At ML6, we often say that “data is gold and companies need people who can turn it into profit.” And this rings true for more than just data scientists — this is an important skill for recruiting and HR teams too!
A recent survey by BambooHR shows that almost one-third of executives want to see reports from their HR teams more often, and 82% say that such HR metrics are somewhat useful, useful, or extremely useful for their organization. That means HR teams need to step their data analysis game up!
So if you’re looking to level up here, we’re sharing four ways you can enhance your approach to HR and TA metrics and reporting. Let’s get started:
- Create one source of truth
It’s not uncommon for your data to come from multiple sources. For example, you might have recruiting data from your ATS, financial data from your finance team, and learning and development data from your LMS.
It’s hard to start analyzing and interpreting your data if it’s all over the place. That’s why it’s important to create one source of truth. This could look like a spreadsheet, dashboard, or you might have another system in place that can amalgamate this data for you.
Creating a single source of truth can also help you remove bias and avoid distorted data because instead of drawing from disparate sources, all team members are working from the same database. While this might take a lot of work upfront, it’s worth it because going forward you’ll be able to streamline all your reporting capabilities.
- Use data to solve problems
While this might seem like a no-brainer, what we mean is that you should dig deeper to understand what your data actually means and how it can solve your biggest HR, TA, and business challenges.
A great way to approach this is to start with a problem, not with the metrics. More often than not, we’ve seen HR and TA practitioners look at their data and extract a problem. However, this is a dangerous approach because you could just be creating new problems for yourself!
Let’s say you’re looking at turnover data, and notice that the rate has gone up from 10% to 15%. While this may be alarming at first, if you look closely, you might notice that the additional five percent is non-regrettable attrition. While it may be worth looking into in terms of how you can attract better qualified talent in the future, it’s really a non-issue that you’ve now spent precious time-solving!
Instead, you should leverage your data to help solve your problems. Let’s look at another example. Imagine your CEO approaches you because the company has experienced a decrease in productivity over the last three months and is losing money due to high absence rates.
Now you can go to your data and look at the reasons some of your employees are not coming into work. The more you drill down into your data, the better your understanding will become — is most of the absenteeism all from one department? The same job type? Are people regularly taking time off during major projects? Once you begin to notice trends, you can start identifying tangible solutions to solve your problem.
- Include external statistics and resources to help you benchmark
Knowing where you stand in the market is critical to remaining competitive and being able to attract and retain qualified talent. If used correctly, benchmarking can help elevate your HR and TA strategies, and prove that your initiatives have a major impact on the organization’s performance and success.
Imagine our earlier example. By comparing your absence figures against industry averages, you might find that your attendance records are actually quite good as a whole. The reason you’re seeing losses in productivity and money might actually be that one of your teams is regularly taking time off during “crunch season” due to a lack of resources and working consistent overtime hours. You can now hone in on this group (instead of focusing on absenteeism at the organization as a whole) and begin to create interventions that help improve their working conditions and decrease their number of sick days.
By understanding how you fare in comparison to the market, you can begin to close the gap on areas where you fall short so that you can stay competitive and better attract and retain talent.
- Always iterate
Your approach to collecting and analyzing HR and TA metrics should never stay stagnant. Over time, some of the data you’re looking at may become irrelevant and you’ll require new metrics — and that’s okay! Keep iterating as the needs of the business change. As we mentioned earlier, if you’re working with the wrong data to drive your strategies, then your strategies won’t be as effective.
Every metric on your dashboard should be focused on a specific business process or goal you need to optimize. However, once you’ve started knocking those out of the park, you might have to identify new goals and KPIs. After all, if you’re always focused on the same things, then you’re not growing!
We hope these insights give you some inspiration so that you can begin to build a strategy to improve your own approach to HR and TA metrics and reporting. And if you need extra support upgrading or streamlining your processes, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team.
About ML6
ML6 is a recruitment and talent advisory firm located in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). We provide customized solutions to support our clients throughout the employee lifecycle. We help our clients attract and retain talent by advising on people programs, processes, and best practice
