How to Use People Analytics to Find Your HR Blind Spots

Forward-thinking CEOs and business leaders have become aware of the strong ties between how modern strategies like “people analytics” can lead to success within their HR departments and increase the bottom line.

People analytics is the use of data analysis to equip HR leadership with the opportunity to better understand and streamline HR functions and capabilities. According to Deloitte’s 2018 Global Human Capital Trends Survey, 84% of respondents stated that people analytics was either important or very important to their business (source: Deloitte 2018.)

In recent years, the HR space has become an area of future-forward digital disruption, with leaders paving the way for the elimination of traditional hierarchies, empowering employees, and using data to their advantage.

By identifying your HR blind sports with the help of people analytics, you’ll be able to move your HR strategies – and business – forward. If you’re ready to find your blind spots and leverage data analysis to enhance your HR capabilities, I invite you to take a deep-dive into how people analytics can yield positive results for your most impactful workplace issues:

1. Identify Where to Cast Your Recruitment Net

Whether you’re an HR leader or recruitment manager, you’ve likely measured a variety of key performance indicators (KPIs) in the past to identify the professional traits of your top-performing employees.

This information is vital in making well-informed future hiring decisions, allowing you to target the experiences and skills of recruits that complement your company’s needs, vision, and bottom line goals.

So, where do people analytics fit in? Even if your HR team is already tracking these KPIs, or is looking to start in the near future, streamlining your KPI tracking via people analytics can allow you to make informed decisions to hyper-target your recruitment efforts.

Some of the most important KPIs to track throughout the employee cycle include:

• Quality of hire (QoH)
• Employee turnover
• Cost per hire
• Time to hire

By taking the initiative to track these KPIs, you can better understand where current processes are lacking, and identify your recruitment strengths. For example, if your time to hire KPI often falls within your ideal targets, but the quality of hires is consistently lacking, it may be time to reconsider your existing recruitment process.

Identifying gaps in your recruitment net using KPIs allows you to optimize your entire recruitment process, from how you screen potential hires to the types of hires you’re attracting. In turn, you’ll be able to look to data analysis reports and identify the ideal skills your business needs to succeed, all while hiring candidates with the skills and retention potential you’re looking for.

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2. Improve Employee Retention

In 2015 78% of business leaders reported that employee retention is an urgent or important matter. Today, leaders are turning to data-driven functions to help them identify blind spots not only in retention strategies, but in targeting their recruitment nets and identifying top talent faster.

Technology has recently disrupted a variety of modern workplace experiences, with the increased use of tech in HR helping teams save money through the automation of processes, the streamlining of feedback, and the alignment of communication strategies.

People analytics can help your business identify the main causes of employee turnover, identify gaps in the recruitment process, and focus your onboarding efforts for optimal results.

Additionally, people-based analytics can even help you design better retention strategies to ensure that your turnover rate is minimized. The following metrics can assist HR leaders and team managers stay on-track to maximize employee’s long-term potential and keep high-value employees on your team:

The performance of new hires. Gathering data on how your new hires are performing and integrating into your workplace processes says a lot about your training, the employee, and your company culture. Look into these insights if you’re finding that a specific department is experiencing a high rate of employee turnover or if all employees are experiencing a lack of competency in various factors of their duties.

Trends of resignation and retirement. People choose to move on from jobs for a variety of reasons, not all of which are dependant on how your business operates, such as retirement or a career change. To make sure that your company is equipped to handle these changes, it’s vital that your HR teams have continuous learning and promotional training. By tracking the probability of retirement within your company, you can create continuous learning streams and promotional training opportunities for your existing employees for when advanced roles become vacant.

The impact of onboarding training and continuous learning. Analyzing training data is critical for companies looking to minimize their employee turnover. Often, investing in better training or continuous learning resources requires proof of positive impact on the employee pool. By connecting high-impact training with high-value results, C-suite executives can often justify extra costs.

3. Identify and Recruit Top Talent Faster

Attracting top talent means that organizations are often competing against one another for high-value professionals. To stand out from the crowd and identify top talent faster than the rest, HR teams need to put down the standard resumes and interview templates and use data to maximize their hiring results.

Data-driven recruitment processes, such as targeting quality of hire metrics throughout your recruitment phase, allows you to accurately determine whether a candidate may be a good fit for your company. It also lowers your time to hire metrics. Data analysis throughout the recruitment process allows you to overcome your blind spots while recruitment automation can streamline your efforts.

Overcome your HR blind spots and optimize your HR processes by collecting the information you need to succeed before problems begin. With people analytics, you can take actionable steps to bridge the gap between an employee’s overall experience and the way your HR strategies are designed.

My team and I at East Tenth Group are ready to help you level-up your leadership capabilities and identify your HR blind spots. I invite you to contact us today.