An organization’s most important resource is its staff. Understanding how to take the best care of your staff and help them to be highly engaged and productive is key to the success of the organization. HR Analytics / People Analytics / Workforce Analytics can help with this. But what is that exactly?

Analytics is a multi-disciplinary field that involves the collection and curation of data, and the analysis of that data using a variety of methods and tools, to discover, interpret and share information and insights, to help develop better business understanding and help guide decision making, usually toward achieving an organization’s goals. HR / People / Workforce Analytics is analytics around an organization’s candidates and staff, and HR actions and operations. The term most commonly used for this area of specialization by people in the field has shifted from HR Analytics to People Analytics over the years, and is now trending toward Workforce Analytics, so I will just use Workforce Analytics for the rest of the article.

The data used for Workforce Analytics will come from many sources inside and outside the organization including, but not limited to, Human Capital ERP systems, Workforce applications, Recruiting applications, Payroll applications, scheduling applications, employee and candidate surveys, social media, Glassdoor, and more. This data can be transformed, integrated and aggregated as appropriate, and then analyzed to provide information to help with operational and strategic decision making around areas such as staffing, recruiting, retention, turnover, absence, compensation and benefits, employee engagement, job satisfaction, performance and productivity, training and development, diversity, equity and inclusion, and operational efficiency, among others.

This analysis is usually performed across time periods (months, years) to allow for period-to-period comparisons and trend analysis to determine if the various metrics being measured and analyzed are improving or not. And the analysis is also usually done across all levels of the organization, so that information is available to support decision making for the entire organization or for a single department or for a specific segment of employees (such as all the clinical employees within a healthcare organization) or potentially for an individual employee.

The end goal usually includes helping with efforts such as:

• Understanding the current workforce landscape and knowing any operational tasks that need to be performed

• Hiring better candidates by predicting candidate success and reducing recruiting/hiring costs

• Improve employee engagement through a better understanding of employee’s true needs, and what is working and what is not, and reducing absences as a result

• Increase employee productivity through a better understanding of how employees work and things that slow them down

• Reducing turnover by predicting employees at a high risk of turnover and implementing proactive retention measures

• Forecast future staffing needs to better prepare for it with recruiting and training & development

• Determining the business impact of HR initiatives

The diagram below summarizes the Workforce Analytics components to give you an overview of this article in a quick glance.

Of course, all organizations are different, and so the goals of an organization, the type of data available and the type of analyses of interest to an organization, will vary. But the importance and value of Workforce Analytics, which helps organizations make the most of their most important resource, is critical to just about all medium to large organizations, regardless of industry and prior success.

Good luck on your analytics journey!