Boosting Employee Retention With People Analytics

Big ideas for big data

The Covid-19 pandemic has triggered a systemic shift in the way business is conducted. The popularity and easy availability of flexible and remote work opportunities and competitive compensation being offered in the current job market have led many workers to rethink their employment situation, leading to waves of departures. This ‘Great Resignation’ has seen 22% of Americans relocate temporarily or permanently, while 4.5 million Americans quit their jobs. 
 
In the present scenario, the labor market is so distributed that filling in key positions locally has become challenging. In fact, statistics show that 68% of Americans prefer continued remote work and consider themselves more productive when working from the ease of their home offices. This is a double-edged sword for businesses today. It is important for businesses to adapt to their existing workers’ sentiment by being open to remote work. 
 

Companies that don’t adapt will struggle to retain talent against the resignation wave. On the other hand, the flexibility of remote work allows companies to hire talent from anywhere – increasing their available pool of candidates significantly.
 
This drastic change is causing companies to alter their talent acquisition strategies to focus on two big trends: retention and filtering through the noise to find the best candidates. To accomplish this, they are increasingly leveraging data to better understand candidates and make more informed decisions throughout the hiring process.
 
The labor market has undergone a complete transformation, and retaining employees or hiring the highest quality candidates, who are also likely to stay for the long term, has become a growing and critical issue. And one way to help solve these challenges is to leverage high-quality data which provides deeper analytics on the background of potential candidates. 

Here’s a closer look at how employers can utilize people analytics to hire better talent faster in today’s highly competitive market for top talent. 

Leverage High-quality Data

Today, it is more important than ever to have access to better professional data for talent acquisition. The best recruiting solutions are powered by high-quality professional data sets that are accurate, fresh, and comprehensive. Businesses can use these accurate and robust data sets to provide the largest pools of candidates possible. 

This data can also help them vet potential candidates by understanding their career path and retention potential. Best of all, this data, in aggregate, can help employers understand how they perform in the wider labor market and become experts on talent migration, catching trends in skills, titles, and candidate migration before their competitors.  

Keep the Data Fresh

While for many businesses, location is no longer a barrier to employment, it is not yet irrelevant. Hiring managers may be in need of talent that is physically available in a specific market, or may be prohibited from hiring in certain regions due to regulatory barriers or tax complexity. 

With the workforce now more distributed than ever due to substantial relocation, recruiters need to ensure they have access to the most current possible information about where candidates currently live, and whether they have recently changed roles, in order to generate the most efficient possible pool of talent for specific roles. 

Because professional data can be slow-moving – people often don’t update their resume address immediately, especially after a temporary relocation – access to the freshest possible data is essential for those looking to backfill roles that need to be filled with some urgency.  

Data Can Show Industry Trends

In a competitive labor market, the most complete datasets contain the widest range of candidates. Businesses can’t afford to miss a potential hire because their recruiting tools don’t have the best data. 

A comprehensive data set will show the latest industry trends and employment statistics, and also give an in-depth knowledge of the demand and supply of qualified candidates. A large dataset with organized and relevant information that is easy to comprehend is considered to be the best for talent acquisition purposes. 

Using Data to Make Informed Hiring Decisions

To stave off resignations and understand growing skill trends, market research data can help recruiters take a long view of the candidate and understand them, their job history, longevity, and title trajectory to better assess how likely they are to stay in the company. 

In addition, it will help and encourage employers to look beyond their local geography and cast a wide net that considers the largest number of possible candidates and increase flexibility by building a remote workforce by sourcing non-local talent.  

Do the Math

Workers are every company’s most important asset, which is why hiring employees and retaining them cannot be done with limited or incomplete data. 

The right market research databases not only provide precision and accuracy, but also empower the talent teams in the recruiting process in deciding upon compensation plans and future talent goals. It is now time for organizations to let sophisticated data analytics do the heavy lifting so there is enough time and resources available to focus on talent nurturing, relationship building, and other critical aspects of promoting a healthy company culture.

Ben Eisenberg is Director of Product, Applications & Web at People Data Labs. Visit www.peopledatalabs.com  Connect Ben Eisenberg