Ways To Use People Analytics To Build A Great Place To Work

If only humans could scan other individuals and gather measurements like in “Terminator2: Judgement Day”-the old-time hit from the ’90s. While that seems like a distant future even in today's tech-savvy world, we have something quite similar in the HR domain and goes by the name People Analytics.

People analytics helps you collect, store and analyze over time, aspects related to your employees and their workplace ecosystem. In the sections that follow we take a look at what people analytics is and how it can be used to give your employees a conducive workplace.

So what is People Analytics?

Let's go through a quick informal definition of People Analytics and then jump into ways and means to gather data that is considered critical for a successful and fruitful exercise in People Analytics.

People Analytics broadly can be seen as a study of an employee and the work culture to understand weaknesses and gaps. It then loosely translates to the collection, recording and analysis of all data related to every employee's performance within an organization over his/her entire tenure.

This means a lot of data that is spread across the spectrum from workforce analytics to human capital analytics to HR analytics. The data items that make it to the list include attendance, schedule adherence, psychometrics, performance, mental and physical well-being, workforce capacity, and bench strength among many others.

Often to understand what needs to be measured you start with a few questions. So what questions would you ask, given the fact that human resources is most likely one of your largest investments? Would you not ask if your employees are happy with what they do? Would you not ask your employees, how happy are they with their workplace? After all, these are the factors that decide the levels of engagement and ultimately the level of performance.

There are multiple ways to collect and collate such data using targeted software and other means like surveys and in-house wellbeing centers( for mental and physical wellbeing). But for what good use will you put it to is the matter that should be of utmost importance.

People Analytics for a great place to work

Let's briefly explore some of the key areas where people metrics play an important role to improve your workplace ecosystem and to some extent the workplace culture.

Employee Churn

One of the foremost concerns of HR other than hiring new talent is retaining top talent. it should be the other way round. Efforts in retaining top talent will go a long way in reducing pressure on hiring. So how can people analytics be used to reduce employee churn?

One of the key indicators of churn comes from the exit interviews conducted before an employee disengages from your organization. Exit interviews when conducted fairly will give more than a fair idea of what are the gaps that need to be plugged in. At the outset it may look like managers or immediate supervisors are to be blamed, but the root cause could run much deeper. People analytics can break this down into various other factors that cover a wide array of causes that include, job satisfaction, equity in compensation, employee benefits, team dynamics, growth opportunities and many more. There are a plethora of reasons that need detailed discussion before an employee disengages from your business. Aside from these employee feedback centric data, people analytics can help you collect, measure and report on other aspects of churn over a given period that includes, employee churn by tenure, gender, PayScale, academic pedigree and more.

Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity

There are several statistics out there in the public domain that prove that the more diverse your workforce is the more vibrant and productive it turns out to be. Besides these facts, some governments even mandate a fairly diverse and inclusive workplace with no scope for discrimination based on gender, caste, sexual orientation and identity. People analytics can help you keep a track of this and take necessary hiring decisions to keep these numbers in check. People analytics can help you distribute your workforce evenly across geographies and ensure racial, gender, caste, culture and religion-based neutrality. Equity in pay heavily depends on this kind of data. People analytics can help to analyze pay parity, leadership diversity, and ethnic diversity across several groups, with the assistance of a powerful sales commission calculator to ensure fairness and equity in compensation.

Employee Engagement and Performance

One of the most crucial aspects of your business is how well your workforce embraces the business goals you set and the values you envision for your organization. This roughly translates to the workplace culture that encourages upright work ethics and practices, eventually leading to the values and goals you set them. People analytics helps you measure all the parameters that decide the levels of engagement and performance in every employee. With a people analytics solution, you should be able to efficiently track all processes involved in your business activities, the urgency with which your employees push or pull tasks day in and day out and help you time track every customer-centric goal, just like you would in a sales cycle. From these metrics, you can draw out the levels of engagement in teams across sites.

Conclusion

An essential piece of the puzzle for a successful people analytics-based project within your business is an efficient and effective performance management solution. A performance management solution that works as seamlessly as possible with any of your existing tools. Kennect offers a highly competent, intuitive and intelligent performance management solution for your sales folks. Sales Performance Management by Kennect, lets your sales folks assess their performance in real-time and enables data-driven decisions using intuitive dashboards. If it is sales we are talking about, incentive management is not far behind. Kennect offers an equally intelligent solution- Incentive Compensation Management - that works seamlessly with SPM, for managing all your incentive related hassles and lets your sales folks do what they do the best, selling!

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