Love it or hate it, HR teams need access to 100% reliable people data. And more than ever they need real-time data. Anecdotally we hear so many HR Leaders tell us that they simply just don’t trust their data. Today, having the answers to make great people decisions is a necessity. To maintain business continuity and respond to change quickly. HR leaders want to make decisions based on data they trust. They don’t want to base decisions on incomplete data, which doesn’t reflect the current situation. So often the data is out of date (as it takes days to get it). Or its unreliable because it’s pulled from various systems, stitched together in excel and spreadsheets that contain legacy errors that no one has spotted. This is not about poor decision making, it’s about relying 100% on the data to trust your decisions.
The power of people analytics
The pandemic has highlighted the need for agility. People strategy and plans have been up-ended and disrupted due to changes in working environments, business needs and the personal circumstances of employees. Businesses need to continually reassess staff availability and their skills to respond to business requirements including who they need, where they need them to work, and for how long. Getting the information and data on which to make strategic decisions is key to competitive advantage and agility.
Paving the way to better decisions based on data and analytics you trust, you’ll gain both visibility. And the ability to spot patterns, inter-relationships and trends that are impacting your business and your people. This is knowledge, and this knowledge will empower you to take action and resolve business problems. It will also help you prevent problems before they happen. As meaningful actions become more timely and more meaningful, your organisation will see the positive impact.
This is made possible when you use a people platform such as elementsuite that brings your data together from all your systems into a single source. This creates your invaluable single source of truth when it comes to your people data. You have access to your people data in real-time, with no more waiting. Plus, this confidence gives access to insights that enable you to look forward, not just backwards – as your data accurately and transparently reflects what REALLY has happened. This approach to data and people analytics will enable you to answer questions you may not have even thought to ask. You can avoid unintentional biases that can come from bad data and impact business decisions.
Realising the value of your data
There is real value in your data which you need to realise. Technology and digitization have enabled businesses to collect and gather more data than ever before. But if you can’t access or consolidate it, you can’t translate all that data into valuable actionable insights. To drive strategic HR operations, you must identify the key data and metrics. These can be hiring, budgets, sickness and absence patterns. Just because you collect the raw data, doesn’t mean it is surfaced, and presented clearly to provide HR leaders with what they need to make better decisions.
The power of people analytics in every day business decisions is undeniable, organizations who excel at people analytics are 3.1 times more likely to outperform their peers. To start using this information to make better decisions though, we have to transform the way we handle data. Today, HR or IT professionals often serve as gatekeepers for data. But to have success with people analytics, there needs to be more transparency. The first step is making analytics more accessible.
Unlock your data
Every day, people across your organization are making decisions that either impact your people or need to be supported by your people. Even when organizations have ‘good data’ it can be challenging to extract what you need and convert into insights that inform better decisions. Not everyone is ‘good with data’ so making it simpler and easier to interpret is key. That way you can do more, you’re able to make good decisions quickly, and achieve better business outcomes.
We understand that company’s personal data will have a slightly different personality. HR systems cannot be rigid, everyone’s HR data setup will be slightly different, so capitalising on new technology like elementsuite, make data more accessible. Businesses need to collate more people data in areas such as furlough pay, with many legacy systems unable to accommodate ‘new fields’ of data. The result is data is stored in more places, such as excel. And its no longer accessible or consolidated to support insights and decision making.
People analytics is directly linked to business value
Applying people analytics should be an underlying business function. But if your organisation doesn’t know where to start with people analytics it can be difficult to connect the investment to the business value. Let’s take a familiar issue such as employee attendance. Manager are observing late arrivals on Monday mornings or sickness on a Monday. Often this is spread out over many months, and often missed when done manually. However, people analytics gives you the power to make connections that might have been overlooked and take action.
With a consolidated view of your attendance data, a single source of that data, you can draw out actionable insights which are valuable to the business, enabling you to address issues, faster. People analytics enables better staff scheduling, better understanding on how to reward people, and the ability to prevent issues. Best of all you can make decision based on fact and you can trust those decisions.
Business benefits
For HR and payroll information, security and privacy are paramount. As your people analytics platform collects more data points, you can explore more and more questions. Which means you will ultimately lead you to make better decisions across the board.
People analytics shouldn’t be a bottleneck, instead, an investment in people analytics should be an investment in a decision-making platform that allows you to create a culture around making better decisions.
When everyone has the facts and insights to support their decision-making process, each choice can contribute to a larger strategic outcome. Don’t just lift your HR or payroll data out of various systems. Instead ensure it is transformed and fully optimised for whatever purpose you have in mind. Which means trusting your data and trusting your decisions.
elementsuite HR Software
