What is HR Analytics? How is it Important for Employee Retention?

Finding innovative tactics and enhancing workplaces and employee experiences are significant tasks for Human Resource (HR) experts. But in order to know whether their efforts are successful and how to put effective policies into place, they need precise data and insights. And effective recruitment is integral to this process, which is why HR analytics is a crucial component of recruiting. So what is HR analytics and why is it important?

What Exactly is HR Analytics?

Human resource analytics is the application of analytical approaches to a company’s human resources in order to increase employee productivity and retention. It exists to give deeper insight into each of the HR processes and to make well-informed judgments about how to improve them. 

Why is HR Analytics Important?

Now that we’ve understood ‘what is HR analytics, let’s find out why it is so important. To remain competitive, businesses must change and expand, which means HR departments must also step up their game. Employers who utilize HR analytics may design a strategy to enhance the personnel selection, recruiting, onboarding, and management processes. Data mined through HR analytics may assist a company in understanding the difficulties faced by its HR department. The following are the most typical uses of analytics by HR professionals:

1. Establishing Standards

The HR division can assess existing employee performance and choose the appropriate key performance indicators.

2. Monitoring Employee Performance

Performance standards are crucial because they enable you to identify employee problems and provide solutions that might resolve them.

3. Implementing Changes

Once you have a clear idea of what needs to be addressed and how specific problems may be solved, you may make improvements to the employment process and assess whether they improve morale, productivity, and output.

4. Checking Results

You may assess the results of the adjustments and gather pertinent information to determine whether your efforts had the desired effect or whether further adjustments are needed for better outcomes.

What are Common Data Sources for HR Analytics?

1. Recruiting Data: The data set covers the number of applicants, their resumes, and the sources of recruitment.
2. Demographic Data: Employee ID, name, gender, birthdate, home address, job title, department, and billing center are included in demographic data.
3. Performance Management: It covers performance evaluations and employee reviews.
4. Learning Management: It outlines the available courses and tracks employees’ progress via various training courses and initiatives.
5. Employee Survey Data: This information might include everything from a survey on the caliber of food served in the company’s cafeteria to feedback on the leadership in the organization.
6. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Data: This data set contains contact information for customers, private conversations and interactions, lead scoring, and many other things.
7. Sales Data: Sales per shop or per salesperson are included in this outcome assessment.

How to Identify Key HR Metrics to Track

When answering the question, ‘what is HR Analytics’, we also identify the metrics to track them. Headcount, turnover, diversity, remuneration, the total cost of layers and spans of the workforce, employee engagement, talent acquisition, learning, workforce planning, productivity, and manager effectiveness are some of the most often-used indicators in HR.

How to Ethically Collect HR Data

• Be open and honest about the information that is gathered and its intended use
• Get the employees’ explicit permission before collecting any nonroutine information and renew their consent periodically
• Make sure managers aren’t aware of employees’ choices regarding data sharing
• Remove the identifiers and analyze the data collected

Benefits of HR Analytics

1. Better Decisions in Hiring: Human resource professionals may quickly identify the top prospects and recruit them with the help of an efficient HR analytics solution.
2. Less Talent Shortage: When a need for a certain position develops inside the firm, HR analytics make it simpler to determine who to target.
3. Enhanced Hiring Procedure: Once the business has accumulated enough data to identify patterns over time, it can use those patterns to speed up and streamline its hiring procedure.
4. Decreased Rate of Attrition: The reasons and trends behind employee turnover may be easily found and understood with the use of HR analytics. It explains the reasons for employees leaving or staying.
5. Enhanced Productivity: With the use of analytics, you can gain a better understanding of your workforce and determine what kinds of teams, environments, and policies will motivate your employees to work hard and improve business performance.

How to Use Data in HR

Professionals in this field need to focus on the latest technology due to the increasing volumes of employee, customer, and transaction activity. This helps them facilitate quicker decision-making in a turbulent business climate. Knowing the existing composition, performance, and risk may help with improving the development of workers, goods, and services. Big data can help assess and improve procedures related to hiring, training and development, performance, remuneration, and overall business performance. The gathered data can then be turned into useful information by doing the following:

Predictive Analysis

As the name suggests, this method makes a conscious effort to predict potential future events using information from the past.

Observing and Analyzing

This involves collecting information about the reasons behind past events and current events.

Reporting

You need to clearly state what occurred so that it may be used as a measure for comparison for any future data collected. 

Examples of Using Analytics in HR

The examples of using analytics in HR can be understood via these metrics:

• When to hire
• Cost per hire
• Early conversion
• Duration since the last promotion
• Revenue per employee
• Possibilities and performance
• Billed time for an employee
• Engagement rating
• Absent percentage

How to Get Started with HR Analytics

You need to follow these steps to understand what is HR analytics and how to get started with it:

1. Strategize

This is the basis that drives your data-gathering efforts and guarantees that you’re looking for the right information required to address business concerns.

2. Identifying Data Sources

Consider the tools your business uses and the outcomes you may achieve by utilizing them.

3. Collection of Data

Ensuring that data is gathered correctly and third-party integrations are set up properly so there’s no data-gathering error.

4. Data Processing

There is never a clear format for data. You will spend a considerable amount of time cleaning and processing the data using statistical methods, etc. 

You can develop a more profound understanding of people by exploring online courses offered by Emeritus. It’ll help you gain an intricate knowledge of the HR sector, what is HR analytics, how to implement big data tactics, and a lot more! 

By Siddhesh Shinde

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