Human resources departments today face mounting pressure to use data and analytics to drive key decisions and deliver greater value to the business. From identifying top talent to predicting turnover risk to optimizing employee engagement, HR leaders must increasingly rely on insights from people data to inform their strategies and interventions.
Enter people analytics software. Also known as HR analytics or workforce analytics tools, these platforms provide powerful capabilities to help organizations make sense of their people data and extract actionable insights to improve HR outcomes.
In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll dive deep into the world of people analytics software. You‘ll learn what these tools are, how they work, and the key benefits they offer for HR teams. We‘ll also highlight some of the top people analytics software products on the market and provide tips for choosing the right platform for your needs. Finally, we‘ll explore best practices for implementing people analytics in your organization and take a look at real-world examples of these tools in action.
Whether you‘re an HR professional just getting started with analytics or looking to take your data-driven HR initiatives to the next level, this guide will provide the knowledge and insights you need to leverage people analytics software for maximum impact. Let‘s get started!
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What is People Analytics Software?
At its core, people analytics software is a category of tools that enable HR teams to collect, analyze, and visualize data about the workforce to uncover insights and inform decision-making. These platforms integrate data from various HR systems and sources, such as HRIS, ATS, performance management, engagement surveys, and more, into a centralized repository.
Advanced analytics, reporting, and data visualization capabilities allow HR professionals and business leaders to spot trends, identify patterns, and gain a deeper understanding of the workforce. With these insights, organizations can make data-driven decisions to optimize talent strategies, enhance the employee experience, and drive overall business outcomes.
The importance of people analytics has grown significantly in recent years as HR has shifted from a largely administrative function to a strategic business partner. In a 2020 Deloitte survey, 84% of respondents viewed people analytics as important or very important to their organizations. Yet only 48% felt ready or somewhat ready to take advantage of it, indicating significant room for growth and maturation.
As competition for top talent intensifies and employee expectations rise, leveraging people data effectively will only become more critical for HR success. People analytics software provides the tools and capabilities needed to thrive in this new data-driven reality.
Key Features and Capabilities of People Analytics Software
While the specific functionality may vary between platforms, most people analytics software tools offer a core set of features and capabilities:
Data integration and management: The ability to connect and integrate data from multiple HR systems and sources is foundational for any people analytics tool. This includes structured data (e.g. HRIS, ATS) as well as unstructured data (e.g. employee feedback, social media). Data management capabilities ensure data quality, consistency, and governance.
Reporting and dashboards: Intuitive, customizable dashboards allow HR teams and business leaders to track and visualize key people metrics and KPIs. Interactive reports enable users to drill down into the data to uncover deeper insights. Most tools offer both pre-built and ad-hoc reporting capabilities.
Advanced analytics: Predictive and prescriptive analytics applied to HR data can yield powerful insights to guide decision-making. For example, attrition modeling can identify employees at risk of leaving, while scenario modeling can project the impact of different talent interventions. Many platforms are now embedding AI and machine learning capabilities to enhance the speed and accuracy of analysis.
Benchmarking: The ability to benchmark people metrics against industry peers provides valuable context to understand organizational performance. Some vendors offer access to anonymized data from their customer base for benchmarking purposes.
Data visualization: People analytics software excels at translating complex data into easily understandable visual formats like charts, graphs, and heatmaps. This allows HR teams to effectively communicate insights to business stakeholders. Some more advanced tools even offer natural language generation to automatically translate data into narratives.
Collaboration and sharing: To democratize access to people insights, leading platforms make it easy to share reports and dashboards with employees across the organization. Collaboration features allow HR business partners and people managers to work together on analysis and action planning.
Action planning and tracking: Generating insights is only half the battle – the real value comes from taking action on them. Some people analytics tools now include action planning capabilities to help HR teams identify and track key initiatives based on the data. Assigning tasks, setting goals, and monitoring progress keeps efforts on track.
By bringing together these core capabilities in a single platform, HR teams can transform their people data into a strategic asset that guides decisions and drives business value. As the market matures, expect to see vendors expand and deepen these feature sets to support emerging use cases.
The Benefits of Using People Analytics Software
Adopting and leveraging people analytics tools offers significant benefits for HR teams and their organizations:
Make better people decisions: With access to data-driven insights, HR can make more informed, objective decisions regarding talent acquisition, development, engagement, retention, and beyond. This reduces bias and risk while improving overall workforce outcomes.
