3 Key Considerations for Successful Use of Data & People Analytics

People analytics has finally arrived in HR, but use of analytics is still rudimentary and not evenly distributed. That much was clear at the 2019 People Analytics & Workforce Planning Conference in Miami on May 5th-7th. HR leaders, vendors and partners in the HR space gathered to discuss the challenges of people management and potential tools and solutions to those challenges through the application of people analytics.

An important topic on the minds of many at the conference was how to aggregate and normalize data to extract insight. In our conversations with attendees, we found that the majority were struggling with inconsistent data and data living in multiple systems within their organization. In addition to inconsistent data, most admitted that they didn’t have a people analytics strategy in place. Although the goal was to learn how to leverage data and derive insights, the lack of a clear strategy and clean data are apparent hurdles for leaders and practitioners in HR.

With the unemployment rate being extremely low and with the current rate of attrition increasing across all industry sectors, it’s essential for HR to tackle the data issue in order to fully leverage people analytics data and bring quantifiable value to the business. How can they go about doing this?

Here are three key questions HR leaders should consider to start off right with data and people analytics:

1. How is your data quality and how many sources of data do you have?

Before adopting analytics, it’s important to understand the quality of data available in your organization as well as the different sources and types of data. When it comes to data, more is not necessarily better if the quality is poor. Since data is what powers the analytics, clean data will give you more accurate results to your questions, making your insights more useful. This is particularly important when you want to use data to derive metrics that will form the basis for critical business decisions.

2. What answers are you looking for in the data?

Just as important as data quality is knowing what to look for in the data. Although it may be tempting to pull different types to data, visualize the data, and see what the data says, a more effective approach is to know what questions you need answers to and have a strategy on how to get those answers from the data. Having a strategy will make your process of using data more efficient and will allow you to learn and improve on your use of data as you progress.

3. What is the business growth strategy?

Knowing the organization’s growth strategy will allow you to plan and scale resources accordingly to meet the needs of the business. This will require you not only to understand current competencies of employees in the organization but also predict the type and level of skills needed in the future. Having the appropriate tools to unlock the necessary data to get that information will go a long way in helping you bring tremendous value to the organization. Instead of falling behind in hiring and not having the resources to support growth, you can be a step ahead of business needs and be ready to supply the company with the right talent and better utilize your internal talent!

At PredictiveHR, we understand the importance of aggregating and normalizing data no matter the condition of the data. PHR strives to provide innovative tools and solutions to help our clients stay ahead of the curve. Our differentiator lies in the fact that our solution has an integrity engine – an AI tool – that will bring all data from disparate systems into one and normalize it. If there is a distortion in the data, we will fix it. This gives you peace of mind knowing that the underlying data is trustworthy. Additionally, our platform pushes you to take a step further in your analysis – right down to the people – to know who is going to leave and why. This capability allows you to be dynamic in your decision making and gives you the flexibility you need in your workforce planning.

To see how PredictiveHR can help you start your people analytics journey or advance your people analytics strategy, check out our products and solutions.