Why You Should Actualize Your Data Analytics
Data analytics for HR — or people analytics — offers insight into one of your organization's greatest competitive advantages — your talent. Although many organizations have adopted sophisticated, prescriptive analytics for customer and competitive insights, HR analytics are still emerging. According to MIT Sloan Management Review, HR analytics is "the new kid on the block" when it comes to business analytics applications.
Using Your Analytics to the Fullest
To understand whether your organization has maximized its potential for superior recruitment and retention via HR analytics, look at how you are currently approaching HR analytics. Your people analytics maturity can yield insight into opportunities for improvement. Here some examples of the different stages of maturity.
Interested in Analysis
Some organizations are just starting to consider the value of people analytics to identify challenges or opportunities. HR leaders may find that distributed systems or quality issues make it a challenge to understand relatively simple HR metrics, such as administrative cost per employee. The goal is getting to a single source of truth that allows for accurate analysis.
Telling Stories With HR Data
Having achieved "truth" in your HR data, or trustworthy integrated sources, HR leaders are able to begin telling stories about how talent performance improves with training, or how initiatives are linked to better retention. Benchmarking against others in the same industry or location can also reveal some important competitive dynamics to be factored into the story.
Predicting Performance
Here, linking quality HR data with other organizational data sources can enable predictive analytics, and an understanding of links between HR initiatives and organizational performance.
Prescribing Action
HR leaders at the most mature organizations have the analytics power to offer strategic recommendations through cause-and-effect relationships between the workforce and business performance.
Actualizing Your Data Analytics
Organizations at each stage of the data actualization model have key challenges to overcome. Does your organization need to achieve consistent data quality, better integration or link your HR insights to business strategy? Determining your current actualization level can help you identify the tools and trends you need to connect your talent to business performance.
To learn how to turn your people data into business objectives you can deliver on, check out The workforce analytics workbook.
