There are some people who live for analytics and reporting. They are obsessed with digging into data, finding patterns and trends, and developing new ways to automate and communicate important learning. Then there are the folks who … don’t. They may be just as observant and responsive in their own way, but they lean toward qualitative analysis.
What matters most, though, is having a team that encompasses both the quantitative and the qualitative skillsets, and this doesn’t just mean having team members with talents and experience in both areas—it also means having systems in place that can allow both to take place in an integrated environment.
Using a human capital management system, even people who don’t have a natural inclination towards the quantitative can work with, analyze, and report using numeric data. And those who would often forget (or deliberately neglect) the qualitative side of things will find it simple to build up a clearer picture using descriptive documentation, not just numbers. Here are just a few examples of how this works.
Employees generate a lot of data at work. They clock in and out. They meet or miss goals and deadlines. They do well or poorly during reviews. They stay with and advance within your company, or quickly leave for opportunities elsewhere. In many cases, though, these sets of information are all cordoned off into their own little enclosures. Time and attendance is one set. Performance ratings are another. Tenure is one more.
A crackshot programmer could certainly find a way to combine some of these datasets for more detailed analysis, assuming that this was a priority assigned to them, and that some manager or member of an internal improvements team thought it interesting or concerning enough to allocate time to it. But in many cases, people with those kinds of skills have a laundry list of urgent projects awaiting their attention. Learning about what makes an excellent (or terrible) employee isn’t as high up on that list as it deserves to be.
This is where human capital management platforms really shine. They collect all of that employee-generated information into one comprehensive system, allowing you to control for different variables and analyze your data across inputs.
This means you can look at recruitment data, performance records, and tenure information to find out whether or not having an industry-specific degree is actually a good indicator of long-term success. You can see whether your new employee mentoring program is effective at increasing productivity in the first 90 days, and whether this carries over at the one year mark. And you can do all this without bothering your programming expert every time you need to look at your information in a new way.
If you have certain metrics that you’re generating reports for on a regular basis, there’s no good reason to be doing them by hand. Human capital management systems enable you to automate a lot of this.
Is there an unexpected outlier? That’s when it’s worth delving deeper into the data to ascertain the cause of the blip. But save your energy and brainpower for the more complex and human-focused parts of analytics.
When multiple forms of employee data are gathered together in an organized format as they are with a human capital management system, it gives you a much more comprehensive picture of what is going on.
If you’re responsible for creating a narrative regarding the development of a new team or project for your annual report, having all those notes attached to the numbers are incredibly helpful in developing a data-driven story that accommodates the learning and reflections of the people who were involved firsthand. No more last-minute emails like “Hey, could you send me those notes from the meeting you had six months ago regarding that new process?”
When everyone is accustomed to using the same human capital management system for managing and gathering information (even if it’s just their own payroll history) analytics becomes much more approachable. No longer exclusively the domain of specialists, increasing numbers of managers and employees can learn to use data to drive their decision-making processes, making your company a smarter and fairer place overall.
Even if an updated system is still a couple years the future for you, it’s helpful to start thinking about your wants and needs now. Get in touch with our experts to find out more.
Our complete guide on Human Capital Management is a comprehensive resource about how effective HCM helps organizations manage their workforce more effectively. Whether you're interested in seeing an HCM platform or just want to learn more about the practice of Human Capital Management, this page is for you.