People analytics is a process of analyzing data about people and their interactions with your business. It can be used to help you understand your customers, track their behavior and predict what they will do next.
What is People Analytics?
People analytics is the practice of quantitatively measuring human behavior in order to understand and improve the way we interact with one another. It focuses on data about people, including their behaviors, preferences, and interests.
The term is used in a variety of ways. People analytics (or HRM) is an approach to workforce management that uses data and analytics to better understand human resources needs for organizations. It can be used for purposes including employee retention, recruitment, training and development, compensation management, succession planning, and performance appraisal.
People analytics is an approach to workforce management that uses data and analytics to better understand human resources needs for organizations. It can be used for purposes including employee retention, recruitment, training and development, compensation management, succession planning, and performance appraisal.
People analytics uses data about people’s interactions with systems and products to help businesses understand the needs of their customers, improve their products, and make more informed decisions. People analytics helps you understand your customers better by giving you access to data about things like where they spend time online, what they read online, how long they spend on websites, what they search for online, what they buy online, and more.
You’ll also be able to see patterns in user behavior across different platforms and devices. For example, if someone spends more time searching on their phone than on their desktop or laptop computer. The term “people analytics” first appeared in 2001, when it was coined by decision science expert Gary W. Gensler (now professor emeritus of business at the University of Michigan).
The concept has since been popularized by Harvard Business Review executive editor Henry Chesbrough as a way to improve organizations’ ability to grow, innovate, and adapt to change. For example, if you are a social justice organization focused on providing resources for low-income people in your community, you could use people analytics techniques to figure out how best to reach those people with your services.
The Process of People Analytics
1. Research the date that matters
This is where you start. You need to understand what your company needs to do right now in order to get the most out of people analytics. Does your company need a better way to manage its employees? Do you need to make sure everyone is working at their best, or do you just want to know who’s not doing well? Are there legal issues that need addressing before you even begin?
Once you’ve identified those needs, dig into the data that matters. This can be anything from employee satisfaction surveys and reviews to hiring and retention trends. Dig into anything that will help you understand what is happening in the world of people analytics and build an action plan for making it work for your company.
2. Experiment and explore
Once you’ve decided on the type of information that matters most to your business (and have a plan for collecting it), the next step is to actually collect it. This involves running experiments or “tests” to see whether certain types of questions yield better insight than others or if different methods yield different results. These tests should be focused on finding outliers or people who provide unexpected results and using them as inspiration for new ways.
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3. Build a strong data-based HR strategy
That means collecting information about your employees’ current performance, looking at where they’re succeeding and where they’re failing, and then figuring out what needs to change in order for them to succeed more often.
Without this kind of information, you won’t know exactly why certain members of your team are having trouble performing at certain times. Whether they’re struggling because they don’t like their manager or because they don’t know how to use new software tools effectively (or both).
4. Technical support
Have strong technical support from analytics experts who can assist with the implementation of the program or methodology you choose to implement in your company’s HR department or human resources process.
Benefits of People Analytics
There are many benefits of people analytics:
- Using analytics helps companies develop new products and services that meet customer needs
- Analytics can help companies create more efficient processes for making decisions about how to allocate resources or prioritize tasks
- Analytics can help companies identify opportunities for growth in areas where they may have previously been lagging behind competitors
- It can help to gain an understanding of how employees are performing.
- People analytics helps to have an overall view of what is happening in the company as well as how it compares to other companies.
- You can also use it to learn more about specific groups within the company (such as managers) so they can improve their performance or move on if needed.
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People Analytics Examples
People analytics tools are used by companies to collect, analyze, and use data about the people who interact with their products. This includes everything from customer support to product development.
1. Google uses people analytics to help the company understand its users’ needs, wants, and behavior. It has been able to do this by creating a platform that allows users to leave feedback on their experiences with Google products.
The company also uses this data internally in many ways, including the creation of targeted ads that are relevant to the user’s interests (e.g., if someone searches for “pizza,” Google will show them an ad for a nearby pizza place).
