What is workforce analytics?

Workforce analytics is a method of monitoring and examining employees’ work productivity to improve workflow. A branch of people analytics, workforce analytics relates to all types of employees: in-house, remote, freelance, and consultant. This powerful investigative tool relies on HR metrics to optimize talent acquisition, nurturing, and retention, enabling HR leaders to make data-driven decisions that boost employee success and employee experience. Workforce analytics can:

• Measure employee engagement 
• Identify the determinants of employee engagement
• Examine current trends and predicting future ones
• Analyze organizational structure
• Pinpoint high-potential employees for leadership positions
• Source suitable new hires

Why should HR leaders care about workforce analytics?

Workforce analytics centralizes vast amounts of data to deliver conclusions from a holistic perspective. Through workforce analysis, HR leaders can elevate their people management strategies and sharpen the recruitment, retention, and hiring processes to achieve desired outcomes.

What can HR leaders do to implement effective workforce analytics?

As the guardians of workforce analytics, HR leaders can exemplify a belief in its effectiveness and alignment with company objectives, thereby encouraging other employees to follow suit. HR leaders can incorporate the following practices when implementing this HR tool: 

• Create a plan of action. Team members can collaborate to determine which analytics will assist them in improving focus areas. For example, an HR team that is aiming to boost employee engagement could implement metrics that quantify employee motivation to measure the effectiveness of the company’s incentive program.
• Monitor the data. While workforce analytics can provide cutting-edge, insightful data, HR leaders, HR business partners, and upper-level management should collaborate to analyze its quality and ensure its accuracy. A partnership between humans and AI combines the benefits of each, filling in any gaps and boosting successful work performances. 
• Implement training for HR personnel. It’s necessary to educate HR professionals to use and understand the workforce analytics program. Fundamental business intelligence skills such as evaluating data, critical thinking, researching, and problem-solving enables HR professionals to optimize workforce analytics and minimize the margin of error. 
• Prepare a privacy policy. Develop a business privacy policy that addresses which categories of information workforce analytics can legally use. Identify possible privacy issues and consult an attorney who specializes in privacy law to avoid breaching employees’ privacy.  
• Incorporate the data seamlessly to achieve objectives. When sharing the results with management, weave it intelligently in to make a case for a specific action. Rather than just reporting the numbers, let the data serve as evidence to support the cause.

How does workforce analytics improve company culture?

Workforce analysis can improve employee work performance, thereby enhancing the employee experience and enriching the company culture. With the assistance of workforce analytics to evaluate large-scale data, employees can more readily perform top-quality work as they actualize their potential. Empowering employees to work more productively, efficiently, and to engage, allows them to contribute to an attractive and enjoyable company culture.