Do we understand the value and purpose of our People Analytics?

Liaison Workforce on workforce management solutions

In the second part of our People Analytics blog series, we look at the purpose of driving workforce data and how effective data analysis can bring additional value to workforce management.

It is imperative that you can clearly articulate what value the data will bring the organisation and how it will benefit different stakeholders from the outset. This is not always as straight forward as you think as the benefits of analytics are not easily quantifiable in monetary saving terms. One of the primary advantages of People Analytics is that it is a supporting tool to identify, achieve and measure longer term strategic goals, such as highlighting root causes for low workforce stability, high turnover or stress related sickness.

These areas will still require action to combat the causes; for example, in two years’ time you cannot definitively say that analytics saved us £200k by reducing turnover by 1% – changes in processes, behaviours and policies resulting the initial analytics will trigger the eventual cost-saving.

It important to understand how the data will impact you positively in other areas of the business. The impact that a People Analytics programme, as a workforce management solution, can have relatively quickly includes:

Reporting efficiencies

Most large NHS organisations have a team of people dedicated to workforce reporting with the majority of their time spent extracting data from multiple systems, manually combining and manipulating the data, creating charts in Microsoft Excel (or another reporting tool) and creating large reports to be distributed across the organisation. This process can be repeated many times through a reporting period for ad-hoc reports.

Automating this through People Analytics gives you the opportunity to save time and redeploy personnel to more valuable tasks and processes that benefit both the organisation and the individuals.

Reporting agility

Most workforce reporting processes would benefit from a system where all reports and metrics can be accessed directly within a single system. Rather than multiple systems or emailed spreadsheets, the data sources can then be triangulated, and the data silos can begin to be broken down. The data can also be interactive so that if a user needs a slightly different perspective on the report or metric, there is no longer the need for an ad-hoc report request and the elapsed time it takes to produce that request.

Reports can be configured to look at the highest impact areas, so an organisation can focus their efforts on what issues have the most influence. Categorisation and banding of data can be automated as part of the data upload process, making it meaningful within the charts. It is no-good assessing payroll data, for example, if you have a chart with 300 pay elements!

Using data more effectively

According to the CIPD, 49% of HR decisions are based on intuition and it is our experience that within the NHS that workforce data is not always considered correct or up to date. With People Analytics reporting, we can begin to move forward and make decisions based on the data collected. We can also use the data quickly and effectively to back up intuition to make recommendations to senior management on subsequent change programs, which can now be evidenced and backed up with clear reporting. Following this, we can also use data as a starting point to begin to influence the rest of the organisation and address relevant issues.

In summary, it is important to carefully consider these areas, and be clear and specific on the benefits and value of engaging a People Analytics programme, as well as how it fits into your overall workforce strategy. With this workforce management solution, you will begin to bring others with you early on in the implementation journey. Liaison Workforce can help benchmark the starting point of analytics transformation and its supporting processes through its advisory Pulse services, which help NHS organisations track and measure progress.

For further information on People Analytics solutions and Pulse reporting, please contact a Liaison Workforce advisor on:

Phone: 0845 603 900
Email: PeopleAnalytics@LiaisonGroup.com

Find out more here.