How to use people analytics to increase efficiency
People analytics. Only some leaders know the term and how it can help your business.
In this week's edition, let me give you a glimpse of what you can do with the insights people analytics can provide.
First of all, what is people analytics - we need to clarify it before we dive into it.
People analytics uses data, statistical analysis, and other analytical methods to understand and optimize various aspects of your workforce.
It can include employee performance, productivity, engagement, retention, diversity, and more.
People analytics aims to use data-driven insights to make better, more informed decisions that improve business outcomes.
People analytics usually comes with software that collects data sets from your company from areas like:
Collaboration metrics, how your team works together on various platforms.
Calendar data, how your team meets, when, and how often, with whom included.
Performance insights on project contributions by your team members.
HR data on team-level insights on leaves, time-offs, diversity, onboarding flow, and other elements.
Overall company activities such as company wiki growth, performance, and high-level growth insights.
These are just examples since you can customize most tools to your needs. It is up to you what you want to measure and how.
Most people analytics tools provide support and guidance if you need clarification about how to start.
We trust what we see.
So we need to see things to build up trust. In the traditional office setup, managers had this ability - or at least they had the illusion of it. They walked the floor. We called fly-by-management.
We don't have this ability in a remote-first setup or hybrid scenario. Yet, we expect managers to trust their teams. No wonder online meetings skyrocketed when everyone started working from home during the pandemic.
Managers lost their ability to "see" how the team works together.
People analytics can help solve this problem by providing a visual dashboard for managers.
Indirectly, people analytics creates trust, improves operational transparency, and helps managers spend more time supporting their teams.
But what are the areas where we can use the help of data?
The first area is the most popular, employee engagement.
People analytics can provide insights into job satisfaction, employee fluctuation, employee retention, well-being, work-life balance, location flexibility, compensation, and career growth.
The more you know about your team members and how they spend their time within the organization, the better support you can provide for them.
Another point is prevention. People analytics measure the growth of your team so it can address problems even before they present themselves.
The second most important use case is hiring and onboarding.
When you hire people, you have massive data on the hiring process.
Which is the most active hiring channel, and where should you focus your recruitment process?
How long is the hiring process, and where do people mostly drop off? How can you refine the process to make it easier to follow?
How efficient is your onboarding process? When are people fully onboarded and start contributing fully to projects?
When do you need to hire and grow your team? Is there a team where there's too much pressure, and a new addition can help? Also, do you have any skill gaps within your teams that cry out for a new hire?
How diverse is your hiring? From the usual suspects of gender and race, how diverse is your team regarding nationality and location? Where and who do you need to hire?
The third most important use case is collaboration analytics.
That is a popular one, my personal favorite.
So you think you work together efficiently? Think again - people analytics can track team collaboration activities and present insights that might surprise you.
How much time do you spend on meetings? How many people are in those meetings? How long are those meetings? What is the outcome after those meetings? Do you see a performance boost after meetings?
How and where do you contribute to workflows in written form? Who is more email-focused, and who is more chat-focused? How do you build your company wiki with documentation? Which teams contribute most and where?
How do you work across different teams? Do you have enough time spent on cross-team collaboration? How siloed is your company?
Which teams are the main contributors in terms of output? Which teams produce the most outcomes? Unfortunately, those two are not the same!
And plain and simple, what are you working on? Is it product development? Is it sales and marketing? Where do you have most of your resources?
There are some indirect benefits of using people analytics.
To unlock these benefits, you must share the insights with your team - which I highly suggest you do!
The insights foster self-organization and self-refinement. The better the understanding of your teams work, the more likely they can organize their workflows accordingly.
Everyone wants to do an efficient job by not spending time on tasks with low value or that could have been done better.
By sharing the data, you create a more transparent workplace. Transparency drives trust. The more trust you have, the higher the employee engagement and loyalty.
People feel valued if they are trusted.
And for obvious reasons, the direct impact on employee engagement, better operational efficiency, and team retention will indirectly improve your overall metrics.
Your company can grow with confidence.
You, as a manager, can grow with confidence.
If you want to learn more about people analytics, I have had two amazing episodes with experts lately on the Leadership Anywhere podcast with Anita Zbieg from Network Perspective and Stefan van Tulder from Talent Data Labs.
How do you measure the activities of your teams?
The better information we have about how we work, the better we work.
Thanks for reading!
