The Global Leadership Forecast finding states that only 18% of participating HR departments saw themselves as “anticipatory,” the ability to be forward-looking, building scenarios, possibilities, relevant action plans & tying it with business outcomes should become more of a priority. Despite the spread of predictive HR Analytics technology and techniques, from our observations of usage of these techniques, it’s the application of it, which is still at a superficial level, calling for much more education, success stories & champion influencers from the domain of HR Analytics. (Also see, insightful HR Analytics reads here – Driving data effectiveness for critical decision making)
For example, while tangible business outcomes such as sales, revenue & growth are board-level priorities, the newest addition to it is as Talent. As organizations begin to map their people data to business outcomes, they can begin to predict and build business scenarios to determine, for example, which high-potentials are most likely to develop tomorrow’s game changing product, what composition will enable best possibility to achieve strategic business outcomes etc. Similarly, HR department’s focus only on performance data of employees (expected if that’s the yardstick to ascertain effectiveness of HR, hence, the yardsticks will have to change realistically, with capability augmentation) without the broader business context, they will continue to struggle to see the big picture.
The key is to keep looking for insights by combining multiple layers of data & arrive at meaningful relationships that help to predict future performance. Employee engagement data can be combined with leadership feedback to build the profile of leaders that are generating the highest discretionary effort and productivity from their people. Ultimately, these insights will improve the overall quality of future investments in leadership recruitment and development
While implementing this type of mindset is not yet ubiquitous, one thing is clear – analytics are only as good as two things: the access to quality data and the specific insights that they can provide. And perhaps the greatest challenge of all – identifying the questions that move the business forward and mapping the right data to be able to answer those questions.
Here are few Q’s, that HR Analytics can get you started with !
Not sure wher to begin ?? (click to expand)
- What are the top important things (contributing around 80% impact) we need to focus on to improve sales using HR Analytics?
- What are the top important things (contributing around 80% impact) we need to focus on to improve customer service?
- What are the top important things (contributing around 80% impact) we need to focus on to improve employee engagement using HR Analytics?
- What are the top important things (contributing around 80% impact) we need to focus on to decrease regretted turnover as per HR Analytics findings?
- What are the top important things (contributing around 80% impact) we need to focus on to improve safety, basis HR Analytics from Safety & Well-being pulse?
- What are the top important things (contributing around 80% impact) we need to focus on to foster innovation?
- Why is turnover higher in certain locations? What is average turnover costs & how can we minimize the costs using HR Analytics ?
- What interventions would have the greatest impact on managerial effectiveness?
- Why are our high-potential employees leaving at a higher rate than other employees?
- How do the drivers of employee engagement differ with employees’ attributes (e.g., age, gender, country)?
- How does HR Analytics help with HR metrics, that are best at predicting future results, rather than simply looking in the rear-view mirror?
- Why do we have better safety results in some plants than others and what interventions would help improve them?
- What are the attributes distinguishing our most effective managers from the others?
- Does our HR Analytics identify locations or offices that can serve as models for other locations??
- We’ve focused on employee engagement for years; what are the other people-related issues driving my company’s business results?
- What would be the best actions to take to better manage our employees who work remotely?
- What actions does HR Analytics prescribe to take to attract a more diverse workforce?
- What actions does HR Analytics prescribe to retain a diverse workforce?
- What specific aspects of our culture are impeding us in providing better customer service?
- What attributes should we be seeking when we hire new employees?
- Why are some locations more successful at sales than others, and how can we extend those characteristics to all our sales offices?
- What are the most effective ways for us to improve the productivity of our sales force?
- What factors drive employee retention?
- How do the drivers of employee retention vary across different segments of our workforce (e.g., age, gender, country)?
- What training is most effective in increasing success for sales managers?
- Should we even be focusing on employee engagement? Are more engaged employees also more successful?
- We talk a lot about the importance of diversity, but are there concrete steps we can take to make my company more open to diverse opinions?
- What can we do to foster greater levels of innovation?
- What was the impact of a certain training intervention?
- Which of our training interventions have the greatest impact on the productivity of our sales force?
- Which managerial competencies foster higher levels of employee engagement?
- Which managerial competencies help reduce regretted turnover?
- What are the key process differences between our most productive plants and others?
- What percentage of our managers are highly effective, and how can we increase that percentage?
- “Leadership” includes many things; what are the specific attributes of the most successful leaders in our organization?