Increase HR efficiency and impact: People analytics tools automate data collection, analysis, and reporting, allowing HR to spend less time wrangling spreadsheets and more time deriving actionable insights. This boosts the efficiency and productivity of the HR team while elevating its strategic impact and credibility.
Improve the employee experience: Insights from people analytics can identify opportunities to enhance the employee experience at every stage of the lifecycle. From onboarding to development to retention, data can pinpoint areas for improvement and help HR design targeted initiatives to address pain points and boost engagement.
Manage workforce costs: A data-driven understanding of the workforce allows organizations to better forecast and optimize labor costs. People analytics can help identify areas of over- or understaffing, model the impact of compensation changes, and track key financial metrics like revenue per employee.
Drive business outcomes: Ultimately, the goal of any people analytics initiative is to positively impact the bottom line. By aligning people strategies with overall business objectives and measuring their effectiveness, HR can demonstrate clear ROI and secure buy-in for future investments. According to Deloitte, high-maturity organizations, or those using people analytics in a sophisticated way, report 82% higher three-year average profit than their low-maturity counterparts.
As the business case for people analytics becomes more compelling, organizations that fail to leverage these tools risk falling behind the competition in the race for talent. An investment in people analytics software is an investment in the future of HR and the business as a whole.
Leading People Analytics Software Products
The people analytics technology market has grown significantly in recent years as more organizations adopt data-driven HR practices. Here are 12 of the top people analytics software products available today:
1. Visier People: Visier is a leading provider of cloud-based people analytics and workforce planning solutions. Their product offers advanced analytics, interactive visualizations, and collaborative planning capabilities to help organizations optimize their talent strategies.
2. One Model: One Model‘s people analytics platform integrates data from multiple HR systems to provide a unified view of the workforce. It offers predictive analytics, scenario modeling, and natural language insights to guide decision-making.
3. Crunchr: Crunchr is a people analytics tool that combines data from various sources to provide insights on workforce demographics, diversity, performance, and more. Its user-friendly interface and pre-built dashboards make it easy for HR teams to get started.
4. Workday Prism Analytics: Part of the broader Workday HR suite, Prism Analytics allows organizations to combine Workday data with data from external sources for richer insights. It offers data discovery, visualization, and machine learning capabilities.
5. SAP SuccessFactors People Analytics: SAP‘s people analytics solution provides a comprehensive view of the workforce by integrating data from the SuccessFactors HCM suite. It offers reporting, trend analysis, benchmarking, and predictive modeling.
6. Oracle HR Analytics: Oracle‘s HR analytics product leverages the data in Oracle HCM Cloud to provide actionable insights on workforce trends, risks, and opportunities. It includes pre-built dashboards as well as self-service analytics capabilities.
7. Nakisa Hanelly: Nakisa Hanelly is an organizational design and people analytics platform that helps businesses optimize their workforce composition. It offers data visualization, modeling, and collaboration features.
8. Tableau for HR: Tableau‘s powerful data visualization and analytics capabilities can be applied to HR data to uncover workforce insights. The platform integrates with various HR systems and offers pre-built dashboards for common use cases.
9. Talentsoft People Analytics: Part of the Talentsoft HR suite, People Analytics offers data consolidation, advanced analysis, and customizable dashboards to help organizations make smarter talent decisions.
10. Peakon: Peakon (now part of Workday) is an employee success platform that uses real-time people analytics to help organizations boost engagement, productivity, and retention. It gathers feedback from employees and offers personalized insights and recommendations.
11. Qualtrics Employee Experience: Qualtrics‘ platform helps organizations measure and improve the employee experience using data from surveys, feedback, and other sources. It offers real-time analytics and action planning tools.
12. IBM Watson Talent Insights: IBM‘s AI-powered people analytics solution offers predictive analytics, skill mapping, and workforce forecasting capabilities. It integrates data from various HR systems to provide a holistic view of the workforce.
While each of these products offers a unique mix of features and capabilities, they all aim to help organizations harness the power of people data to drive better business outcomes. The right choice for your organization will depend on your specific needs, goals, and existing HR tech stack.
