Imagine you could use “soft” people analytics metrics and turn that into real, business outcomes? The good news is that you can. Consider this for a moment, Human Resources is undergoing rapid change and the advent of technology has resulted in next-generation capabilities that can transform previously intangible metrics to tangible results via the analysis of data.
The evidence is in – the path to a more powerful and successful business is understanding your people. Do exactly what you are doing right now – i.e. continue driving your recognition and engagement strategies across your workforce – but add people analytics to your armoury to ensure business success.
We know what you could be thinking, “Do I really need analytics on top of everything else?”.
The answer is a resounding ‘yes’. Keep reading so that we can explain this all in more detail.
We are sure that you would agree that being a leader is tough and that it is virtually impossible to have a handle on all-things people within your organisation, all the time, right?
Now, imagine how much tougher it is being a middle or line manager? Their day-to-day role centres around managing more people and with fewer resources. Add to that, there is growing evidence that confirms that employees leave managers, not companies. And the pressure for managers to really understand their workforce intensifies. This is where analytics really shines.
For leaders who truly desire to unlock their organisation’s full potential through its people, analytics is central to this success.
Implementing people analytics as part of your business strategy could help you to build tactical and strategically efficient management teams. When you have the insights into your people, you are empowered to take proactive measures to align your workforce to your organisational goals, increase your employee engagement levels and (here’s the exciting part) propel your bottom line faster than Lewis Hamilton at the start of the British Grand Prix.
People analytics is a strategic tool that can help organisations transition into significant drivers of key outcomes in a way that demonstrates ROI.
1. Gain insight to make insight-driven decisions
Technology is advancing at a pace where businesses are challenged to keep up with its progression. This being said, a quality people analytics tool should require no massive IT implementation. In most cases, these tools are designed to work effectively alongside your existing infrastructure. Its function is to simply (but efficiently) create a significant repository of data.
You’re probably thinking, “Oh boy, now I need to employ a data scientist…”. On the contrary, o’ fearless leader. Many of these tools or platforms are created with a drag-and-drop approach offering significant upsides for busy managers who require insight into the minds of their employees (and really, insight into your organisation).
People analytics tools can help you make even better business decisions. Here’s how:
- These tools can identify triggers or hot spots that require attention as it relates to employees’ engagement levels, as well as identify managers who are performing well, but also those who need improvement in specific areas.
- It can highlight areas that could benefit from incentives, reward programmes to boost employee morale.
- The converse is that it can also showcase internal policies that are diminishing the engagement of your employees.
With access to these defined set of insights, are you starting to see how you can really use this to drive your business strategy with a view to profound success?
2. Uncover insights to understand your plan of action
Innumerable action-driven insights can be uncovered with these tools. One of the most critical outcomes is definitely the ability to retain your top talent. By leveraging this all-important data your business could design and implement employee retention strategies that really work.
The evidence is insurmountable, by now we all understand that losing a good employee is costly and its repercussions are felt months, sometimes even years after an employee has left the organisation. To this end, it makes complete sense to want to understand why your employees are leaving.
This critical data insight could help to bring your organisation’s employee engagement and retention strategies into sharper focus.
3. People analytics is directly linked to effective business strategy
A people analytics tool is like the peanut butter to your jelly (and by jelly we mean your business strategy). It gives you the agility to respond without waiting for the year-end survey to understand what’s really going on.
Importantly, it gives you the opportunity to attract, retain and reward the best talent within your organisation – which can result in a higher rate of employee satisfaction. It also enables middle management and the C-suite to strategically align measurable goals with organisational goals and offer data-driven analytics to the right managers at the right time. Improvement plans can be devised from these insights and its impact can be measured to ensure the future success of the business outcomes.
Here are 8 reasons people analytics has the ability to redefine your business strategy for success:
- Enables managers to make critical data-driven decisions for rapid implementation that can positively drive business outcomes.
- Gives organisations access to the state of their employees’ minds at any given time, allowing for strategic agility in employee engagement and retention.
- Provides organisations with an ongoing skills audit for their talent pool. This helps leaders to understand key skills shortages and areas of improvement, as well as where the key skills can be better utilised across the organisation.
- Analytics helps managers and the executive team understand the strength of their people so as to meet an ever-changing business landscape with a view for a competitive advantage.
- The insight offers an objective view of the respective teams within the organisation to boost and measure their employees’ success and make informed business decisions.
- The data presented by the people analytics tools enables managers to identify top talent and quickly highlight their achievements, thereby strengthening employee engagement and staff retention levels.
- Managers can collaborate on a strategic gap analysis which can be implemented across departments with a view to adopt best practices.
- Having the data on hand also allows leaders to hold managers accountable for frequent recognition of their employees.
People analytics has several direct benefits for an organisation’s business strategy. It assists to identify the measurable business outcomes and tools like these also enable managers to work more efficiently with their teams, thereby increasing productivity, engagement and employee recognition. It further confirms that understanding engaged people drive organisations forward.
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