Workforce Analytics

The need for expanded workforce reporting and analytical capabilities has likely never been as urgent. Workforce issues like acquiring, rewarding, and retaining talent are prominent on corporate agendas. This, combined with tactical issues like disparate HR systems, need for consolidated reporting, need for global and historical data management, self-service reporting, and the need for basic reporting completes the spectrum of challenges faced by organizations today. As a result, organizations are compelled to improve their ability to plan for workforce reporting and analytics solutions.

Some examples of workforce challenges and issues include:

• Workforce planning. Account for current and forecasted business needs, as well as workforce-related actions.

• Talent acquisition and movement. Correctly measure the effectiveness of recruiting efforts. An organization must understand the needs, patterns and obstacles that affect workforce migration. It is critical to assess the future demand for skills — and the future supply.

• Workforce performance. Manage the effective use of top performers to gauge and manage how performance ties to retention and to use an effective management structure.

• Demographics and diversity. Identify gaps in diversity before they become issues and rate the effectiveness of the programs designed to address them.

• Learning and development. Map progression to development to be better positioned to evaluate effective development programs.

• Retention. Invest in staff with critical skills who hold key positions. By measuring and managing turnover issues among this population, an organization can mitigate the potential loss of development investments. Retention is not only about understanding why employees are leaving, but also about determining who intends to leave, as well as knowing when and how to try and change an individual’s mind.

The business imperative

• Many HR organizations have been slow to facilitate strong reporting and analytics capabilities for people management purposes. The historical focus of reporting and analytical techniques has been in finance, marketing, and operations. Today, this is changing and HR has earned a seat at the table. There are several reasons for this change:

• A focus on the workforce is a priority
• HR is striving to be a strategic function
• The maturity of ERP and other systems is leading organizations to do more with their data