Predictive analytics is allowing more businesses to analyze their data and make better decisions. Financial service organizations, for instance, can reduce risks for these businesses by helping to prevent fraud and retain customers. This helps businesses increase revenue over time, but the first step is having an understanding of the data that leads to these realizations. It stands to reason, then, that analytics can be used in other areas of businesses to inform decisions, reduce risk, and improve processes.
How can predictive HR analytics help change your human capital management?
HR is one area that more businesses are seeing benefits from when it comes to predictive analytics. Here are some of the ways that predictive analytics in HR can help improve the entire human capital management process.
1. Forecasting staffing and recruiting needs
Analytics help HR better understand when they’ll need to hire and why. Because of the ability to track various data points, predictive HR analytics can help recruiting teams have a more accurate understanding of when there may be an increase in business or production that will require the hiring of additional staff on a temporary or permanent basis. This, paired with good corporate communication about goals and initiatives, can keep HR teams from scrambling to find help in time.
2. Employee engagement
This is one of the most important HCM points of impact. Beyond sending out surveys or other feedback methods, predictive analytics give HR teams a better idea of how engaged employees are and how they feel about their role in the company. Predictive analytics has the processing power to analyze different mediums, including social media data, performance reviews, and more, giving a deeper insight into the thoughts and feelings of employees and make process and culture adjustments as needed.
3. Measure turnover
HR analytics help some businesses better understand what might motivate an employee to leave and can even warn employers when team members might be on the verge of leaving. By analyzing behavior and communications, as well as other data points, HR analytics is able to predict what might make a particular employee leave, helping to reduce employer risk and also save the company time and money by potentially enabling them to save the situation (and the employee) and avoid having to go through the costly recruitment process.
4. Accurate employee advance and reviews
HR analytics give employers a lot of data in the form of employee skills, their education, and background experience, all which can be used to create a picture of how ready an employee might be for their next challenge or if they’d be good for another position, including management. Ultimately, it can help employers give their employees better feedback and align their review process to the overall business goals. It also works in the recruitment stage, analyzing criteria to allow for the best fit to be hired for that particular position. This reduces internal friction and can help the business run more smoothly. It also can help avoid the cost of a miss-hire – if the wrong candidate is hired (not skilled enough, difficult personality, etc.), it can cost the business not just the amount of time and money spent re-recruiting for the position but also potentially save them reputation and process damage along the way.
Since human capital management is the process that manages the employee process from recruitment through acquisition through onboarding and onto a career path or departure from the company, it makes sense that predictive HR analytics have the possibility to touch and impact all stages of the HCM process.
HR analytics are helping more and more businesses understand their strengths and address their weaknesses as they relate to the workplace and employees. Find out more about how you get started in predictive HR analytics and how you can enhance your human capital management today.