The Do’s and Don’ts of Workplace Analytics

Workplace analytics data is extremely powerful for improving the employee experience, and ensuring productivity is never an afterthought. For example, if you find your employees spend over 50% of their work week in meetings, you may want to look at how to help them be more effective. 

Workplace analytics are an essential part of people analytics, and can be extremely valuable. However, you need to ensure you approach data collection and analysis in the right way. So, before we look more closely at the do’s and don’ts of people analytics, let’s define it more precisely.

What is people analytics?

People analytics can be split into three sub-categories:

• Workforce analytics involves data relating to time, payroll, absenteeism and workforce management processes.
• Human capital analytics includes all of the above while considering the people within your business as an asset and how they can be utilized for business growth.
• People analytics involves the above workforce analytics processes while including individual level measurements such as individual’s psychometric testing, performance review scores and wellbeing.

Do’s and Don’ts of workplace analytics

Here are the key do’s and don’ts that will ensure your analytics efforts are worth the investment.

Do: utilize analytics to make training and development decisions based on facts

Career development is a leading factor in attracting and retaining top talent. Gallup reports that millennials in particular want their job to be a career development opportunity and people analytics can be used effectively to this aim. 

The right analytics approach allows you to take data for multiple sources which in turn can be used to analyze the skill sets of your employees. With this information you can develop and deliver tailored training programs, targeted to your people’s needs. With people analytics you can also make fact-based decisions about the effectiveness of your training programs, as you can explore the data that links training to business outcomes such as employee engagement and productivity. 

Don’t: utilize analytics without a defined goal

Without specifying a particular problem to evaluate or define a goal, it’s impossible to leverage the power of your organization’s data. The best analytics tools can’t tell you the problem you’re hoping to solve but with the right goal defined, their processes help you find a solution.

The most important question to ask is “what data is relevant to our specific goals?” and then set the relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) based on this. This avoids any wasted resources on analyzing or even collecting unnecessary data. It also means the most relevant and actionable information can be delivered and gives you something tangible to work with.

Do: utilize analytics for talent acquisition

Talent analytics allows you to gather and review data on the recruitment experiences of previous applicants. You can then match this information against your job specification requirements and company values. This helps to draw up an impartial list of skilled candidates using the most reliable algorithms with no human bias.

Do: maximize analytics’ power for improved employee experience

Employee experience is the culmination of an employee’s journey through all touchpoints with their employer. People analytics can be effectively used to improve this experience at many different stages. There’s a direct link between people analytics and employee experience, if used properly. 

You can effectively analyze many elements of an employee’s experience, including their sense of belonging, where they perform well and where there is room for improvement. It helps to facilitate better working environments and allows you to build better employee experiences based on data.

Don’t: track or report sensitive data without an authorized business purpose

Some organizations get carried away with the amount of data they have access to and forget their data protection obligations. Something as simple as not deleting an employee’s record after the required time period or taking employee records home could cause significant problems for any company. 

Personal and sensitive data cannot be shared or used for analytics purposes unless you have authorization from the owners of that data. While automated analytics tools can’t necessarily discern between the sensitivity of two data sets, you can, and it’s essential you remember to do so. 

Data protection legislation exists to protect people’s data and your organization, so it is vital you keep it in mind, even when utilizing the latest technologies.

Utilizing people analytics for good

Making the most of the data your organization collects is essential for any business wanting to keep up with the competition. Likewise, making sense of people analytics is vital for individual and business growth. 

Our platform incorporates an effective analytics tool. LumApps analytics can help monitor your internal communications and employee engagement metrics with those communications.