What is workforce analytics, and what metrics should you track?

Companies around the globe are turning to workforce analytics to increase employee productivity.

For far too long, companies have managed employee performance subjectively. While you may save time and money on a short-term basis, this method isn’t sustainable.

Both employees and employers suffer when they can't see the impact of their work.

If you’re hoping to find a tangible approach to workforce analytics, you’ve come to the right place.

Workforce analytics is a set of tools for analyzing employee data and metrics used to evaluate and measure workforce productivity. The goal is to look at employee actions, behaviors, and processes to find patterns and ways to achieve business outcomes.

Keeping track of the right workforce metrics helps HR professionals and business leaders make better business decisions about workforce management. For instance, HR data affects staffing, employee training, and retention.

Workforce planning metrics assess how the entire HR department works, not just each employee individually.

With people analytics and HR analytics, managers can make better decisions.

HR professionals can use these metrics to find skill gaps, provide training, or reevaluate less-than-ideal workflows. This data can help employees feel focused and confident in their jobs.

Here are a few ways that businesses benefit from using workforce analytics:

• Better forecasting

• Reduced hiring costs

• Optimized recruiting

• Improved employee retention

• Reduced compliance risks

• Better budgeting

• Increased employee morale

Many business leaders have found that big data has changed how they do business. Workflow and resource requirements vary from company to company.

Here are nine key performance indicators (KPIs) that you should track to optimize your workflow for better business outcomes.

Talent Management and Human Capital Management (HCM)

Workforce analytics can help human resources and HR professionals set benchmarks and track people data to optimize business operations.

These performance metrics include, but are not limited to:

• Headcount

• New hires

• Pay and benefits

• Company culture

• Employee retention

• Employee satisfaction

• Diversity among employees

Performance Management

Performance management data measures the interactions between an organization's employees and their HR department.

Most activities fall into one of three main groups:

• Supporting and coaching

• Corrective actions like training or clarifying job duties

• Ending the workplace agreement

Measuring the frequency and effectiveness of conversations between employees and HR may seem like a pretty surface-level analysis, but don't overlook it. Make sure you are doing what you need to retain your top talent.

Productivity Management

A simple way to measure workforce productivity over time is to divide the company's revenue by the number of employees who worked on the projects that brought in that revenue.

Employee experience, retention rates, employee turnover, and other data sources would be a better, more accurate way to give actionable insights.

Are there areas where you can cut down on staffing with productivity management?

Employee Engagement

Low employee engagement rates usually mean that you have some work to do when it comes to improving things like:

• Work environment

• Job responsibilities

• Task flow

• Company culture

• Turnover rate (differentiating between involuntary and voluntary turnover)

You can also calculate employee tenure, assess time-to-hire numbers, or even quantify how many people show up to company events.

Or, they can start using employee surveys to discover what their employees need from them. From there, they can take this feedback and develop employee engagement strategies. This way, employees can find a better work-life balance, develop new skills, and become more involved at work.

Remote Workforce Management

Workforce analytics data is essential to enhance productivity in remote teams and improve workforce performance.

You can track workforce productivity by looking at the time it takes to complete a task and cross-referencing it with the quality of the work. Fortunately, there are plenty of time management apps that can make the process of compiling employee data a lot smoother.

This way, you can find out if employees are more productive when they work from home instead of at the office.

Employee Monitoring

With the help of employee monitoring tools, managers can determine how long tasks take to finish and what times of day employees work best.

The data analysis provided gives managers the ability to plan workdays and set up task workflows. ​​This way, managers can balance meeting schedules and deep work time for their teams.

Are employees putting in too many hours? Employee monitoring helps with work-life balance, too.

Technology Management

Some of the most critical financial metrics to track in the IT department are:

• Training costs

• Labor costs

• Equipment lifecycles

• SaaS subscription costs

Ask yourself: do employees have the tools they need to do their jobs? Time tracking tools with website and app usage features can help you here.

Ticket resolution times are another excellent non-monetary metric to track. If you find teams struggling to help customers promptly, your company's technology management could probably use some work.

Operational Efficiency

Improving operational efficiency doesn’t always start with big data.

Operational efficiency also stems from proof of work, downtime costs, and other simple bottlenecks you might be overlooking.

This downtime could be anything from a broken internet connection to a lack of skilled employees. There are many ways to look into the benefits of workforce analytics when making business decisions. You can start by looking at:

• Training costs

• Hiring and retention rate statistics

• Employee net promoter score

• Tools and technology utilization ratios

• Associated costs for fixing tools and technology

• The cost of adopting new technologies

• How long tech lasts

• Overall performance of existing tools and technology

Legal Compliance

Legal compliance means different things across different industries.

There is a lot of focus in the medical field on making sure that patient data is safe. Business leaders are legally required to keep an employee’s records years after they’ve moved on.

Are employees giving out information or documents about the company and the customers? Are you getting negative customer reviews?

A good analytics solution for legal compliance will let management know when something happens that could put the company at risk.

Employers can track metrics for workforce analytics manually. In a lot of instances, people use spreadsheets to track this data.

Managing this data manually leaves plenty of room for error. That’s why companies are switching to the most accurate and cost-effective way to track people analytics: workforce management software.

Fully integrated workforce analytics tools are more impactful than manual systems. Most have dashboards that help you organize your data in real time.

Plus, algorithms for automation provide predictive analytics and machine learning that would take considerable time to figure out by hand.

When you turn to software to manage your workforce, executives get the business intelligence they need to make better business decisions.

Managers no longer need to rely on generic data.

Instead, they can utilize proof of work tools and workforce analytics for strategic planning.

Hubstaff's employee productivity measurement solution makes it easy for business leaders to look at projects and check team members' timesheets from a single screen.

Sign up for a free demo of Hubstaff's time management and productivity tools today to find out more.