How SMBs can benefit from HR Analytics

As we continue to move forward to build a more technologically focused world, ideas are turning into successful businesses every single day. We know that the primary focus for any company is building a better product or service that it has to offer. Founders and investors are putting in a lot of effort and even more money to get the infrastructure and automation to collect, analyze and make data-driven decisions when it comes to product development, customer success, sales and marketing. However, what is not given worthy importance is analyzing data for HR decisions.

For most companies, employees are the most important asset but they also account for the largest expense on companies’ financial statements. Large companies are leveraging the workforce analytics data to improve employee retention, efficiency, productivity and reduce costs at the same time. But what we need to consider here is that this data and analysis is rather more important for smaller companies to scale.

Following are some of the key areas where HR data analytics can help SMBs:

Monitor Employee Learning and Development

Companies are continuously looking for more specific skills from their workforce. Employees, on the other hand, are always looking to add new skills and grow in their careers. Gone are those days when employees were satisfied with their positions and would go on with the same role for decades. Even large companies are struggling to understand how well their learning and development strategies are performing.

Imagine if you were tracking and analyzing this employee development data. It would not only be beneficial to understand the success of the program but would also help identify the right courses for the workforce. Moreover, it also helps to understand the engagement rate for employees opting or not for a specific course and take necessary actions. Most importantly it becomes easier to justify the cost associated with offering these pieces of training if it is helping the employees grow personally and at the workplace.

Easy Integration with other Applications

Accounting applications such as QuickBooks, NetSuite, Xero and Intacct that are widely used by SMBs can be easily integrated with HR analytics platforms. These applications hold necessary financial information about employee reimbursements, travel costs, training and development cost and so on. Connecting these applications and syncing numbers with the HR analytics platform makes it easier and more efficient to monitor if the costs incurred by the company are resulting in any positive results. Cutting these extra costs and optimizing the expense plan can prove to be very beneficial for small companies.

Flexibility with custom reporting and dashboards

Not everybody can be a data analytics expert and HR professionals are not expected to play around with data while they are busy hunting the best talent for your organization and making sure the employees are happy with their jobs.

This is exactly where the workforce analytics comes into play. Some companies have developed superior platforms that use AI to build custom reports and dashboards without any advanced analytics skills requirements. These reports and dashboards can then be exported and shared with multiple teams to take relevant actions. Some of these platforms also use advanced visualization techniques to easily communicate the message to higher management as well. The reports can be sorted, filtered, grouped, etc. and all of this with easy drag and drop capabilities.

Improving recruiting strategies and retention

The gig economy has completely changed the way employees look at jobs and more essentially how companies look at employee tenures. Quickly scaling companies want very specific skills for special projects. Because of this, companies are continuously recruiting and rotating employees on one hand and struggling to retain employees in certain areas.

Data-driven recruiting has become increasingly popular in recent times. Metrics such as quality of hire, time taken to fill a position, number of candidates reviewed and how long does the candidate stick to the organization help to quantify how well the recruiting is performing. Hiring a wrong candidate can be a big cost for a company and especially when we talk about small companies. Although recruiting is still one of the biggest challenges faced by companies, using HR analytics can help make it a competitive advantage.

Filtering relevant applications and hiring is just the first step of the process. Human resources teams also need to look into the retention, efficient turnover and overall employee satisfaction. Let’s say you hired a perfect candidate who has been performing well and meeting all the required expectations. Retaining that employee can be a challenge. Keeping a track of retention and turnover data, understanding what affects these factors can make a huge difference in the growth of the company.

Being a small company, the focus should be on improving the product, adding useful features and trying to scale. Using workforce analytics can help save a lot of time, money and prevent disruptions that occur when employees are replaced.

Identifying workplace trends

Free food and beverages, unlimited PTO, better than ever healthcare benefits, work from home flexibility, pets at the workplace, etc. are the extra benefits employees are expecting from their employers these days. The availability of these benefits affects employee productivity, efficiency, satisfaction, and engagement.

Employers can overcome these by collecting necessary data over time and taking the right steps. For example, most businesses have a peak season/quarter in a year where the leads come in at a much higher rate and the sales team is under tremendous pressure to deliver higher targets. Employers can identify this and offer certain benefits to make sure that the sales reps are motivated.

Finally, scale and grow the company

With the US economy on an all-time high, the business world has seen quick changes over the last couple of years. Using relevant data to make decisions has become a basic requirement for all areas of business, including HR. Large companies have benefited a lot from these HR analytics tools.

SMBs can now take advantage of and benefit from these people analytics tools that have been exclusively developed and designed for companies in growing stages. This can help with increasing retention and lowering turnover, creating dashboards and integrating with other platforms and also help develop recruiting strategies and workplace trends. This will help in a more stable and productive workforce which is a definite path to success for any organization.