Canadian HR Reporter

20 www.hrreporter.com F E A T U R E S AMID the ongoing COVID -19 pandemic, many new HR challenges have bubbled to the surface: How can we optimize the number of people working from home? How do we ensure effective collaboration between people who work in offices and those who remain remote? More importantly, how can we train people across different work locations and help them grow, develop and stay productive in the new "never normal" era? Now more than ever, employers and HR need an efficient and effective way to gain insights into their staff — their sentiments, preferences, skills, routines and roles — in delivering the business strategy. People analytics can enable companies to ideate around and implement innovative solutions for addressing talent-related risks by identifying skill gaps, determining future- ready skills, reducing talent attrition rates, optimize learning, development, hiring and workflow automation. Organizations can also increase their return on investment on key employee segments by using analytics to plan and follow an employee's journey through different learning and development experiences and pathways. This journey is marked by four types of activities: • Identifying the relevance of a training program to an employee's career pathway by using data analytics to assess an employee's skills gaps, learning needs and training priorities. • Measuring the timing and completion rate of training programs. • Measuring an employee's productivity improvements by tracking performance metrics and relevant behaviours. • Providing real-time performance feed- back and pushing more training and development recommendations to an employee based on a personalized training road map. HR also needs to identify which HR and non-HR stakeholders — including WHAT'S THE MOST DIFFICULT TASK WITH CURRENT ANALYTICAL TOOLS? digital marketing or analytics-related programming languages. It's also important for HR to develop a vision for its people analytics capabilities and set clear objectives and outcomes. Traditionally, HR teams have been able to share basic statistics on headcount, attrition and hiring numbers, but what lies beyond that in the form of predictive analytics and the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence-based techniques is almost limitless. Identify core beneficiaries of an analytical approach: People analytics can provide a more grounded perspective on both the current and future workforce, but certain HR processes may benefit more from a streamlined, data- driven approach. For example, if certain employee groups or roles have been impacted more than others as a result of COVID-19, analytical techniques can identify current and future skills gaps to 26% Easily understanding the results and implications of analyses 23% Accessing information from other departments 19% Implementing innovative programs 14% Making good decisions based on trusted data 10% Meeting senior management's information needs 8% Responding quickly to problems USING ANALYTICS TO UNLOCK POTENTIAL The COVID-19 pandemic has proven that employers must be able to react to new challenges as soon as they arise. And people analytics should be an integral part of the toolkit, say Janet Krstevski and Kamran Niazi of Accenture improving time-to-hire and employee retention as well as enhancing employee experiences, health and well-being. Here are five simple steps HR can take to ensure it is appropriately deploying people analytics capabilities and delivering the insights for which customers are looking. Understand people-related needs and talent risks: Before an organization can fully explore the benefits of people analytics, HR needs to understand what talent risks its organization is facing and which data-driven insights will be useful in managing these risks going forward. Most HR professionals continue to focus on historical HR data and reporting, but they need to understand how critical talent risks will impact the organization — such as those related to a higher-than-normal attrition rate or a lack of future-ready skills such as human-centred design, Source: Oracle H R M E T R I C S

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