How Workforce Analysis will Change Your Life as an HR Manager

Every plan and forecast needs a basis – a basis on which the plans will be estimated and discussed for efficiency and execution. You have to consider several factors and criteria to explore the possibilities of executing your plan and this requires a lot of data. By implementing data analysis techniques into workforce management and HR job processes, you can now analyze many aspects of your organization including staffing, retrenchment management, job satisfaction levels of employees and more. From having no idea of how to go about planning your workforce to getting the most optimized direction for workforce analysis, data will help you get comprehensive insights.

As an HR professional, nobody else can understand better the need for a solid workforce for your organization. Not your CEO, the CTO, or your company’s funding but your workforce is your business’ biggest asset and with data analytics, you can now plan all your strategies for the coming year or for a general business period effectively. To help you understand how workforce analysis can save a lot of time on your schedule and let you focus on other equally important tasks, here is our compilation of the biggest pros of implementing workforce analysis.

Proactive Elimination of Delays

One of the biggest challenges in workforce analysis is coming up with plans that are precise in terms of deadlines and delivery dates. Without coming up with vague deadlines, you have to actually consider a project completion that makes sense and is foolproof. With workforce analysis, you can do just that. Properly analyzed data will give you insights and patterns on absenteeism of employees in general and in a particular department you are setting up tasks for. You can also refine the data to know the rate of absenteeism under a particular manager. Once you know the pattern and estimate the probable absenteeism, you can make a data-backed decision on the precise project delivery dates. This can help you avoid delays and unforeseen disruption.

Retention

Some of the biggest shockers in workplaces come in the form of unexpected resignation letters. When you think your senior employees are happy and doing really well, you get a letter from one of them about their exits. It is at that time you regret speaking to them about their satisfaction levels, motivation factors, pay hike and more. Workforce analysis lets you predict such retentions with the help of data. You can pull out data sets that directly reflect on an employee’s satisfaction levels and commitment to the job and take proactive decisions on how you can make the place better for him or her and retain the employee from leaving. This will not just keep your current pool of talent intact but help your organization save on expenses as well.

Benchmarking

If you intend to establish an environment which is just and fair for all your employees, workforce analysis will help you come up with benchmarks for performances. Instead of the regular metrics like exceed expectations, average and other classes of performance standards, you can bring in effective metrics like commitment levels, attitude towards job and management, productivity index, attendance, punctuality and more to decide on promotions, pay rise and other incentives. This will not just decrease the politics in your organization but ensure your employees know the transparency of your benchmarking standards.

Pilot Processes

It happens often that your business receives several pilot processes and you need to come up with an effective team that can pull off the initial requirements and converts the pilot into a business deal. It is at that time that you need to plan your workforce for the best performance. You need to build a team of doers and not place bets on your gut instincts. You need to make an informed decision on who can be part of the project and actually get results. Workforce analysis will give you the right approach to selecting your team and getting things done. Thanks to the work history of your employees you will have a set of benchmarking standards ready for use.

As HR Leaders, sometimes, our proposals to the organization might sound confident and right but if we can’t prove our point and our thought process behind taking a decision, the countless hours spent in planning and preparation are futile. So to make your job easier (and that of others), it is best you implement HR and workforce analytics to your system and see the difference for yourself. If you haven’t started with HR analytics already, make next year count for your career and your organization by upskilling to HR analytics today! Good luck! Click here to start now!