Tips for Selecting and Implementing People Analytics Software
Investing in a people analytics platform is a significant decision that requires careful planning and consideration. Here are some key factors to evaluate when selecting a tool:
- Alignment with business goals and use cases
- Integration with existing HR systems and data sources
- Breadth and depth of analytics capabilities
- Ease of use and adoption for HR and business users
- Vendor track record and customer references
- Pricing and total cost of ownership
Once you‘ve chosen a platform, effective implementation is critical to realize the full value of your investment. Best practices include:
- Clearly defining goals, metrics, and success criteria upfront
- Securing buy-in and support from senior leadership
- Carefully planning data integration and migration
- Investing in change management and user training
- Starting with quick wins before scaling up
- Continuously monitoring and optimizing your deployment
By following these guidelines, organizations can set themselves up for people analytics success and achieve lasting business impact.
The Future of People Analytics
As HR continues to evolve into a data-driven function, the role of people analytics will only grow in importance. We can expect to see several key trends shaping the future of this space:
Increasingly sophisticated analytics: As tools mature, they will offer more advanced predictive and prescriptive capabilities powered by AI and machine learning. This will enable HR to not only understand what has happened in the past, but also anticipate future trends and proactively optimize the workforce.
Greater democratization of data: Leading organizations will work to put people insights directly in the hands of managers and employees to drive better decision-making at all levels. Vendors will focus on enhancing the user experience to make analytics more accessible and actionable for non-technical users.
Tighter integration with other business systems: To paint a truly holistic picture of the workforce, people analytics will need to integrate data not just from HR systems, but also from finance, operations, customer experience, and more. Expect to see more pre-built connectors and APIs to facilitate this exchange of data.
Focus on employee experience: The rise of remote and hybrid work has heightened the importance of understanding and optimizing the employee experience. People analytics will play a central role in measuring employee sentiment, identifying pain points, and designing targeted interventions to boost engagement and well-being.
Emergence of ecosystem solutions: As the market matures, we may see the rise of people analytics "ecosystems" that bring together best-of-breed tools to support various HR use cases. These ecosystems will likely be anchored by core HRIS/HCM platforms and augmented by specialized solutions for workforce planning, talent acquisition, learning, and more.
To stay ahead of these trends, HR professionals will need to continuously upskill in data literacy and analytics. Building a data-driven HR culture and mindset will be key to success in this new world of work.
Real-World Examples of People Analytics in Action
To bring the power of people analytics to life, let‘s look at a few real-world examples of organizations using these tools to drive business impact:
Cisco: Cisco uses people analytics to predict attrition risk and proactively intervene to retain top talent. By analyzing data on factors like role, performance, compensation, and tenure, they can identify employees most likely to leave and take targeted action to address their concerns. This has helped Cisco reduce attrition by 2-3% and save millions in turnover costs.
Chevron: Chevron leverages people analytics to optimize its workforce planning and talent acquisition strategies. Using data on skills, competencies, and business needs, they can model future workforce demand and identify gaps to proactively address. This has allowed Chevron to reduce time-to-fill for critical roles and ensure a steady pipeline of talent.
Novartis: Novartis applies people analytics to measure and enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) across the organization. By analyzing data on representation, advancement, and experience across different employee segments, they can identify areas for improvement and track progress against DEI goals. This data-driven approach has helped Novartis boost diversity in leadership and create a more inclusive culture.
Walmart: Walmart uses people analytics to optimize scheduling and staffing in its stores. By analyzing data on customer traffic, sales, and employee preferences, they can predict labor demand and automatically generate schedules that align with business needs while accommodating associate availability. This has increased productivity, reduced overtime costs, and improved the employee experience.
These examples demonstrate the wide range of business challenges that people analytics can address, from talent retention to workforce planning to DEI. As more organizations adopt these tools and share their successes, we can expect to see even more innovative applications emerge.
Conclusion and Getting Started
People analytics software is quickly becoming an indispensable tool for HR teams looking to drive strategic value in today‘s data-driven world. By harnessing the power of people data, these platforms provide unprecedented insights into the workforce that can guide smarter decisions, improve the employee experience, and ultimately boost business outcomes.
As you embark on your own people analytics journey, remember that technology is only one part of the equation. Achieving success requires a clear strategy, strong partnerships with IT and the business, and a commitment to data-driven decision making at all levels of the organization. Start small, build momentum through quick wins, and continually measure and optimize your efforts.
The future of HR is data-driven, and people analytics software will be a key enabler of this transformation. By investing in these tools and capabilities today, you can position your organization to thrive in the new world of work and secure your seat at the table as a strategic business partner. The time to act is now – let‘s get started!