Here’s why People Analytics Matters for HR

By: Ralf Bovers

Why People Analytics matters for HR chart with purple overlay

As professions mature, they define consistent standards and metrics that enable professionals to measure impact. Measurement has always been the hallmark for human progress. We have learned to measure everything tangible such as time, weight and space all the way to measuring business value in terms of money and assets; depicted through financials of a business. Later we set standards such as the GAAP for finance. However, we ran into problems when stakeholders realized the fact that gauging long term business value is more complex than viewing these financials. This paradox led to a global debate that enabled us to realize that business value is a combination of both tangibles and intangibles i.e. financials and human capital.

Today businesses value human capital with their own unique metrics and measures that has made it difficult to compare business performance across an industry. This has brought forward the need to develop standards around measuring human capital. And who better to take responsibility for reporting the value of human capital then the HR itself. Change is here with the recent introduction of the ISO 30414 in Human resource management in January 2019. HR professionals are uniquely positioned with their background and professional acumen to take this initiative forward. Reporting human capital not only initiates a data driven approach to decision making but also enables the introduction of people analytics.

People Analytics – Fundamental for showing business value

“Most organizations feel that HR is not in control. Workforce Reporting and People Analytics are tools to sync Workforce, Organization and Culture with the business strategy.”
– Dirk Jonker, Founder & CEO of Crunchr

At the most fundamental level HR helps to mitigate people risks. If we were to remove all the personnel from a business today, they would equate for more than 80 percent of the entire business value. Every individual brings a unique skill-set, HR’s purpose is not only to recruit, on-board, train, manage performance, compensate, reward and recognize but also to retain its workforce. Using the right metrics and measures, people analytics endorses the value that HR brings to the business.

People Analytics – Your invitation for a seat in the board room

The language of the board is strategy. Backed with the right matrices and measures, people analytics can assist HR strategists to highlight areas such as health and safety, management skills, leadership development, engagement, culture alignment and succession planning. In such a case, people analytics can make a huge impact on the predictions and credibility of the HR department.

People Analytics – Key to improve business performance

Companies that have adopted advanced people analytics capabilities experience on an average 25 per cent increase in productivity, alongside a huge rise in recruitment efficiency and a drop in attrition rates. The CIPD also confirms that using people data leads to improved business performance. True people analytics encompass HR data, the entire workforce data and customer insights. It measures, analyses and knits together all this information to improve the decision-making process. Thus, using people analytics can enable the HR to measure and track people progress in relation to the business strategy.

Conclusion

The bar has been raised for the HR fraternity. HR professionals have the opportunity to understand, harness and leverage the best insights. This change will not only solidify HR’s status as a business partner but also guarantee their position as a strategic advisor to the business.

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