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6 ways people analytics can help HR improve retention
Improving retention benefits the entire organization. Learn some ways people analytics can help HR increase retention, from identifying high turnover to improving DEI.
As retention remains a major issue for companies, HR leaders should explore all potential strategies to improve their company's turnover rate. People analytics can possibly help improve those numbers.
HR leaders can use people analytics to improve diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and identify departments where turnover rates are higher than normal. These strategies can lead to employee retention improving as well.
Here are some ways people analytics helps HR leaders potentially improve employee retention.
1. Understanding employee turnover
People analytics can help HR leaders better understand reasons for high employee turnover. For example, HR staff could examine employees' stated reasons for leaving and find that employees most often cited low pay.
Turnover is influenced by various factors, so HR staff will likely need to examine a wide range of data to get an accurate picture.
2. Identifying areas of high turnover
Identifying the areas of the organization with high levels of turnover is an important step for improving retention. People analytics can show HR leaders turnover rates across the organization, as well as turnover for specific departments or geographical regions.
Looking at these analytics may then reveal root causes for the turnover. These may include the following reasons for employee departures:
- issues with specific managers or company management;
- compensation that does not align with local market compensation for in-person positions, industry-specific compensation for remote or hybrid positions, or equivalent or similar positions at other organizations;
- lack of learning and development opportunities;
- lack of promotions; and
- uneven distribution of bonus budgets across teams.
HR leaders can then examine and potentially create strategies to mitigate these problems, including looking more closely at management styles or identifying career development opportunities for employees.
3. Mitigating future turnover
One of the most potentially valuable features of analytics software is predictive analytics, which uses current and historical data to forecast future trends. Predictive analytics can provide potential insight into future turnover and areas of concern.
While predictive analytics is not guaranteed to show future trends, it can provide some insights that HR leaders can use to mitigate future turnover issues.
4. Improving employee experience
Employees may decide to leave a company because of negative employee experience, and people analytics can potentially help HR leaders determine how to improve their organization's employee experience.
HR staff can aggregate various feedback and sentiment data to produce employee sentiment metrics that delve into employees' feelings about various topics, including their team, the company systems and company policies. HR leaders can then create strategies to improve employee experience.
Since HR information systems don't typically include feedback and sentiment data, HR staff will need to send out surveys to gather this information.
5. Finding future company stars
Analyzing performance data, manager reviews and other metrics can help HR leaders identify the organization's key performers, then work with the employees' managers to develop the high performers for future roles and create tailored development plans.
A clear development plan and communication with the employees about how much the company values them can prevent those employees from leaving the organization.
6. Improving DEI efforts
Analytics can play an important role in DEI efforts by identifying areas where the company is underperforming on diversity initiatives. HR leaders can then create hiring goals or take other steps to ensure the organization hits its targets.
Achieving DEI goals can demonstrate to employees and prospective hires that the company not only values diversity but is committed to following through on DEI efforts.
