Workforce analytics have traditionally focused on HR’s use of them when their value can actually have significant overall business impacts. Realizing this, more business leaders are demanding insights into workforce dynamics to unearth insights that weren’t apparent before.

Businesses often claim that talent is their greatest asset, but they’re not always able to track what’s working, what isn’t and why. For example, in Deloitte Consulting’s 2018 Global Human Capital Trends report, 71% of survey participants said their companies consider people analytics a high priority, but only 10% are “very ready” to deal with it. According to David Fineman, specialist leader at  Deloitte Consulting, who co-authored the report, business leaders want insights into six focus areas that include workforce planning and shaping, recruiting and staffing talent optimization, culture and engagement, performance and rewards, and HR service delivery.

“The important distinction between focus areas that are addressed today compared with the focus areas from prior years is the emphasis on issues that are important to business leaders, not limiting analytics recipients to an HR audience,” said Fineman.

In fact, the Deloitte report explicitly states that board members and CEOs want access to people analytics because they’re “impatient with HR teams that can’t deliver actionable information and insights…”

As businesses continue to digitize more tasks and functions, it’s essential for them to understand the current makeup of their workforces, what talent will be needed in the future, and what’s necessary to align the two.

Shebani Patel, People Analytics leader at professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said that companies now want to understand employee journeys from onboarding to daily work experiences to exit surveys.

“They’re trying to get more strategic about how all of that comes together to build and deliver an exceptional [employee] experience that ultimately has ROI attached to it,” she said.

What companies are getting right

The availability of more people analytics tools enables businesses to understand their workforces in greater detail than ever before. However, the insights sought are not just insights about people, but rather how those insights directly relate to business value such as achieving higher levels of customer satisfaction or improving product quality. Businesses are also placing more emphasis on organizational network analysis (ONA) which provides insight into the interactions and relationships among people.

While it’s technologically possible to track what individuals do, there are also privacy concerns that are best addressed using clustering techniques. For example, KPMG’s clients are looking at email patterns, chat correspondence and calendared meetings to understand how team behavior correlates with performance, productivity or sales.

“Organizations today are using [the data] to derive various hypotheses and then use analytics to prove them out,” said Paul Krasilnick, director, Advisory Services at KPMG. “They recognize that it needs to be done cautiously in terms of data privacy and access to information, but they also recognize the value of advancing their internal capabilities and maturity from descriptive reporting to more prescriptive [analytics].”

According to Deloitte’s Fineman, high performing people analytics teams are characterized by increasing the analytics acumen within the HR function and among stakeholders.

What needs to improve

Like any other analytics journey, what needs to be improved depends on an organization’s level of mastery.  While all organizations have people data, they don’t necessarily have clean data.  Further, the mere existence of the data does not mean it’s readily usable or necessarily valuable.