How infusing analytics can empower the future of work

The ripple effects of the pandemic, significant economic shifts and new ways of working are increasing pressure on organisations to become more data-driven.

In the Sisense ANZ State of BI and Analytics COVID-19 report, 67% of respondents regard business intelligence (BI) and analytics programs to be more important than business operations, especially in the post-pandemic workplace.

Interestingly, the results show HR professionals are making significant inroads in their use of analytics post-pandemic by employing BI to inform decision-making. From the survey, 31% of HR respondents confirmed that they actively implement BI and analytics in their organisation. On top of this, 27% of HR respondents said they are using additional BI and analytics solutions due to COVID-19.

At the same time, BI and data analytics fluency within HR departments has also significantly grown over the years. In the last five years, the number of HR professionals with data analysis skillsets increased by 242%, according to a 2020 survey by LinkedIn.

When organisations infuse AI-driven insights into their everyday workflows, their workforce can experience an increase in employee engagement, diversity, and better decision-making.

AI-driven analytics help organisations make better business decisions by leveraging the right data insights at the right time. Organisations can also leverage AI-driven analytics to get deeper, personalised insights to help employees make better-informed decisions.

Some of these new workforce trends include: rapidly scaling up of human power, direct sourcing of talent, emergency communications, redeployment, as well as internal mobility, outplacement, staff wellbeing, and staff development.

The key to these trends is data — and understanding the power that can be unlocked by infusing data within organisations to give them the leading edge.

Here are some ways AI-driven analytics can enhance the workforce within organisations:

Understanding employees

As HR analytics evolve, leaders can enjoy better visibility into their most valuable asset: their employees. When the right HR data analytics systems are aligned with employees, organisations can open an exciting door of new opportunities.

The right analytics insights can help HR professionals identify trends in tenure, for instance, highlighting when an employee is likely to leave the organisation and why. This insight could be used to trigger an alert when employees are approaching this tenure threshold.

With this knowledge at hand and notifications set, workflows can be designed to notify the relevant managers and recommend programmes to counter the possibility of turnover. Based on previous success rates, certain managers may opt to engage in programmes to retain their top talent.

If organisations can understand the causes of employee attrition, they can address turnover by building effective employee retention programs. This will turn employee dissatisfaction into action. 

High employee engagement

Higher engagement in an organisation leads to higher levels of productivity, profitability, and output quality. Organisations need BI and data analytics to learn about their workforce's level of engagement.

As organisations expand the reach of their BI platform, the added value comes from connecting to multiple datasets and correlating across systems. This is when analytics starts to add insights to the employee experience, helping inform better decisions to enhance employee experience and decrease attrition rates.

Diversity

Most HR leaders understand that with diversity comes more creativity, and that diversity is vital both in people and in recruiting pipelines. But channels that may have been traditionally used before the pandemic may no longer yield traditional results. Organisations can now focus on making recruitment more strategic and data-driven to meet future organisational needs.

Recruitment

Data-driven recruitment can transform HR capability and potential when used in the right way. With many organisations currently experiencing rapid shifts in their workforce, now is an excellent opportunity for organisations to review what is and isn't working. It's time to use data to challenge the norm.

As an example, AI-infused analytics can help measure the eventual success of hires, where they came from, what channels are positively correlated with eventual job success and the right mix of skills to deliver maximum productivity. 

Data analytics, BI and the future of HR

When everyone has access to data analytics, they have the context to make the best decisions for their team, their department, and the company — in real-time. In a data-driven culture, where every employee has access to the data they need within their own workflows, data analytics delivers significant benefits. This infusion of analytics offers insights and promotes strategic decision making on the spot.

But to do this right, the C-suite must lead. Emphasising data literacy and decision making throughout the organisation is the precursor to infusing insights into each employee's daily workflow within the organisation to optimise employee experience, engagement and outcomes.