How to maximise the value of HR analytics and unleash limitless potential of people data

HR analytics or people analytics or workforce analytics is the use of people data to analyse and solve business problems. HR analytics is turning out to be the most critical capability for HR leaders to succeed in the years to come. Inorder for next generation HR leaders to succeed, they need to clearly understand 'what' they need to do with the data , 'when' it make sense to use data vs instinct to maintain 'human touch' and the difference between operatinal reporting, dashboard and strategic action driven HR analytics. Many organisations are investing heavily in building analytics technology, however not everyone is unleashing the potential of people data with HR analytics platform. It is often forgotten that HR business leaders capability in data and analytics is as important as having the right HR analytics tool. 

In order to unleash the potential of people data, it is important to understand what are your critical people data assets, what value people data can add if combined with other internal and external data and how organisation want to use this data. Below model shows journey from data into insights and actions in the context of HR and what are the critical factors to be considered to maximise the value of HR analytics.

Below are the stages for converting data into insights and action

• DATA - first step is to have the data in an accessible format. If data is held in 200 excel sheet it is not going to help in making the decision. So the basic requriement is to have data in your HR/talent system or in data warehouse or a data lake
• ANALYSIS - the next step is to have the rigt tool to be able to visualize, apply predictive modelling and optimise the data you have.
• INSIGHT - the right skillset and tools to translate what happened, what will happen and what should happen in to simple understandable visuals
• ACTION - organisational intelligence to converts those insights into actionable business decisions related to people, people operations, processes or strategy formulation

Inorder to unleash the limitless potential of HR analytics, 4 critical success factors need to come together

1. High quality data from the right source - this includes, internal people data, enterprise wide data and external research data
2. Great HR analytics platform - which can handle 'big data' and have ability to visualise and tell the story
3. Skillful Data engineers, analysts and data scientists - who understands the technology, business needs, knows how to put data together to make sense and create data model model to make sense out of the data
4. Data driven HR leaders - who rely on data to make decisions and know what they want to do with the data and when they need to rely on data vs their instinct