Unquestionably, Talent Analytics is all the rage these days.
Everyone’s talking about it, but have HR departments truly embraced analytics yet? Should they?
And most importantly how can you tell if your organization is really ready for and would benefit from Talent Analytics?
Let’s look at some of today’s most critical talent management (or people management) challenges and determine how Talent Analytics and the ability to examine the wealth of available data can help:
1. High cost of recruiting
Talent acquisition is expensive. In addition to the high cost of a bad hire, there are large amounts of time and resources required to source the position and attract, interview and interact with candidates.
Talent Analytics Boost: Talent Analytics can help you understand why certain candidates fail after their hiring while others succeed. You can then reassess your onboarding practices, teams and hiring managers, to achieve better future results.
You can identify which types of candidates, based on educational background, work experience, location and industry, most often succeed in your organization and invest appropriately. Data can also reveal which types of social media and other interaction has worked best for recruiting your best talent.
2. High cost of employee retention
Employee turnover is extremely expensive and a drain on resources and morale. HR needs to do all it can to avoid turnover by improving employee retention rates.
Talent Analytics Boost: Evidence shows that good onboarding helps improve employee retention, as does employee engagement. Data can show you which employees are most engaged, which ones are not and which are most at risk of leaving. From there, you can implement plans to improve your organization’s engagement, perhaps through automation of time-consuming procedures and consistency of processes.
You can also analyze which employees are more productive faster and answer questions as to why, based on hard data. Perhaps it is a particular process, a particular manager or something else that can be modified to remedy the situation.
If you know there are problems or see them coming, they can hopefully be addressed. And this will help your retention rate.
3. Better employee engagement
Studies show that engaged employees lead to better business results for the organization. To show HR’s strategic value – improving the organization’s bottom line through better people management – HR leaders need to ensure employee engagement is top of mind and find ways to improve it.
Talent Analytics Boost: Data provides insight and clarity to which employees are engaged and which are not. This information can be tied to performance data, providing insight on your top performers, your potential future leaders and more, all resulting in a better-performing organization. Large amounts of data are available from social and other networks, providing further engagement insight.
4. An improved competitive edge for the organization
While there is increased discussion about talent analytics, the number of organizations that are actually utilizing analytics and benefitting from it is a not nearly as high as it could be. So, while it is clearly the way forward, it is still early in the process, and the adoption of data analysis can give your organization a competitive edge.
Talent Analytics Boost: Talent Analytics and analysis of big data can be used to gain insight for better decision-making for your organization. Just be sure you pick one or a handful of areas that you can gain the most from.
For example, to begin this process, perhaps focus only on hiring, talent assessment, or employee retention. It will likely depend on your biggest needs, such as a necessary hiring surge. If retention is a primary concern, you might want to look at employee engagement. You can always expand your use of data analysis to other areas.
5. Immediate real-time analysis
Typically, when we do have the opportunity to analyze data, it is historical. Historical data can be very useful, providing insight into what happened, when it happened and even why. But while valuable, historical data is not nearly as valuable as having current, up-to-the-minute data and analysis of that data at our fingertips.
Talent Analytics Boost: Talent Analytics tools are available today that can provide HR leaders and professionals the latest analytical information in real-time, allowing for immediate decision-making. These real-time analytical tools also reduce the time and resources spent acquiring the insightful data.
For example, if data can provide insight about an employee who is at risk of quitting, it’s better to know that information sooner than later, so steps can be taken to potentially prevent the departure.
What’s better than real-time analytics?
If you really want to start to make a difference in how your organization operates with regards to its people and back it up with talent analytics, the time can be now.
If these above areas are of concern and you want to stop going on gut feel by providing better insight and better decision-making to the organization, it’s time to get started with Talent Analytics.