A 5-Minute Guide to HR Analytics

HR as a Strategic Ally Modern HR executives have worked hard to transform the perception of HR as a cost center to a strategic ally for business leaders. Talent is capital and must be managed as rigorously as any other asset. Making important personnel decisions based on hard data is at the heart of fact-based HR, and a recent McKinsey & Company study1 supports the value of hard data for HR by finding that companies scoring in the top third in talent management were 40 percent more profitable per employee than those in the bottom third. Google, Bon-Ton, and other enterprises have also proven the value of better analysis of HR data. However, HR executives have been hobbled by old fashioned information systems. To hard questions, they have only soft answers. Whats the ROI of training? What candidate screening yields best results? How do we spot and retain valuable players? Other questions, often spur of the moment, may flow one after the other as questions lead to more questions. The move to transform HR requires a better way for HR to access and analyze data. A modern analytic environment must offer three critical capabilities to the entire spectrum of HR staff so they can adequately support the enterprise.

Explore key metrics freely HR touches all departments across the enterprise so the data behind HRs key metrics must bridge all information silos. For example, data may need to be viewed by business unit, product group, and geography to find root causes, to find profit per employee, to compare compensation with performance, or any number of other questions that arise as others are answered. The data may come from a myriad of sources; to truly become a strategic ally for the business, HR professionals require real-time, role-based access to all types of data. Executives at Shell Canada, for example, used dimension-free data exploration to find answers on employee productivity and qualifications, which helped determine the appropriate size for the workforce. Also, a top pharmaceutical company determined how work experience and education should affect starting pay grades. Employee productivity, demographic diversity, distribution of employees by geography, compensations and pay can all be correlated with performance to make the most of resources. Better enabling HR to freely explore data can make a real impact on the business. Monitor constantly Although, hiring, compensation, employee performance, vacancy rates, and timeto-fill may appear on-track at first glance, by applying analytics one can quick spot that a departments positions are unfilled for an unacceptably long period, or that major events have distracted attention from a spike in attribution. An event-driven system that notifies professionals when a metric is above acceptable levels can prompt HR staff to take a closer look. And data mashups let them do so quickly, by empowering HR professionals to bring data together from various corporate sources to make informed decisions based on all the relevant data, not just one slice of the problem. Contextual collaboration, which enables HR staff to quickly share a simple dashboard in a workflow or portal, simplifies consensus building. HR staff can see the data at the heart of a discussion and caninteract with it, make comments and notes. Ultimately, through this collective insight, the team arrives at a common understanding for how important employee decisions are arrive at. This collective visibility can also drive key actions. A blip that one HR team member at first dismissed, for example, could be appreciated as a serious problem by another member. Alternately, what might at first appear to be a problem in the data, could be explained by another team member when its put in context. Discussion arises, and they realize that its the first sign of a new trend. These types of contextual interchanges speed decision making and powers HR users to take more targeted action more quickly.

A 5-Minute Guide to Business Analytics

Foresee needs and events Is the sales departments star performer about to take a better offer? An effective HR systems predictive capability gives warning well before the sales person knocks on the bosss door and asks shyly, Do you have a minute? In the past, HR recruiters had little more to go on for hiring decisions than letters, resumes, and interviews. Analytics is changing the HR recruiters arsenal dramatically. Up-to-date HR analytics supplies much more guidance. The Bon-Ton chain, for example, with more than 280 department stores in the U.S, used analytics to determine attributes of effective sales reps. The Bon-Ton HR team had tested cognitive ability, situational judgment, initiative, and other traits, and learned that reps with scores in the top-half tended to sell 10 percent more product than other reps. These successful reps even tended to like their work more. Since 2008, sales per rep have risen $1400 and turnover has dropped 25 percent at Bon-Ton all made possible by harnessing analytics for HR success. HR becomes a valuable ally Modern analytics technology has turned HR into a science that no employer can ignore. HR departments running on fact-based talent management not only create value, they know exactly how much the return on investment is and can be. Executives can finally meet hard questions with hard answers even before theyre asked. Visibility into the unknown arises from trends and patterns that executives found by exploring key metrics fast and on demand. They roam key metrics at will for insight into factors like employee productivity, demographic diversity, distribution of employees by region, compensation, and pay grade. Critical data appears in data mashups that bridge silos. At a glance, they know whos creating value for the enterprise. Theres no more waiting around for actionable insight. Staffing and recruiting specialists, meanwhile, monitor headcount, open requisitions, and pending offers; and they dont have to sit back and wait. An event-driven system can initiate alerts when vacancy rates, time-to-fill-positions and other conditions exceed thresholds, while built-in predictive analytics inform forecasts and prevent surprises. Got a question? Suspicion? Spotfire offers a new level of collaboration and transparency in the process. With contextual collaboration capabilities, Spotfire allows HR professionals to share an analysis and invite staff to contribute their knowledge and judgment to the decision-making process all in confidence, as the enterprise-class platform ensures security. It all adds up to HR for the value-driven business world.

A 5-Minute Guide to Business Analytics

Dimension-free data exploration - freely explore data to any level of detail, without IT intervention. Speed insight to action. Data Mashup easily combine data from different sources - without having to ask IT for support so HR teams can quickly gain a comprehensive view of the business, while adhering to existing security policies. Predictive and Event-driven analytics - empowers HR to anticipate opportunities & risks quickly so they take appropriate action immediately. Contextual Collaboration - Securely share insights in context and practice collaborative, fact-based decision-making. Publish insights through corporate portals and social platforms as appropriate to quickly drive HR teams to consensus. Enterprise-class - enable all HR professionals to use a single analytic platform to instantly visualize and analyze data from multiple sources, while respecting ITs requirements especially those concerning security. Learn More About Spotfire Analytics From interactive dashboards and data visualization to predictive analytics, Spotfires intuitive analytics and data discovery software provides an astonishingly fast and flexible environment for visualizing and analyzing your data helping you make smarter decisions every day. To learn how Spotfire, an enterprise-class analytics and data discovery platform, speeds users from insight to action with industry-leading capabilities such as dimension-free data exploration, data mashup, and contextual collaboration, contact Spotfire today: 866-240-0491.
1 Question for your HR chief: Are we using our people data to create value? McKinsey Quarterly, Organization Practice by Nora Gardner, Devin McGranahan, and William Wolf, March 2011

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