The Role of People Analytics in Employee Experience
The rapidly changing business landscape has employers focusing on providing their workforce with the most positive experience, as a positive employee experience has contributed to more employee satisfaction, higher productivity, and greater organisational outcomes. To improve employee experience, HR professionals and business leaders are learning to understand the vital role people analytics has in the success of their efforts.
Why is People Analytics Important for Positive Employee Experience?
Employee experience is a continuing effort. With the labour market changing and becoming more competitive, it is vital for businesses to be more strategic. During a rapid growth period or uncertain economic periods, people analytics provides quantitative and qualitative data analytics for better people management planning and execution. This plays a major role in employee experience.
Because of its effectiveness, it is growing in practice. Our Insight222 2022 People Analytics Trends research, which surveyed 184 global companies, revealed substantial growth of the total people analytics employees within organisations. The research showed that the total employee headcount increased, from 1:4000 in 2020 to 1:2900 in 2021, and it has held strong in 2022. This means that in a company of 100,000 employees, the people analytics team size is, on average, 34 in 2022 and 2021, compared with 25 in 2020.
As Insight222 Executive Director, David Green pointed out:
"… we've seen that with the research that we've been doing at Insight222 over the years, that the importance and the influence of people analytics on the C-suite to make decisions is increasing all the time, probable still not where we want it to be, but it is improving, and the best people analytics teams are solving business challenges and actually delivering outcomes for the business, but also for the employees as well."
Additionally, the research shows that of the companies surveyed, 65% indicated that they increased their team size in the previous 12 months, compared to 55% in 2020. This growth is expected to continue as 68% of companies predict their team size to increase in the next 18-24 months as they strive to become or remain Leading Companies.
Where People Analytics Can Help Most With Employee Experience
Employee experience covers a wide range of areas across HR. People analytics provides value across every aspect of the employee journey. From employee pain points to moments that matter, people analytics can offer important insight into the most pressing challenges HR is facing today.
Talent Acquisition
The insight people analytics can provide for recruitment include improved methods for sourcing and acquiring talent. The HR data collected can offer suggestions for a smoother application process for the candidate. Or the information can expose issues with the communication channel between the recruiter and the candidate. People analytics can also research the effectiveness of the onboarding process. Remember, it can also assist with developing the company branding to make it the employer of choice.
Retention
Employee satisfaction with their company greatly influences why some employees stay while others leave. For some employees, it can be a bad boss or a toxic work environment. For others, it can be the work itself and the feeling of burnout. Many others want growth opportunities at their workplace and leave when there is none. People analytics can work to develop ways to identify the reasons individuals leave or stay in order to shift the company's focus to an employee-centric view of their people management.
Workforce Planning
It is crucial for employees to know how to perform their jobs, but it is just as important for companies to be adaptable to the changing labour market. As roles and jobs become obsolete, so comes the need for upskilling or reskilling. People analytics can find the most effective ways first to train new hires and plan for continued advancement of people within the team.
Employee Engagement
A healthy workforce is a happy workforce. Employees who feel well can focus on their jobs and be productive. People analytics can find ways to encourage healthy living with their employees while keeping a tab on workloads and the company's morale.
Diversity and Inclusion
With the knowledge of the vast benefits of having a company culture that is diverse and everyone feels psychological safety to speak up, there is an opportunity for People Analytics to explore how to attract a great diverse workforce and how to develop a climate in the company where people do not fear repercussions if they point out a safety hazard or a bad policy.
How to Partner People Analytics With Employee Experience
The goal is to create a company culture that supports employee experience. By connecting people analytics with EX, businesses can build an exceptional employee experience.. The use of collected data to measure and track employee sentiment and understand employee feedback gives them all the tools they need to personalise and create an employee-centric approach to employee experience and take control of their organisational outcomes.
Talent Acquisition
With recruitment, people analytics can look at what attracts candidates and persuades them to join their team. Here they can analyse time-to-fill position or application job metrics and compare them to industry benchmarks to determine the effectiveness of their recruitment efforts. By looking at these numbers, companies can see if they need to work on the application process or explore the salary range they offer.
For onboarding to be reviewed, people analytics can measure time-to-productivity or the percentage of new hires that do not last the year. HR can see if new employees need more support during their first year or if the program is working.
Retention
people analytics leaders can use several methods to understand why people leave an organisation or stay. The most insightful is the turnover rates. To dig deeper, stay and exit interviews are also an excellent tool for people analytics to gain real-time feedback. Also, gathering information from one-on-one meetings with managers provides insight into building a positive employee experience and what is driving employees to leave.
Workforce Planning
For companies to stay ahead of the changes in their industry and the labour market, their HR and people analytics must shift to a more skill-based model. This means creating a culture of learning and the best methods for employees. By starting at the top with role-modelling around learning, courses and programs can personalise employee learning.
To determine the effectiveness of training and leadership programs, data analysis can be done by looking at the time it takes for people to learn, the rates of advancement of employees, and the roles people advance into. Seeing how employees progressed in the past can reveal gaps in advancement opportunities and where there need adjustments.
Employee Engagement
Employee engagement can give a lot of insight into employee satisfaction with their experience. Using employee listening tools such as pulse surveys can give people analytics insight. Retention and turnover rates can give clues to how employees feel at the workplace and if their employee experience is positive. This way, the full employee experience can be modified when sentiment analysis is complete.
Diversity and inclusion
When measuring the DEI of an organisation, it should consider every metric. Some elements to consider are production rate, absenteeism, quality rates, shrinkage, safety incidents and customer satisfaction. People analytics can use data and surveys to investigate the company culture, including the organisation's climate and employee engagement.
When measuring anything that improves the employee experience, the key is to use data analytics to measure and track employee engagement, sentiment analysis to understand employee feedback, and how to use data to personalise the employee experience.
How Leading Companies Are Using People Analytics to Improve the Employee Experience
Many Leading Companies are discovering the business value people analytics provides when making improvements in employee experience.
Microsoft understood the importance of employee engagement and wanted to raise the bar with their employees' full journey within the organisation. They developed an effective employee listening program that created specific surveys that got to the heart of issues without over-saturating employees with surveys. They also implemented focus groups for more personal feedback. From the information collected, Microsoft was able to identify the key factors that were holding their employees back and making things more difficult for employees to perform their roles.
What they found out were means to help their employees thrive. Afterwards, they worked to remove obstacles such as poor communication or bureaucracy. Microsoft continued to maintain a healthy employee listening program that has helped them navigate the last few years, which has proved to be challenging for any company, big or small.
How to Connect Your People Analytics With Your Employee Experience
The best way to connect people analytics with your employee experience is to foster an employee-centric data-driven culture within your organisation. To do this is to educate all stakeholders on the importance of data-supported decisions when it comes to EX. Because when companies deliver a positive employee experience, they see large benefits.
Discover How Employee Listening Changes the Way You Connect With Your People and Deliver Value to Your Business
You may have the initiative for an employee listening strategy, but you’re not sure where to begin. If that's the case, book a free consultation with one of our experts for our Consulting Discover service. Our Discover engagement helps you understand how employee listening can accelerate your people strategy.
Together, we will explore what and who you should be listening to, why listening is important and what your goals are. We will build a compelling story and vision for employee listening and connect this to the your mission, your team, and your technology. This typically delivered over a 12-week period and looks to deliver tangible business value to your organisation.