How Can People Analytics Boost and Measure Productivity?
Employee productivity is the heartbeat of any organisation, driving profitability, customer satisfaction, and competitive advantage. Conversely, low productivity can strain resources and lead to inefficiencies, project setbacks, and missed opportunities.
But simply setting high KPIs to boost productivity won't get you far. Mostly, it's virtually only possible to predict which activities will lead to meaningful improvements with strategic data-backed HR insights. That's why people analytics is essential for understanding and enhancing employee productivity.
Peeling Back the Layers of Analytics in Employee Productivity
Using talent analytics and productivity tools, managers can measure employee performance to drive business growth.
It gives a special understanding of what makes employees productive and helps organisations find ways to improve and enhance employee performance.
At its core, people analytics is about leveraging strategic HR insights from data to create actionable plans. It allows organisations to measure the effectiveness of their resources, assess and develop talent, and identify key performance indicators. Here are some common strategies and methodologies used in analytics to measure productivity:
Performance Metrics:
Performance metrics are the building blocks of measuring productivity as they offer concrete data on how well team members and overall teams perform. Metrics like key performance indicators (KPIs), revenue per employee, and project completion rates clearly show how individual employees contribute to your organisation.
However, it's not just about tracking metrics like output and efficiency. The power of people analytics lies in its capacity to provide context to these metrics.
For instance, you need more information to know that a sales team closed a certain number of deals in a month. Combining performance metrics with other data, like collaboration metrics, can help us figure out why one team did better than another.
By combining performance metrics with collaboration metrics, we can determine the reasons behind the success of one team compared to another. We can analyse factors such as customer interactions, sales strategies, and the most successful time of day. This can then create targeted employee training programmes and productivity-boosting strategies.
Employee Surveys:
Surveys help understand employee feelings, work issues, and what motivates them.
However, we must analyse these surveys using advanced people analytics (and other business metrics) to gain maximum value.
It can find links between employee engagement and company culture, helping organisations improve productivity with specific actions. Then, when you pair employee survey and sentiment analysis data with employee productivity metrics, you can better understand the employee experience and conduct a more accurate performance analysis.
Real-Time Monitoring Tools:
Tools like time-tracking apps, activity trackers, and employee communication tools can give insights into employee behaviour and boost productivity. Organisations can evaluate their employees' productivity in real-time by monitoring response times, task duration, and teamwork with other teams.
For example, by looking at the number of hours spent on a task, organisations can more accurately measure how long it's taking their employees to complete assignments. This can help them better plan projects and allocate resources accordingly.
Similarly, tracking employee communication patterns can provide valuable insights into team collaboration and between individuals. Teams can use this data to identify areas where they struggle with productivity due to a lack of communication and collaboration or where they work together effectively.
By analysing this data, businesses can identify bottlenecks, streamline processes, and optimise resource allocation. However, it is important to consider the ethics of monitoring productivity in real-time. I suggest using Insight222's Ethics Charter.
Benefits of Using Analytics to Enhance Employee Productivity
Data-driven insights can give organisations a wealth of actionable information about their employees and the workplace environment.
Identifying Bottlenecks:
Analytics is a guiding light in the often-convoluted labyrinth of organisational workflows and processes. By delving deep into data, it uncovers bottlenecks that often go unnoticed, hindering productivity and efficiency.
For instance, it might reveal that a specific department or demographic consistently faces delays due to insufficient resources or inefficient procedures. Similarly, talent analytics might pinpoint instances of employee burnout caused by an accumulation of unidentified micro stresses over time.
Understanding Employee Behaviour:
This understanding is a game-changer. It allows organisations to tailor strategies and initiatives that resonate with their employees' unique motivations and preferences.
Take, for instance, workforce planning.
By meticulously analysing historical data alongside external factors like talent market conditions, businesses can proactively address challenges, predict future trends, and seize opportunities through informed workforce planning.
It's about staying ahead of the curve, being agile in responding to changing market dynamics, and aligning your workforce to future trends. This advantage isn't just about managing the present; it's about shaping the future.
Strategies for Enhancing Productivity
With strategic HR insights, organisations can take a more proactive approach towards enhancing employee productivity. Here are some strategies to consider:
Continuous Feedback:
Performance reviews are often the first thought when we think of feedback and productivity. However, the most significant impact can stem from ongoing dialogues empowering employees and managers.
In this context, people analytics becomes an active facilitator of this dynamic feedback. It enables the identification of areas where employees excel and where they need improvement. This capacity to track and measure performance continuously eliminates the guesswork and brings objectivity into the evaluation process, making feedback more constructive.
Consequently, it fosters a culture of growth, where data informs employees and actively engages them in their professional development. In this scenario, feedback, powered by people analytics, becomes a catalyst for continuous learning and productivity enhancement.
Training and Development:
Let's turn to skills gap analysis and using talent analytics to determine our workforce planning. We can create learning and development pathways that align with the organisation's long-term goals and bridge the gap between the current and desired skill sets. This way, employees' learning efforts can translate into higher productivity by efficiently utilising their talents and skills.
In precision learning, we customise training to individual needs, maximising its impact on productivity. For more information on how you can bridge the gap between skills demand and business objectives, our myHRfuture Academy courses have a host of online courses to help support your upskilling.
Workplace Environment:
The physical and virtual workplace environment plays a pivotal role in productivity. By leveraging talent analytics, organisations can understand which work arrangements and settings work best for their employees. This data-driven approach to workplace design creates an environment that fosters collaboration and innovation and promotes employee wellbeing.
People analytics can also identify areas where the workplace environment may be hindering productivity, such as outdated technology or inadequate facilities. By addressing these issues, businesses can create a more conducive and productive work environment for their employees.
Conclusion
As organisations continue to embrace digital HR and HR technology, talent analytics will play a crucial role in understanding and enhancing employee productivity.
Businesses can use tools and analysis to learn about their workforce, find areas to improve, and create strategies to increase productivity.
From continuous employee feedback to strategic training programs and a conducive workplace environment, people analytics empowers businesses to enhance the employee experience and boost productivity levels proactively.
At the end of the day, it's not just about collecting data; it's about using that data to make informed decisions that drive success. So, embrace the power of analytics and unlock the full potential of your workforce today.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jasdeep Kareer
Jasdeep joined Insight222 in 2023 as a member of the products and services team. She brings a wealth of experience in data science, analytics, and client delivery having worked across a wide variety of industry sectors. After working for three years in Dubai, Jasdeep returned to the UK in 2019 where she established and led the People Science team at GE. She went on to develop an analytics client facing function within the analytics business at Workday. Jasdeep holds a Ph.D. in Applied Statistics from the University of Cambridge, and a Master’s in Mathematics & Statistics from The University of Sheffield. In her free time, Jasdeep enjoys travelling, dancing, trying different cuisines from around the world and following Formula 1.
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