Data-driven insights have become the cornerstone across industries. Understanding the capabilities of data and people analytics has on human resources, talent management teams from various verticals are unlocking their potential in better understanding their people.
As organizations grapple to retain employees, close job openings and cope with rising attrition rates, talent leaders depend on insights to navigate people-related decisions.
What is People Analytics?
People analytics is the use of talent data to drive critical talent & business initiatives. Talent acquisition teams leverage this talent data to understand, improve, and optimize the human resources side of the business.
This modern approach to managing talent resources with data brings umpteen benefits to your organization, including increased revenues and lowered costs of hiring new people.
With challenges on the rise in managing and recruiting talents amidst the hybrid work model, talent managers are pivoting to people analytics for multiple activities, ranging from candidate screening and onboarding to performance review.
Considering the impact COVID-19 has had on traditional hiring and workforce management, people analytics has a substantial role in post-pandemic times. This article breaks down the rise of people analytics in today’s workplace and its role in improving HR and recruitment practices.
The Rise of People Analytics in the Modern Workplace
A 2021 study reported that 72 percent of talent analytics leaders said the demand for talent analytics in their workplace witnessed a rise since the onset of the pandemic.
Before we jump on the use cases of people analytics, following are a few numbers that make it a must-have addition to HR and talent acquisition teams:
- There is about an 80% increase in recruiting efficiency
- A rise of 25% is experienced in overall business productivity
- Attrition rates plummeted to 50%
These numbers might slightly justify the effectiveness of people analytics across sectors. But what exactly is forcing talent management teams to integrate data and analytics into their respective organizations?
- The post-pandemic developments in technology and software are among the strongest factors for enterprises adapting to these solutions. Marketing and sales teams were pushed to go completely digital, making them the major beneficiaries of this transformation.
- HR departments have a stockpile of data containing employee-related information, including performance data, job history, and compensation. The challenge of storing and locating these massive chunks of data is beyond the HR teams’ capabilities. With the emergence of data-driven insights, the load of sifting manually through hordes of documents has been minimized drastically.
- Talent management teams are now being questioned about their decisions based on measurable outcomes. This has also become a detrimental factor for decision-makers to make certain decisions based on analytics and not depend upon subjective judgment or their instincts.
Considering the numbers and reasons mentioned above, there is little doubt why companies are adjusting their present-day human resources strategies with people analytics.
The Role of People Analytics in HR & Recruitment
HR analytics or people analytics is essential in smooth-running all HR-related functions from scheduling tasks to performance and workforce management. Here are several areas that are currently experiencing massive transformation due to the rise in implementation of data and analytics:
A Data-driven Approach to Recruitment & Hiring Bias
Hiring and people-management activities were among the many functions that took a hit during the COVID-19 crisis.
A recent research study claimed that algorithms increased talent acquisition teams’ ability to scout for the best-qualified candidate by more than 50 percent. This increase in finding the ideal candidate is more likely because of a lack of human instincts and inherent bias involved during manual talent hunting.
The growing concerns of unconscious bias have become a talking point when hiring the ideal fit for the available job position. While bypassing the issue of recruitment bias can be taxing, HRs and talent leaders can leverage analytics to improve the quality of the hiring and promote diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
With remote working becoming increasingly necessary, talent management teams utilize AI-powered talent intelligence solutions for data and analytics to help tap untapped talent markets at competitive costs.
Talent intelligence doesn’t dehumanize recruitment, and AI may not automate everything; in fact, the opposite. HR teams can focus on personalization while talent data systems run in the background. Outreach becomes the more intentional, diverse, and inclusive scope of job seekers that can be reached.
Analytics also are need-of-the-hour solutions to help your HR team go through millions of data touchpoints and give them the data to analyze employee salaries, bonuses, and performance data. This helps review bias patterns present in the organization and helps set up new frameworks for appraisals.
Cutting down on attrition
The Great Resignation has had employees quitting in droves, which completely disrupted the world of work. While hiring has solved the pandemic-induced concern of attracting new employees, talent acquisition teams believe that employee turnover and attrition can be disruptive and costly for organizations.
The answer: The datafication of human resources is seeing growth, and HR leaders with people analytics can find practical ways to reduce the high attrition numbers significantly.
With the integration of sophisticated data analytics, talent management teams can identify high-risk employees and convince them to stay. The efforts can be made post analyzing the collected data, which includes a series of information like demographic profile, job roles, and performance appraisals.
Talent managers can leverage the data collected to create employee-specific learning resources and ensure employees are offered compensation through various mediums.
Navigating to maximum accountability
Insights and information on individual performance were always traditional– manual reviewing and assessing reports. In addition, the cumbersome task of evaluating long reports takes the time of human resources.
The integration of people analytics enables access to easily interpretable insights that talent management teams can utilize for strategic business goals. As employees take control of the data, there comes the benefit of driving maximum accountability.
There is no denying that boosting accountability was and continues to be a challenge in the workplace, but with people analytics on board, accountable employees can face the challenge with zero hindrances.
People analytics is already becoming a nucleus element of the future of HR and recruitment, and enterprises that tap into the solution will be the ones that reap the most out of it. If people analytics is used intelligently, it can even cut down the clutter in multiple departments, resulting in better workflow across the organization.
As a talent intelligence tool, Draup supports organizations with global talent data, organizational workforce metrics, and predicted trends that facilitate workforce planning the right way. Furthermore, HR leaders and talent management teams can leverage the insights from the talent intelligence platform to elevate the career path of underutilized talent and streamline workplace management to drive accountability further and improve employee branding.