HR Analytics: Does Your Current 360º Platform Omit Critical Data?

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In the realm of modern business, data is king. The Human Resources (HR) department is sitting on a goldmine of valuable information generated from employee interactions, performance metrics, and engagement surveys. However, the challenge often lies in transforming this trove of data into actionable insights that can propel organizations forward. This is where HR analytics steps in – a powerful tool that can shape the way businesses understand and leverage their human capital.

To truly comprehend your workforce and make informed decisions, it’s not enough to merely gather data. HR managers must also critically assess the tools they use to gather and analyze this information. Workforce analytics is a key aspect, focusing on understanding workforce planning dynamics, skills gaps, and performance metrics.

Enter the concept of the 360º platform – a comprehensive approach to employee feedback that aims to capture insights from various angles.

What is hr analytics?

HR analytics, often referred to as human resources analytics, is a data-driven approach that involves analyzing HR-related data to gain valuable insights and make informed decisions.

It encompasses various data analysis techniques, including predictive analytics, which uses historical data to predict future workforce trends. HR professionals play a dual role in managing traditional HR tasks while also using data to guide strategic decisions.

This data is taken from multiple sources, including employee surveys, applicant tracking systems (ATS), human resource information systems (HRIS), human capital management (HCM), and human resource management systems (HRMS).

The effective use of HR analytics depends on the quality of data collected from metrics such as:

• Time to hire.
• Time to fill.
• Application abandonment rate.
• The turnover rate in the first year.
• The retention rate of the most qualified talent.
• The average rate of absenteeism.
• Training expenses per employee.
• Employee commitment.
• Human capital risk.

Overall, HR analytics empowers organizations to optimize recruitment, improve employee engagement and employee retention, and align HR strategies with business goals, all through the power of hr data.

Key metrics of hr analytics for organizations

Without question, any company that can attract the right resources, manage talent acquisition, and utilize its resources optimally is setting a course for long-term success.

To achieve this, it is important that both managers and those responsible for Human Resources know what HR analytics is and the types that exist and can be implemented in the organization:

• Time to hire

This is a metric that hr departments use to measure how long the process of integrating a candidate into a job position takes. 

This process includes getting the job description approved, posting the job, screening applicants, interviews, offers, background checks, and signing documents.

• Onboarding of employees

New employees coming into an organization need to get up to speed with technology and equipment, complete training, fill out paperwork, meet with colleagues, and prepare to perform as quickly as possible. 

Some experts estimate that this process should take three months. With so much time and money invested, using HR analytics is a key strategy to make sure it’s an effective process.

• Patterns of staff retention and turnover

Since personnel represents the largest expense in an organization, it is important to track how long employees stay with the company and understand the reasons why they leave.

It is possible to assess the rate of staff turnover and predict future trends in order to implement actions to reduce the rate of turnover and the losses it represents for the company using data collection tools such as exit surveys,

• Performance and skill building

Skills development is one of the best ways to build and retain good employees, as those who don’t feel like they are growing or making progress toward their career goals will eventually leave. 

To find out what kind of professional development organizations should offer, to whom, and when organizations can implement an employee evaluation system, either quarterly, annually, or bi-annually. 

HR groups can use these assessments to identify employees who are performing positively and those who are not performing optimally to make improvement decisions. Hence the importance of knowing what HR Analytics is and how to implement it.

• Organizational culture

Organizational culture represents a key factor for an organization’s success or failure since it comprises the tacit collective rules, systems, and patterns of human behavior that guide the perceptions and motivations of employees.

For this reason, implementing systems that allow the analysis and evaluation of the organizational culture is a process that will allow a better understanding of the complete environment of the workplace, from which actions can be implemented and follow-up of the changes that must be made.

Benefits of using hr analytics in an organization

Now that you know what HR analytics is, we will present some of the most important benefits that this methodology brings to an organization:

• Improve the hiring process

It works hard to hire the best employees for a position in the shortest possible time. To do this efficiently, recruiters use HR analytics to find talent and assess recruiting processes and the quality of candidates.

