Analytics are nothing new – businesses have been analyzing business processes in various ways for decades. Analytics has come to mean something different, though, in the last decade, and today “analytics” tends to refer to digital data collection and processing that gives businesses insights into parts of their organization, like sales and marketing. Being able to capture this information digitally and analyze it faster has led to businesses making more effective solutions.
For instance, if a marketing team uses Google Analytics, they can easily find out what parts of their website are performing well, how many people are visiting their site and from where. This information helps marketers make changes that can drive more business and customer engagement.
How can HR analytics benefit your organization?
Analytics has lately taken hold of HR departments as well. With more-organized and more-accessible data on employees, organizations can reduce turnover, save time and money on hiring, and create an engaged, productive workforce. While not every organization has begun implementing streamlined HR analytics solutions in their day to day operations, the ones that are have seen several benefits, including:
- Reduced hiring costs
- Better retention
- Improved training and review processes
- More cohesive management and interdepartmental communication
The best HR analytics tools to support your business
If you’re looking to start the HR analytics journey at your organization and reap some of the benefits for your business, here are some free HR analytics tools to try:
- Zoho People: This employee-centric software lets businesses sign up for free and gives them a better handle on performance reviews, time management, feedback, goal setting, and more to help you see tangible data points and use them to make hiring, promotion, and raise decisions, as well as see the effectiveness and efficiencies of your team. If your small business has five employees or fewer, Zoho offers a “forever free” plan.
- Zenefits: Zenefits offers free demonstrations and custom solutions for your specific business. After you’re enrolled, their pricing is competitive considering what they offer: payroll, benefits management, and HR tools like compliance tools and library resources, time and attendance tools and performance management add-ons. Their technology is also easily integrated with common office tools like Google, Slack, Office365, Salesforce, and Expensify, to help make all employee interaction and HR administrative tasks easier for everyone.
- TinyPulse: This HR tool is free to try and focuses on data and insight around employee engagement and experience, including onboarding, recognition, performance, and exit interviews. Because employee satisfaction and engagement are at the heart of why employees stay with a company, this is a good tool to try if you’re looking for a way to get and use feedback from employees.
- Odoo: Odoo boasts a suite of business apps that can help you run and analyze business function better, including HR. Free to try, you can customize your own Odoo subscription and include features such as recruitment, leave of absence, timesheet, and expenses, and other HR-related processes.
- Bamboo HR: With tools like employee database and records, performance management, employee satisfaction and feedback, HR reporting, and PTO tracking, this HR software helps you better manage all your HR tasks and analyze all the data that goes along with them so you can adjust your processes along the way as you grow your business.
Predictive analytics tools for HR make human resource processes easier, simpler, and more effective. HR analytics tools give your business a way to turn unstructured, disparate data and create more holistic pictures of employee health, engagement, cultural fit, and productivity. Understanding the employee equation no longer must be elusive – HR analytics can help point a better way forward for a business’s workforce, which in turn helps build a better business from the ground up.
