The Importance of Accessible HR Data for Companies of All Sizes
By Kristen Boyle, Vice President of Marketing, HireRoad
Gone are the days when human resource departments were seen as administrative hubs. Today, successful HR teams are data-driven strategic assets to organizations—regardless of the workforce behind them.
Technological advancements have made HR one of the most transformed business departments in decades. Time-consuming manual processes once used to source, hire, onboard, engage, and retain workers have been replaced with more efficient tech-driven solutions.
Perhaps the most significant HR advancement has been data—specifically, people analytics.
However, despite the growing awareness and importance of people analytics, a divide exists between enterprise organizations with vast resources and smaller, leaner companies that lack the same infrastructure. People analytics are thought to be exclusive to big business, when in reality, every organization, regardless of size or data savviness, should have access to these insights.
The Power of People Analytics
People analytics is the concept of using insights from HR data to guide workforce decision-making—such as optimizing hiring decisions, workforce performance, and retention efforts. The insights gained from people analytics have been proven to help organizations identify patterns and trends that increase recruiting efficiency, reduce turnover, and improve business productivity.
Beyond streamlining the “basic” HR KPIs, people analytics can even help HR teams analyze candidate characteristics most likely to lead to success in a particular role. They can identify skills gaps, reveal sources of employee disengagement, and unveil what contributes to turnover. With this data at their disposal, HR departments are now moving beyond intuition and making evidence-based decisions that yield more positive outcomes for the organization.
The Problem: Accessibility
While people analytics have been a game-changer for many HR teams, some have faced barriers getting started. These barriers are often centered around budget constraints, lacking analytical expertise, limited resources, and/or resistance to implementing new systems within their existing HR tech stack.
Companies without these constraints are now dedicating entire teams to data science and HR analytics, investing in sophisticated HR platforms that provide advanced predictive analytics, custom reporting, and real-time workforce trend insights. As a result, these organizations can now make highly informed decisions that lead to greater business success.
In contrast, companies with constraints lack the dedicated headcount or expertise to prioritize people analytics. One common roadblock is the lack of in-house data scientists or advanced analytics training. HR teams that need to borrow analyst or data science resources from other functions often find their requests deprioritized, making it hard to secure support for their people analytics. And even if the budget allows for basic people analytics software, small HR teams lacking in-house analysts can easily get overwhelmed with the complexity of the data aggregation and cleansing that is required to get started and benefit from the tool..
This discrepancy in access to data-driven decision-making has created a divide where only the larger organizations are capitalizing on people analytics to shape their talent strategies, and under-resourced organizations are left behind.
The disparity in access to people analytics has real business implications:
Better Hiring Decisions
Hiring the right people is among the most important decisions an organization makes. Traditional hiring methods of resume review, rounds of interviews, and gut instinct can be biased. With people analytics, companies can take a more data-driven approach, identifying key attributes that translate to success in a specific role. For lean companies, this is especially important. A bad hire can be devastating (and costly to replace) for a small team, where every employee greatly impacts success.
Improving Retention
Employee turnover comes at a cost—both financially and in terms of disruption. People analytics help organizations identify the root causes of turnover, whether related to compensation, job satisfaction, career growth opportunities, or workplace culture. People analytics helps identify patterns in employee behavior and feedback, guiding companies toward proactive solutions to improve retention instead of responding reactively, when it’s too late.
Enhancing Diversity and Inclusion
People analytics also help organizations measure diversity, identify gaps, and track the effectiveness of DE&I programs. HR teams uncover hidden biases and take corrective action by analyzing hiring patterns, promotions, and employee feedback. For resource-constrained teams who worry about the defunding of their DEI programs, people analytics can help arm teams with the data they need to manage and report on DEI in a meaningful way to stakeholders.
How PeopleInsight by HireRoad Solves the Accessibility Issue
PeopleInsight by HireRoad believes that people analytics should be accessible to companies of all sizes and sophistication—not just those with deep pockets. That’s why they’re committed to providing intuitive, accessible people analytics tools that are user-friendly, easy to implement, and tailored to meet the needs of businesses, whether they have an HR team of 2 or 200. By streamlining the collection and analysis of HR data, PeopleInsight enables HR teams to generate actionable insights without needing a team of data scientists or a hefty budget to maintain an internal infrastructure.
Whether you’re a small startup or a large enterprise, access to people analytics isn’t a “nice to have”—it’s a must-have in order to have a real impact on business outcomes. With clear and actionable data at your fingertips, crucial decisions can be made, and the ability to make those decisions in an informed manner shouldn’t be dictated by the size or HR budget of your company.