How many candidates actually join, and how many leave at what stage? What job boards work best for you? How many candidates do you need to contact to close a position? These are just some of the questions that HR analytics helps answer.

• Reduces wear

Employee retention is becoming more difficult, especially since young people are not afraid to change jobs frequently. Here, the use of HR analytics will help identify the factors that contribute to churn and the corrective measures that can be taken to avoid it in the future.

For example, through exit surveys, it is possible to collect data to analyze the reasons and patterns that motivate churn; thus, it is possible to find a way to stop the churn rate. 

• Improve the employee experience

Many organizations don’t realize that the employee experience begins at hire and is fueled by the sum of experiences an employee feels throughout their journey within an organization. 

Therefore, understanding what factors are positively and negatively affecting the use of HR analytics will significantly contribute to improving the employee experience and increasing their permanence in the organization.

• Hr analytics increase productivity

The collection of data on the factors that affect productivity helps to take corrective measures that can range from the change of infrastructure in the work environment to the development of better dynamics between leaders and teammates.

For example, employee engagement is a key factor affecting workforce productivity, so you can start by implementing some employee engagement surveys to find out the current status and generate activities to promote its increase.

• Hr analytics improve talent acquisition processes

Talent processes are not just about pre-hiring, hiring, or annual performance reviews, but much more. Training, recreational activities, and counseling, among other aspects, must be taken into account. 

This is where knowing what HR analytics is helps to use key information to monitor talent processes at all times, identify challenges and bottlenecks, if any, and work on them. 

For example, by implementing strategies such as the 360 ​​performance evaluation on a regular basis, it is possible to fully understand the perceptions of employees regarding their own work and that of their collaborators, receive their contributions, and work on them, in addition to making them know that they are heard.

• hr analytics increases employee satisfaction

Thanks to HR Analytics, you have access to data that allows you to see what is happening in the organization and how employees perceive it. When you’re armed with data, it allows you to fix what’s supposedly broken and improve future processes. 

Using data to value employee voice is crucial to building and maintaining trust, a critical element in increasing employee satisfaction, engagement, success, and retention rates.

How hr analytics helps human resource management

HR analytics plays a pivotal role in enhancing Human Resources Management (HRM) by leveraging data-driven insights to drive strategic decision-making and improve overall business outcomes.

This transformative approach involves gathering data to gain valuable insights into various aspects of HR operations. 

• Collect data

HR analytics starts by gathering a wide range of quality data, including employee demographics, performance evaluations, engagement surveys, and even data from the hiring process. 

This comprehensive data collection provides a holistic view of the workforce and enables human resource professionals to make informed decisions. It is obtained through various statistical techniques, like machine learning, data modeling, and artificial intelligence.

• Predictive hr analytics

Predictive data analytics is one of the most powerful aspects of human resource analytics. By analyzing historical data, predictive HR analytics can forecast future trends, such as turnover rates or high-performing employees at risk of leaving.

This enables proactive interventions and strategies to retain top talent and mitigate potential challenges.

• Hr metrics of hr analytics

HR analytics introduces a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) known as HR metrics. These metrics, such as turnover rate, employee engagement score, and time-to-fill vacancies, provide quantifiable measures of HR processes and employee performance.

Human resource professionals can monitor progress and make data-driven adjustments by tracking these key metrics.

• Hiring process enhancement with hr analytics

Using hr analytics can revolutionize the hiring process. HR teams can optimize their recruitment strategies by analyzing data related to successful hires, recruitment sources, and time-to-hire.

This can lead to more efficient hiring, improved candidate selection, and reduced employee turnover.

• Business outcomes

HR analytics connects HR activities with broader outcomes. It allows HR professionals to demonstrate how their initiatives impact the organization’s bottom line.

