3 HR analytics tools for data-driven decision making
)
HR leaders are strategic players. Human resources is no longer limited to admin, contracts, and compliance. Today, HR leaders are key drivers of workplace culture, strategic decision makers, and effective people managers. They’re positioned at the heart of their business, designing systems of work that positively impact everything from customer satisfaction to the bottom line.
Equipped with analytics, HR leaders can leverage data-driven decision making to gain full visibility across their organization — and become a center of truth that all departments can benefit from.
What do we mean by data-driven decision making?
Instead of making decisions based on anecdotal observations and gut feelings, data-driven decision making enables you to identify opportunities with laser focus, and act on them with confidence. Qualitative and quantitative data takes the guesswork out of HR and business decisions. Leveraging data analytics for HR means you see the root causes of issues, rather than just the symptoms. Your HR software should enable you to:
Visualize data with graphs, charts and interactive reporting
Produce word clouds and heat maps from sentiment analysis
Aggregate multiple data points for correlation analysis
Why is data-driven decision making important? Because the insights you can pull from transparent numbers and language can tell a colorful story about your workforce. Here are three key HR metrics that help to build a valuable story around your organization and culture.
3 metrics to transform your HR approach
1. Attrition rate
Attrition rate (also known as ‘churn rate’) is the rate at which people leave an organization. A high attrition rate means that your employees are frequently leaving, which is not ideal. Understanding the reasons for your attrition rate is key to making informed decisions on how to improve it. Here are some areas to consider when analyzing your attrition rate:
Are people leaving voluntarily or involuntarily?
Is attrition in line with broader seasonal trends (such as December being the most common month for people to leave a job)?
What insights are your exit interviews providing?
See intelliHR’s turnover cost calculator to understand how much attrition is costing your organization.
Be careful not to jump to conclusions about your attrition rate. It’s easy to assume that people are leaving because, perhaps, they aren’t having fun at work — add some Friday afternoon drinks and get everyone a company t-shirt. Voilà! But having clear, concise data in front of you may highlight that it’s actually a completely different issue that’s causing people to leave such as a lack of training, or they might be bored with their particular role. The Breaking Boredom Survey discovered that 33% of workers look for a new job because they’re bored.
Data-driven decision making means having a laser focus on which business activities to invest in, so you avoid fixing the entire engine when you’ve simply got a flat tire.
Image: Financial drivers and compliance analytics within intelliHR platform (HR Analytics)
2. Sentiment analysis
If you want a detailed picture of how happy your employees are, sentiment analysis is your superpower. This metric takes a gut feeling and turns it into clear, concise data insights. Some of the features include:
Natural language processing and AI to analyze data from check-ins, feedback sessions, performance reviews, and calendar notes.
Visualized insights as positive, negative, and neutral feelings from employees.
The ability to pinpoint where and why negative sentiment is occurring at work.
Sentiment analysis is a cutting-edge tool that helps you spot opportunities for re-engagement, gaps in team communication, misalignment to goals, and much more. It’s an essential ingredient when building a culture of trust:
Learn more about using sentiment analysis of employee feedback to understand your people better.
3. Performance tracking
Imagine a tool that tracks productivity, teamwork, quality, and values for each employee in a way that can benchmark performance in real time. Now, take a look at all of this in action:
Video: This is intelliHR’s performance management tool, explore all the features here.
By tapping into performance in real time, you can quickly identify gaps in training, motivation, and productivity. This puts you in the driver’s seat of your organization’s performance — because when your people are thriving, so can your business. HR data analytics helps to identify trends and patterns over time, for example:
Is there a time of year when people naturally dip in productivity?
Do major product updates improve or detract from teamwork?
Does a drop in quality of work for one employee have a ripple effect on nearby team members?
Related: The ultimate guide to HR analytics
HR analytics are an excellent tool to benchmark insights over time. To compare employee sentiment from week-to-week is one thing, comparing it from year-to-year can highlight macro trends that occured in parallel with major company changes — providing a unique layer of insight.
HR leaders need to be in touch with the heart and soul of an organization, however when you combine this with intelligent data-driven insights, you get the best of both worlds. Access to workforce data won’t turn you into a robot operator — in fact, it does the opposite. You’ll be equipped to handle important decisions with grace, tact, and purpose.
Strategic HR comes to life when you lean on savvy technology that takes the guesswork out of your people management.