Total costs / FTE equivalent.
- Learning efficiency: Impact / costs.
3. You want to maximize productivity.
Do you know your average revenue per employee?
You should. It measures your workforce efficiency.
The more productive your organization is, the less likely you are to experience losses and the more likely to increase profits, create a positive organizational culture, and increase retention.
4. You want to get a handle on employee absenteeism.
Absenteeism costs US companies $84 billion a year—an average of $560 per employee. You’ll want to keep a close eye on absenteeism and get a clear idea of its fiscal impact.
People analytics will help pinpoint absenteeism problems and determine the most effective interventions. Absenteeism is preventable, and it may result from more profound issues, like a conflict with supervisors.
Regular engagement and well-being surveys will help identify causes and eventually predict their occurrence.
5. You want a safer workplace.
A safer workplace prevents employee injury and saves companies the associated costs.
In the US, work injury costs exceed $170 billion a year. Most of these accidents are preventable. Monitor and analyze safety and incident data to predict and prevent future incidents.
6. You want happy employees.
Happy employees = happy employers.
Happy employees are more engaged, productive, committed, and less likely to leave.
If employees are unhappy, it can indicate conflict or stress or a need for improvements in the work environment.
Regular employee engagement surveys will help you keep abreast of engagement to design interventions. Creating an engaged workforce should be every company’s priority.
7. You want to improve diversity.
Research shows that companies with diverse teams experience elevated employee engagement and performance levels.
Analyze how underrepresented groups interact with your company during the hiring process. Your insights might show, for example, that there are a disproportionate number of female to male applicants or people of color.
If that’s the case, you can rethink your talent pipeline and expand the recruiting pool. Other insights can detect unconscious biases in promotions and development.
8. You want to be strategic about workforce planning.
Do you know where your company’s talent gaps are and how to fill them?
Is it more cost-effective to hire more staff or pay employees for overtime during busy seasons?
People analytics can answer these questions for you. Data analysis can predict staffing requirements and help you make informed decisions about the deployment of staff based on skillsets and business needs.
9. You want to have a resilient organization with continuity of leadership and performance.
Industry experts recommend having at least two successors for each leadership role. People analytics can help identify and develop this talent.
Your people data will reveal who your high-potential employees are—the ones with the combination of ability and motivation to succeed in senior roles. These insights will also help you weigh the readiness and suitability of your internal talent against the cost and risk of recruiting an external replacement.
10. You want to keep your top talent.
There was a time when you couldn’t predict turnover, and the only way to know the reason for employees’ resignations was during the exit interview. By analyzing engagement surveys and the demographics of exiting employees, you can predict who is likely to leave.
People analytics allow you to identify the attributes of long-term, high-performing employees and use those insights to retain your best people.
Get Started in People Analytics
with the data and resources you have.
Download the eBook
Your Roadmap to Success in People Analytics
About Pixentia
Pixentia is a full-service technology company dedicated to helping clients solve business problems, improve the capability of their people, and achieve better results.
+1 903-306-2430,