Since the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted and displaced workers, there has been a steady shift in the priorities of the workforce. People are now seeking employment with companies that care about their staff and invest in their workforce.

Because of this, recruitment and talent management are seeing more significant challenges to remain staffed than ever before. To stay on top of these obstacles, leading employers turn to data to make intelligent choices with recruitment and retention strategies within their organisation.

How Serious Are the Current Challenges With Recruitment and Talent Management?

Since the great resignation, nearly 4.06 million Americans alone quit their jobs for better opportunities elsewhere. This is not to consider the millions globally who have also moved to improve their work conditions and leave for employment that offers greater growth prospects.

This is a good statistic for companies looking to recruit employees. But for those already struggling to keep their workforce, these are numbers to take seriously to c-suites and advise ways to improve talent management and recruitment processes.

What Does It Mean to Be a Data-driven HR?

Companies that drive their business decisions on solid data see higher growth and sales. Since employees are a significant driver of business success, it also makes sense to have data-driven decision-making in HR. This means that Human Resources builds a data-driven culture and utilises HR data fundamentals in the approach people analytics take with recruitment and talent management.

What Data Can Help HR with Talent Acquisition?

Before the pandemic, filling job vacancies was simpler. For all general purposes, posting a job opening was all talent managers needed to do to receive a large volume of quality candidates. Now, over two years after the pandemic and job vacancies are harder to fill.

Job openings in the UK alone range 54% above the January to March 2020 pre-coronavirus level. These are numbers talent managers should take seriously.

Some of the hardest-hit industries have been hospitality, food, and retail. By drawing in data-driven people analytics, talent managers can identify and being developing the best recruitment solutions to the problems. Taking this further you can also investigate the opportunities where tech in HR can help support your talent acquisition needs.

Five Most Useful Talent Acquisition Data Points to Measure for Greater Impact

Several metrics can be measured to improve the recruitment process for more efficiency. Determining the greatest barriers the company is contending with can decide what data to be collected. However its important to use analytics, data and technology to shape a comprehensive and future-proof talent acquisition strategy.

Labour Market

Labour market trends can give insight into what competitors and experts are doing. If organisations feel they are falling behind leading companies, studying the current labour trends that competitors are utilising and the general economy can help determine effective recruitment strategies. While the general economy, locally and globally, can give insight into salary and benefits that would most attract candidates.

Time-to-Fill

If a company finds itself scrambling to fill roles, this helps determine how long a particular role will take to fill. Knowing if it is a challenging position, such as a technical role, will prepare HR for proper planning, when to start sourcing for the job and how efficiently they can have someone in the company and onboarding.

Source of Hire

Suppose a business is not reaping the benefits of diversity in its workforce. In that case, identifying the best platform and methods of sourcing candidates improves the speed of finding employees and the quality of those employees.

Quality of Hire

If companies have low productivity or a high turnover rate, looking into the hiring quality can improve these issues. Establishing what a quality hire looks like gives insight into screening methods and skills and experience to look for.

Cost-per-hire

Suppose talent managers are questioned about why they are requesting new recruitment solutions, understanding how much of an investment it takes to fill roles assists with the argument and budget development. This can also cross over to talent management when persuading business leaders to adopt your suggested talent management strategies. 

How Data Can Help HR with Talent Management

Not only is talent management about attracting top talent, but it is also about the continued improvement of the employee experience through skills development and training. There are multiple company benefits to talent management based on data. One example it has been found that 94% of employees would stay at a company longer if that company invested in their career.

A data-driven HR impacts talent management through:

Workforce Planning

As our report showed, Insight222 People Analytics Trends 2022, a key area where data-driven decision-making HR and people analytics offer business value is through workforce planning.

Looking at your company’s talent intelligence or where employees are currently at with their skills base and skills the company will need in the future, workforce planning helps HR create a skills base talent strategy and training programs to close the skills gap. Or develop a talent marketplace within their organisation to develop the employee skills they need.

From workforce planning data, you can determine

• The skills and experience your current workforce have

• The skills and experience your future workforce will need

• The skills gaps that exist within your workforce

Training and Development

You can build an effective skills-based talent strategy that looks at what skills employees require to continue to succeed, contribute to the organisation, and develop L&D programs to meet the need.

Succession Planning

From the data collected and analysed, succession planning can be developed to improve advancement opportunities for employees. This helps build training and development, mentorship programs and talent marketplace platforms.

How to Collect Data for Talent Management

There are multiple means for people analytic teams and leaders to gather information regarding what the company needs and what employees want.

Performance Reviews

Performance reviews are effective as there can be one-on-one conversations and you can identify employee goals in the near future.

Employee Surveys

When used effectively, employe surveys engage employees with company culture while also listening to their needs and wants for their continued employment with the company.

AI

AI can make evaluations of what skills employees have and what skills the company may require in the future, then make suggestions.

How to Become a More Data-driven HR to Deliver Greater Impact 

Becoming first aware that intuition can only get you so far and that using data to evaluate the current situation with recruitment and talent management strategies will drive better results. With the difficulties that companies are currently facing in today’s economic landscape, data-driven decision-making in HR leads to a greater chance of navigating those challenges.

But becoming data-driven is more than just a mindset. Knowing the HR data fundamentals, including how to collect the data accurately, compel it into a compelling story for c-suites and evaluate the results, will give you the ability as HR professionals to deliver business value and impact your company’s recruitment and talent management efforts. 

Get Started with Data-Driven Organisation Design and Workforce Planning with myHRfuture

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The myHRfuture Academy hosts an array of data-driven HR, and People Analytics speciality courses. The Data-Driven Organisation Design and Workforce Planning training course will help you to understand the ‘work’ not just the workforce, and by using data and analytics you're able to build a framework to understand the roles, skills, objectives and activities that are available in your organisation today, and that your business needs for the future.

Our unique mix of training courses, videos, interviews, podcasts, case studies and articles help you build hands-on skills while providing real-life context to what you’ve learnt.

Enroll at the myHRfuture Academy today and build a data-driven HR team in your organisation now and make a positive impact on your recruitment and talent management needs!