Why HR’s Future Is Data-Driven And Where HR Should Focus

HR should use data to drive decision-making

In the past two years, organizations have encountered heightened turnover, high competition for talent, and new policies. Organizations have made changes to attract great talent, but just because the employee experience has evolved, doesn’t mean it’s great. Flexible work hours, a remote policy, or even bringing your dog to work doesn’t mean employees will suddenly be engaged.

People need to remain at the forefront of decision-making. When those decisions are rooted in data, employee experience, and business impact win.

HR knows that people data supports decision-making. It’s just been difficult getting the rest of the leadership on board and figuring out where to start.

Strategic business initiatives drive the demand for HR intelligence. Creating an excellent employee experience or making purposeful cultural decisions shouldn’t be done on a hunch. HR data tools are essential to strategically impact culture, engagement, and performance.

Leadership values HR analytics like turnover rate and time to hire for strategic decision-making. According to McKinsey & Company, 70% of executives have prioritized HR analytics.

The SEC even mandated publicly traded companies to report on human capital, emphasizing the importance of people strategies and metrics. This supports what HR has known all along. Employee success has a business impact.

Leadership is starting to understand that the employee voice matters, indicating the need to connect employee surveys and feedback data to business goals. This matches what other functions have been doing for years — using data to support decision-making. Fully equipped with resources and support, HR leaders can begin to build the knowledge they need to see the full picture and make a strategic impact.

Other business functions are already using data for their strategic decisions. Your CFO wouldn’t come to a meeting stating the company is doing well financially without the data to support their perspective. Data helps tell important stories about the business, justify key decisions, and help leaders focus on what matters most.

To be a strategic HR partner, HR needs to be able to understand and tell stories about the organization’s biggest asset, its people. People analytics elevate the credibility of HR decisions, increase buy-in, improve decision-making, and drive better outcomes.

Great analytics empower leaders to make the connection between people and business goals, so managers can make meaningful changes. Democratizing HR intelligence provides the ability for the entire organization to know what is happening with their team and paves the path for the best possible decisions. This gives HR leaders more time to be strategic.

HR knows the power of data and the competitive advantage it provides in an intense labor market. When you make strategic decisions based on data, you are in the driver’s seat to employee and business success.

A report by Deloitte showed high-performing organizations are twice as likely to use people analytics. To create the best experience for employees, you need to have valuable people insights available immediately. Working from year-old information in a competitive and constantly changing environment doesn’t work.

Turnover. Why are your best people leaving? Evaluating information from exit surveys, pulse surveys, and annual engagement surveys can help you connect the dots and make impactful changes to better the employee experience.

Culture. A survey showed 83% of respondents believe leaders are responsible for creating and shaping an organization’s culture. If you’re not directing the organizational culture, someone else is. Analyzing data helps you assess challenges and be more intentional with culture to influence employee engagement.

Roles. Wouldn’t it be great to tie performance evaluations with goals and growth? What about having up-to-date data that identifies employees ready for a new challenge or those who might be looking to leave? People analytics can help you use talent reviews to mitigate bias and help people find their perfect place in an organization.

HR leaders know that data can support their people decisions. But many feel overwhelmed about where to start or are stuck in manual and ineffective processes. Knowing what data is important and figuring out how often to analyze it can feel daunting. Making sure you’re able to have real-time, easy to access, easy to understand data that you can connect to business goals and other business data is key.

To be strategic, HR leaders need intelligence that is:
 

With the growing need for people analytics comes the growing need for up-to-date data. Doing more with people data means we should always be listening. Time-static metrics from annual talent reviews and biennial engagement surveys won’t cut it.

HR isn’t used to real-time data, but this is on the horizon. People analytics technology can help organizations see, understand, and act on insights in real-time, enabling them to have a bigger and faster impact on business success.

Intelligent dashboards allow us the ability to ask great questions, analyze accurate data, and make a plan of action. It allows us to strategically make decisions for employee experience. More importantly, it allows us to impact key business outcomes.

Finally, people analytics is most successful when connected to overall goals and business objectives. This ensures HR is focused on the right strategies and tactics at the right time, and that their efforts are impacting the overall success of the organization.

HR leaders should be able to support their decisions with people analytics to provide intelligent insights and help navigate, evolve, and implement great experiences for employee and business success.