HR and business leaders looking to improve strategic workforce planning and create talent-ready organizations will find talent and workforce analytics a powerful enabler.
Organizations large and small, private and public, can leverage vast amounts of data that can help them predict, find, engage and keep the most talented employees. Unfortunately, most don’t.
In our 2015 Talent Trends Survey of global HR leaders, 56% indicated they use talent analytics and insights to inform their workforce planning process. Of those who do, the number one reason for using analytical data was to make the workforce planning process more efficient (73%), followed closely by accurate mapping and addressing of skills gaps (69%), and the ability to clearly identify high-potential employees for development (65%). Respondents saw a number of uses for workforce data and analytics, including to improve alignment of people and company strategy, linking performance to compensation, and deeper access to external talent pools.
5 tips on using talent analytics & predictive workforce intelligence
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1. assemble the internal team: Whether its recruitment leaders, HR business partners, or hiring managers, identify the team members who can best determine what intelligence you need — and bring in a technology expert to facilitate ease of reporting and a data expert to help you turn numbers into business recommendations. | |
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2. establish a baseline: You can’t know where you’re going without knowing where you’ve been. Capturing a snapshot of the current status will provide the critical baseline to benchmark performance against. | |
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3. identify critical metrics: You don’t want to analyze everything, so choose the data that will contribute real value to your workforce and business planning and can help you to look ahead. |
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4. share the findings: Reach out to the appropriate stakeholders who can benefit from the data you’ve collected. Collaborate on a plan of action in a defined period of time. Follow up on the data to ensure you’ve measured and interpreted the information correctly. Make adjustments if necessary. |
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5. upskill the HR team: As big data becomes the prevalent resource and tool, HR professionals need to develop skills and comfort with data, statistics, and analytics. |
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