The #1 Thing HR Professionals Can Improve in 2020
Plain and simple, the #1 thing HR professionals can do to improve in 2020 is to learn how to leverage data. This is not a new thought, nor is it necessarily a new skill. HR professionals have been using data for generations just not in the ways that data must be used today.
Is Data The New Normal?
For some time now data has been referred to as the new gold for businesses. Data collection has always been focused outside the organization. How are customers interacting with our products, ads, support services? In more recent years many organizations have added an inward focus to data collection to improve business operations and efficiency.
The bottom line is that data is becoming a core capability that all businesses must leverage. Without it, your business risks overlooking key insights and falling behind the competition.
Why Has HR Fallen Behind In The Race To Transform?
When you hear “data” what do you think of? Technology? Systems? Analytics? It’s hard to imagine how data can help us improve the less technical areas of business like people. This may be why Human Resources has lagged behind in the adoption of data.
Workforce data holds the key to gaining a deep understanding of where your workforce is now, where it needs to be and how you are going to get it there. HR leaders know they to collect and learn from their workforce data, but their department has lacked the skill set, training, and tools to extract those key insights.
How Can Your HR Department Start Leveraging Data?
As an HR professional, you don’t need to be a coding expert or data analyst, but you must be able to see the insights in the data. You can see those insights by feeding data to a workforce analytics program or by cross-referencing data from multiple spreadsheets. You also need to translate those insights into actions and communicate them to others across the organization. The process of how you arrived at your conclusions needs to be repeatable and transparent before others will believe you have real answers.
Start With Training
While workforce analytics platforms are still maturing as is our understanding of the workforce and how to propel it forward. Therefore, training in baseline data analytics is a must for your HR professionals in 2020. Here are some additional areas for training:
Excel - if you don’t already know advanced Excel methods like writing Macros and using VBA lookup, then get training here too. Excel is great for smaller tasks and quick analysis.
Data Visualization – As an HR analyst you will need eye-catching, high-quality charts and graphs to present your findings in a clear and concise way. You want to understand which visuals best communicate your story and how to build them.
Python or R – Python and R are statistical programming languages and are better and faster than Excel. They are used to perform advanced analyses and predictive analytics on big data sets. You don’t need to be an expert, just know enough to do simple tasks.
SQL – SQL is the industry-standard database language and if you don’t already have training here, this is a great place to start. SQL is needed for large datasets which if you don’t have already, will have in the very near future.
Invest In the Right Tools
While manually collecting and organizing your workforce data is an option, it’s time-consuming, static, and leaves room for error. If you want your department to fully and quickly adopt a data-driven mindset, you have to invest in the tools that make it easy for them to incorporate data in their everyday work.
Platforms such as Visual Workforce help you automate the process of collecting and organizing your data in a visual way. Not only do these platforms connect you with the tools you need to bring your workforce into the future but they provide the transparency you need to build a trustworthy, credible relationship with your people.
In today’s competitive world, these tools are helping organizations delivery more efficient and productive people operation plans. Often these plans are multi-dimensional managing upskilling, training, team creation, and hiring plans. Using data to inform your people strategy will help anticipate changes and risks, putting your workforce ahead of the curve.
Only through consistent, in-depth analysis of workforce data can an organization hope to structure and support its workforce in a manner necessary to achieve its goals. Want your HR departments to shine in the coming years? Arm your HR teams with data, the knowledge to use it, and the tools to grow your organization’s most important asset, people.