2. Uber uses people analytics to understand how drivers feel about the company and its services. This is done through surveys that riders complete after every ride or trip they take, as well as other data analysis methods like analyzing driver emails or chat logs between drivers and customers (which can be used in conjunction with other sources of information).
3. NASA uses people analytics in order to understand how its employees are feeling about their jobs and working conditions so that it can make changes where needed (e.g., adding more breaks during long shifts).
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What are People’s Analytics Tools?
People analytics tools are a collection of techniques that help businesses understand how they can manage their workforce better.
People analytics tools can include:
- User research to understand how customers use products
- Personas to understand how users behave
- Customer satisfaction surveys
- Employee feedback surveys
- Interviews with employees
- Awareness studies to understand what people don’t know
Read: Top 8 Applicant Tracking Systems for Successful HR Leaders
Some Great People Analytics Tools to Consider
1. Formplus:
Formplus helps you understand the customer journey, so you can build custom forms that fit your customer’s needs. You can use Formplus’ via any of the pre-designed feedback surveys or create yours from scratch. It’s a free service that lets you create forms and surveys for direct feedback on user behavior towards your products or service. This is great if you’d want to hear thoughts and suggestions from your customers. Formplus also helps you track employee feedback and usage data across your organization.
2. Visier:
Visier gives you insight into your customers’ behaviors so you can optimize your marketing strategies and customer experience. With Visier, you can get information about where people are coming from (e.g., mobile vs. desktop), which pages they’re visiting most often, and how long it takes them to complete tasks on your site.
3. Sisense:
Sisense helps you understand how different groups of customers behave online by analyzing their behavior across multiple channels such as email marketing campaigns or social media posts and providing insights into how these groups interact with each other over time.
4. Crunchr:
Crunchr is an easy-to-use tool that allows you to quickly see trends in employee engagement with your company culture, products, services, and brand. This can help your HR team make informed decisions regarding retention strategies and onboarding efforts.
5. ChartHop:
ChartHop allows users to create interactive charts using any data stored in an Excel spreadsheet using its drag-and-drop interface. The tool also offers data visualization capabilities via graphs, bar graphs, or pie charts; along with sharing options that enable users to share their work on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter
How Can HR Start Building People Analytics Capabilities?
- Data science
There are many tools available for gathering and analyzing data. HR professionals should consider using these tools as part of their People Analytics process. For example, a few companies use sophisticated algorithms to analyze employee interactions on social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter. This type of analysis can be used to identify individual strengths and weaknesses among employees, as well as trends in behavior that might be related to a particular work environment.
- Behavioral science
Human resources professionals need to learn how to apply behavioral science techniques in order to better understand how people behave at work. For example, studies have shown that there are certain personality traits associated with leadership effectiveness (e.g., agreeableness), which may be useful information for HR managers who want their employees to achieve high levels of productivity and engagement within the organization’s culture.
- Business acumen
This means having a solid grasp of business fundamentals including finance, economics, marketing, and more. Having good business acumen will help you put together a plan for developing your people analytics capabilities.
- Change management
Change management refers to the ability of organizations to adapt their processes as external factors change over time and without losing sight of their core mission statement or values system in the process
What Does the Future of People Analytics Look Like?
People analytics is the future of human resources. In the past, people analytics has focused on identifying demographic information about your users (age, gender, location) and what they’re doing in your app or website.
But today’s tech companies are breaking new ground by using data from across their entire organization from marketing efforts to customer support in order to understand how customers think about their experiences with your business.
It’s so much more than just “employee engagement” or “employee satisfaction.” It’s a way to understand how your employees are feeling, and why they’re feeling it. It’s a way to understand what they need in order to be successful, and then how you can help them get there.
And it’s not just about employees, either it’s also about customers and clients, too. People analytics gives you insight into all of those groups of people that use your products or services every day and it helps you make better decisions for them.
Conclusion
People analytics is a powerful tool for understanding how people interact with brands, products, and services. When used right, people analytics will use data to understand human behavior, which can be used to predict future behaviors, improve products and services, and inform decisions.