- How can we reduce fraud/theft at a certain location?
- Do the drivers of employee engagement differ significantly in different regions of the world?
- What specifically can executives do to help employees be as successful as possible?
- We have some call centers with much lower turnover than other ones; what’s different about those call centers?
- Does our performance rating system accurately reflect actual employee performance?
- How does managerial span of control affect sales results?
- How should we modify our leadership development program to drive better business results?
- Which of the low scores on our employee engagement survey can we ignore because they have nothing to do with outcomes we care about?
- Which of the high scores on our employee engagement survey do we need to get even better at because they are important drivers of our business results?
- How successful is our employee orientation program?
- How have our difficulties with a certain product launch (or some other specific issue) affected employee commitment to the organization, and what can we do to address that?
- What differentiates those locations where we have higher customer loyalty?
- We implemented a diversity initiative last year but it hasn’t been successful; what’s holding us back?
- Is our employee rewards/recognition program more successful for certain functions?
- Why are so many of our new hires leaving within the first few months?
- There’s a big variation in quality across our plants; what’s the cause of this and what can we do to address it?
- We have so many training programs; which ones should we cut and which should we expand?
- We’ve acquired another company; what are the greatest strengths and weaknesses of its culture?
- What characterizes our most successful managers?
- Why is turnover so much higher among female employees?
- Did a newly-introduced employee benefit have a positive effect on employee engagement?
- Are there differences across generations in what our employees want from their work?
- What one or two characteristics best differentiate our top sales people?
- Did we meet our business objectives with this training program?
- There are big cultural differences between our overseas locations and our US locations; are any of these differences driving better results in certain locations?
- Why has productivity dropped so dramatically in one specific location this quarter?
- What specific factors are most associated with higher employee engagement?
- What job rotations did our most successful sales employees complete?
- How did we initially come to the attention of our most successful job candidates?
- Which of our talent gaps are most critical to address?
- Are there certain employees who have the right characteristics to be moved into sales?
- What interventions would be most effective in reducing high levels of turnover?
- How can we better deploy our employees to drive improved profit margins?
- Should we hire only those job candidates who have certain types of college degrees?
- Do our employees with higher education significantly outperform those without them?
- What leadership characteristics lead to better team sales results?
- Are we doing enough to encourage informal learning? What predictive steps, as per HR Analytics can optimize this ?
- We have some locations where employees have much more input into hiring decisions; are those locations more successful?
- What are the characteristics of managers with the highest employee loyalty?
- Our recent employee survey highlighted our lowest scores; are these, in fact, the most important areas for us to focus on?
- Some locations get new employees up to speed much more quickly; what are they doing differently?
- Why is employee engagement higher for some job functions than for others?
- Our culture is overly risk-averse; which locations are better at encouraging smart risk taking?
- How can we predict which of our employees are most likely to leave in the next year?
- Our employees seem to be losing confidence in our executive team; what specifically is behind that?
- What’s the relationship between employee engagement and sales results and what should we do as a result?
- What characterizes the work environment in the plants with the best safety records?
- We have a limited budget for targeting improvement; where should it be deployed?
- We have high turnover; what can we do to reduce it among those employees we most want to keep? Which of statistical methods constitutes of our best HR Analytics case
- How can we reduce employee absenteeism? Using HR Analytics, what is quantum of savings possible
- What are the biggest differences in how our work-at-home employees and on-site employees perceive the organization, and should we do anything to address this?
- Would a different pay structure help to reduce employee turnover?
- What employee characteristics drive customer satisfaction?
- How can we identify those employees best suited to be promoted to manager?
- Employee morale is way down since some recent layoffs; what areas should we target to best address this?
- A portion of bonuses is usually tied to improvements in certain areas; what areas should we select?
- What’s the “sweet spot” for job tenure for our sales representatives? How can we maximize this using HR Analytics?
- What’s special about this one sales office, which always has the best quarterly results?
- What characterizes our organization’s culture, and where should we seek improvement?
- We’re having quality problems in a certain location; how can we address this?
- Using HR Analytics, what are the best areas for us to target our leadership development program?
- We’re in the middle of a merger/acquisition; how doe we leverage HR Analytics to check any big incompatibilities between our two companies’ cultures?
- Our latest survey found some locations have very low scores in work-life balance; what’s driving the work-life issues in those places?
- What key measures should we include in our annual report to our Board of Directors?
