We know that businesses who utilise workforce analytics are generally more successful, primarily because the data allows them to make smarter decisions. But how do business leaders actually view and use the data workforce analytics provides to make these decisions?
Most leaders still use traditional styles of reporting to help guide business decisions, but there are a few new approaches that are helping set workforce analytics users apart from their contemporaries.
1. Analytics Dashboards
Creating dashboards for HR allows ‘engine room’ checks of the organisation’s workforce. By compiling data that needs to be watched, like retention rates, absenteeism, or performance, HR can quickly see any potential issues or trends without having to do any active analysis.
Dashboard analysis is fantastic for line level managers too, as it provides an easy way to sift through the unnecessary data and focus on their teams’ key focus areas – all without running any specific reports or data analysis.
2. Analytics Slideshows
A more traditional way of presenting data, slideshows are still very useful for presenting data summaries to teams or managers to backup strategies, identify concerns and measure workforce performance.
The key to good analytics slideshows is to avoid irrelevant data and focus on what information you need to express. Clear diagrams and comparisons are the easiest way to do this. In any good analytics platform, every chart can be added to a slideshow with a click, making it quick and easy to select which insights you’d like to present. This slideshow should then be shared through the software or exported as a PowerPoint presentation.
3. Analytics Reports
There are times when a slideshow isn’t detailed or extensive enough to facilitate the decision making process. For complex decisions, the traditional report can more effectively provide a large volume of data, with far greater detail. The rules for creating useful, effective reports are really the same as for all other forms of analytics representation – keep the data relevant, clear and specific.
To speed up the report creation process, only export the data you decision makers will need (or want). It’s often a good idea to annotate and expand on these analytics insights with some potential solutions and ideas to solve the issues or opportunities uncovered.
4. Live-View Analytics
By far the most responsive way to utilise workforce analytics is to directly analyse the data from your workforce analytics platform. This allows you to ask questions as they come up, rather than requiring you to prepare a new slideshow, report or add it to an external dashboard. This is by far the best approach when initially analysing a problem or issue, as it allows for a great deal of exploration and understanding.
Of course, to get to this level of workforce analytics proficiency, business leaders will have developed their confidence in getting around the software to find the answers they require, but most modern workforce analytics platforms are quite easy to learn.
The key is to remember the purpose for workforce analytics – to provide good data to decision makers, allowing them to make good business decisions. So long as the insights are readily available, easy to understand and utilised to their full potential, business leaders can easily set themselves apart from the competition.