For instance, by correlating employee engagement with employee productivity and profitability, HR can showcase the direct link between engagement efforts and business success.

• Informed decision-making

Instead of relying solely on intuition, HR professionals can make well-informed decisions backed by relevant data.

For instance, insights from HR analytics can guide talent development initiatives, succession planning, and training programs that align with the organization’s strategic goals.

• Personalized approaches

HR analytics enables HRM to adopt a more personalized approach to employee management.

By analyzing individual employee data, including employee behavior, performance management history, and learning preferences, HR can tailor development plans and career paths to each employee’s strengths and aspirations.

• Continuous improvement with hr analytics

HR analytics is a continuous process of improvement. By regularly reviewing and analyzing HR metrics, organizations can identify trends, spot areas of concern, and implement targeted interventions to enhance HR practices and improve internal processes.

• Hr analytics software

Specialized HR analytics software simplifies the data analysis process. These tools streamline data collection, visualization, and reporting, making it easier for HR professionals to derive insights and communicate them effectively to stakeholders.

Recognizing the diverse needs

HR departments generate a large quantity of rich data but often struggle to convert valuable data into valuable insights. To better understand your people, HR managers need to understand their workforce engagement vendor. The question most HR managers neglect to ask today is:

• What size companies do their employee engagement vendor typically serve?

There is no one-size-fits-all solution, so this question will strongly indicate the vendor’s fit for your organization. QuestionPro recommends that you further challenge the vendor and also ask questions about data integrity.

• Does your current 360º platform unnecessarily dump critical data?

This could be because your current 360º vendor is not aligned with the needs of your business. In our humble opinion, this simply does not make sense at all.

Team members at SMBs are known by their names and not by their employee numbers. The dynamics of a 100,000+ organization fundamentally operate much differently than a 50-500+ organization.

We at QuestionPro Workforce try to capture each team member’s response within a workforce – no matter a team’s size.

We’ve helped a variety of talent analytics managers design smarter 360º, which reflects the voice of an entire workforce without data loss. 

The problems SMBs encounter are at the heart of our product. We understand that in small/medium-sized organizations, every voice should be counted, and every voice matters. Our new “data clubbing” 360º employee engagement setting best reflects this concept.

IN – data clubbing

We’ve created a solution that helps SMBs and HR managers not to lose an ounce of data. If respondent groups are less than three, an administrator can “club” the data together with another respondent group. How does this work? Let’s walk through a simple example.

Jim has requested a 360º review from his team, which is comprised of his manager, 2 direct reports, and 3 peers.

When the Rule of Three is applied – the rich feedback from which two direct reports will be absent from reporting. People Analytics teams and HR managers dislike using the rule of three because the team member can not view the feedback from an entire respondent group.

The 360º feedback report is complete and inclusive when applying a clubbing rule. Direct Report responses are merged with Peers, which maintains the respondent’s privacy without any response loss.

Out – rule of three

Traditional 360º platforms use dated survey parameters. For example, the “Rule of Three” (or Five) was established to protect the privacy of the respondents who work in small teams in large organizations. 

The rule would work like this – if an individual has less than 3 people in a respondent group (peers, direct reports, or external reviewers), then those responses would be nullified since the sample respondent group is too small. 

A small respondent group bears the risk of the respondents being identified by the team member who is receiving a 360º review, and if old rules are applied, these rich pieces of feedback are redacted from a 360º report.

Data clubbing rules

Administrators can define how many respondents need to present before clubbing.

Modern hr analytics move modern businesses

It goes without saying that team contributors are at the heart of any business. They collectively shape an organization’s culture and effectively set the business up for long-term success. Today, we have many modern tools to help receive feedback from multiple sources. 

It is imperative to capture each team member’s perspective to understand a holistic view of yourself.

We offer a variety of solutions to listen to the voice of employees, from our real-time Pulse app to our comprehensive 360º platform. To learn more, schedule a demo and email workforce@questionpro.com 

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