Self-Service People Analytics: Benefits and Practical Examples

Introduction
With the ever-increasing importance of data, analytics has become a crucial tool for HR professionals. At Crunchr, our mission is to ensure that HR professionals can use this tool to their benefit. We call this self-service people analytics. Self-service means that HR professionals can gather, analyze, and leverage insights themselves to make informed decisions that enhance employee engagement, boost productivity, and promote organizational growth.

What exactly is self-service people analytics, and how can HR professionals leverage its benefits? In this blog post, we delve into the world of self-service people analytics and explore its key benefits and practical examples. In my next blog, I’ll dedicate a full blog to one specific self-service example.

Self-Service People Analytics: What Is It?
Self-service people analytics refers to the practice of empowering HR professionals with the tools to analyze and interpret HR data independently. Unlike what I call the “dependency setup”, in which HR is fully dependent on the analytics department, self-service people analytics provides HR professionals with flexible and on-demand access to HR data. To be very clear: this is not to speak badly about analytics teams! On the contrary, they are our closest partners and owners of the self-service people analytics initiative. People analytics teams see self-service as the way to empower their HR teams and people managers to work data-driven, while at the same time it enables them to focus on more value-added activities such as advanced analytics.

Benefits of Self-Service People Analytics
Accurate and Timely Data: With self-service people analytics, HR teams can access up-to-date and accurate HR data, evaluate key metrics (such as employee turnover rates, employee engagement levels, and performance metrics), and analyze insights real-time, enabling them to make quick and informed decisions. This may sound as a no-brainer and spark the question why this hasn’t been standard for ages. Well, that’s because people data is complex, scattered across different systems and highly sensitive because of data privacy. Additionally, HR has traditionally not been the most data-driven discipline. This is changing rapidly, by the way, as mentioned by Insight222s research last week.

Increased Visibility: Self-service people analytics is not just giving access to an empty data-sheet! By providing prebuilt insights to HR teams via best-in-class dashboards that come with the possibility to easily drill down, explore further, connect and compare metrics, and guide users, HR professionals gain visibility into the underlying issues which were previously related to gut feel observations. With self-service people analytics, HR can easily unearth issues and connect the dots.

Improved Decision-Making: This is the most important benefit. Data-driven decision-making is critical in HR because these decisions impact both the top and bottom line as well as who an organization wants to be to its employees, the market and society. With self-service people analytics, HR teams can leverage data for better decisions to positively impact employee engagement, diversity & inclusion, productivity, and retention. It’s all those small self-service decisions that add up to transformational impact. At Crunchr, we call this people analytics for people. In other words, it’s the wide adoption and application of people analytics to create the best positive outcomes.

Practical Examples of Self-Service People Analytics
There are many practical applications of self-service people analytics in organizations and I will work out a concrete and dedicated example in the next blog.

One example is identifying potential terminations. HR departments can use data to predict employees who are likely to leave the organization or are at risk of being terminated. Another example is the recruitment of new employees. Using self-service people analytics, HR departments and people managers can identify the most effective sources of new recruits based on retention rates. This helps to ensure that recruitment strategies align with business objectives, which ultimately leads to a lower turnover rate and higher productivity levels. Lastly, managers can benefit from self-service people analytics when it comes to talent development. By analyzing employee data, managers can identify areas where employees may require development or which roles could be suitable next career steps.

Our customer Graham Trevor, Group HR Director at Randstad, summarizes self-service people analytics as: “Having the ability to have consistent, accurate and robust data for all the HR team. Crunchr has allowed us to accelerate our data led culture within HR like no other solution has. It gives easily accessible insights, and the ability to filter the data is a very quick and easy way that makes the data useful, dynamic and easily understood by everyone.”

Conclusion

In summary, self-service people analytics is a useful tool for HR professionals looking to leverage the power of data themselves to manage their workforce more effectively. It promotes data-driven decision-making and empowers HR teams to be more proactive. By leveraging the benefits of self-service people analytics, organizations can make more informed decisions that positively impact business results and the employee experience.