When Google began to champion the role they felt people analytics could play in driving better HR decisions, they likely had no idea that this concept would help them become one of the largest companies in the world. Their success with workforce analytics showed a lot of growing companies the power that it could have in driving better HR and business outcomes, and it led to workforce intelligence booming as an industry.
However, workforce intelligence is still a relatively new concept, and many businesses haven’t quite figured out how to make it work within their organization. Right now, the biggest struggle in workforce analytics is the “knowing vs. doing gap,” in which company leaders are grappling with leveraging their workforce analytics data to boost employee engagement and happiness — both key metrics for organizations that want to weather turbulent economic long-term. That’s why, in this guide, we explore what workforce intelligence means for you today and how you can implement it if you want to future-proof your business.
What is Workforce Intelligence?
Workforce intelligence is a data-driven approach that uses analytics and AI to gain insights into employee performance, skills, and workplace trends. It helps organizations make informed decisions about hiring, training, and workforce planning to improve productivity and efficiency.
And, as a $15.5 billion dollar industry that’s predicted to grow to $24.5 billion by 2029, startups and large enterprises alike are making workforce intelligence a bigger priority, particularly due to the fact that AI and machine learning tools have made workforce intelligence even more powerful.
Key Components of Workforce Intelligence
- Data collection and integration: Analysts and HR professionals use software, programming language, and statistical models, and language learning models (LLMs) to gather data and make more informed workforce decisions. They may organize this data into sets to make more sense of it and figure out what story the data is telling them about their current workforce.
- Insights and actionable recommendations: HR teams take guidance from analytics software and from other stakeholders to update their current workforce development and headcount planning initiatives.
- Insights and actionable recommendations: HR teams take guidance from analytics software and other stakeholders to update their current workforce development and headcount planning initiatives.
How Workforce Intelligence Differs from Traditional HR Analytics
The main difference between workforce intelligence and traditional analytics? Workforce intelligence is a practice that relies on all business data that could potentially have an impact on employees.
Traditional HR might require keeping track of lagging indicators like turnover and employee engagement. But the shift towards workforce analytics is more characterized by a greater emphasis on deep machine learning, faster data processing, and predictive and prescriptive analytics to make better decisions for the future.
Essentially, traditional HR analytics asks “what happened?” Workforce analytics uses today’s technology to ask, “What happened, why did it happen, and what should we do to improve?”
The Benefits of Workforce Intelligence
How, then, can workforce intelligence bring tangible benefits to your business? Let’s explore a few ways.
Improved Decision-Making
When you’ve got high-level pain points to overcome for your business around things like revenue and turnover, workforce intelligence tools allow you to use data-driven insights and get a better understanding of the problems themselves as employees experience them every day.
For example, workforce intelligence platforms like Teramind give you real-time visibility into how your workforce spends their day, which projects matter most to them, which apps they use the most, and how they interact with clients and customers. These are all important trends to keep a regular eye on if you don’t want workforce issues to snowball out of control.
Increased Operational Efficiency
If you want to improve operational efficiency and productivity in particular areas of your business, but have no idea how employees in those departments are getting things done, suggestions will only be based on guesswork. Workforce intelligence allows you to dig deeper into what may be slowing your workforce down so you can execute better resource allocation.
For example, you’re a multi-national bank trying to overhaul your customer due diligence department. You can use workforce intelligence solutions like user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) to gain visibility into field-level employee activity so you can identify their bottlenecks on a highly granular degree. The added bonus? This also helps you boost security and compliance by allowing you to identify anomalous behavior.
Enhanced Talent Management
What if operational efficiency isn’t your problem, and growth is getting stalled because of major skills gaps within your workforce? That’s happening more often as technological advancements outpace our ability to learn.
Workforce intelligence allows you to pinpoint high-potential employees as well as where team members need more learning and development. This lets you personalize your solutions and coaching for each team member. This also makes it easier to build the team you have into the team you want rather than holding individuals accountable for knowledge gaps they can’t control.
Key Metrics and KPIs in Workforce Intelligence
The right set of indicators can help you bolster the HR strategy you already have in place. Let’s look at how you can build on your traditional HR metrics with a more thorough set of workforce intelligence analytics and actionable insights.
Commonly Tracked Workforce Metrics
- Headcount and turnover rates: Your turnover rates tell you how many employees are churning within a given period. Spotting trends in turnover allows you to make better decisions about what your employees need to stay within your organization, like promotion and development programs or higher compensation.
- Employee engagement and satisfaction: Surveys, meeting metrics, and even productivity metrics allow you to see how your employees feel about their roles and responsibilities, which contribute to workforce engagement. They can also show you how satisfied team members are with the perks and benefits they receive at work.
- Workforce productivity and performance: Tracking productivity helps organizations learn more about how the workforce gets work done and what obstacles get in their way every day. However, productivity isn’t always an indicator of good workforce performance, which is why performance reviews and assessments are also essential.
Implementing Workforce Intelligence in Your Organization
Before identifying how you can apply more workforce intelligence practices within business processes, it’s essential to think about the role they play within your long-term vision. Let’s explore the steps you should follow to make sure your analytics have the most impact.
Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Started
Start by defining your organizational goals as specifically as you can, and determining which stakeholders will help you get there. It’s best to have a cross-functional team on board in the ideation stages for brainstorming. For instance, you may want to include CHRO, HR department heads, and analytics teams to uncover why your company is experiencing a slow decline in turnover.
- Objectives: Clearly define your objectives and what you hope to achieve with workforce intelligence. Are you looking to improve efficiency, identify and address skill gaps, optimize workforce allocation, or all of the above? Identifying your goals will help you focus your efforts and ensure that the data you gather and analyze aligns with your objectives.
- Data Sources: Identify the sources of data you will need to collect in order to gain insights into your workforce. This may include HRIS (Human Resource Information System) data, employee survey data, performance evaluations, or other relevant information. It’s important to have a comprehensive understanding of the data sources available to you and the quality and reliability of that data.
- Data Collection: Once you have identified your data sources, you need to establish a process for collecting that data. This could involve creating surveys, setting up systems to track employee performance, or working with your HR department to ensure the accurate and timely capture of relevant data. Make sure to establish clear guidelines and protocols for data collection to ensure consistency and reliability.
- Data Analysis: With your data collected, it’s time to analyze it. This step involves using statistical techniques and tools to
Then determine:
- Data sources and collection methods: Identify the data sources that will provide you with the necessary information to measure workforce intelligence. This can include HRIS (Human Resources Information System), performance management systems, employee surveys, and even social media platforms. Determine the collection methods for each source, whether it’s automated data extraction or manual input.
- Key metrics and KPIs: Select the key metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that align with your organizational goals and help you measure the effectiveness of your workforce. These can differ depending on your industry and specific business objectives. For example, if employee retention is a priority, you may track metrics like average tenure or turnover rate.
- Data analysis and interpretation: Having data is not enough; you need to analyze and interpret it to gain meaningful insights. Consider employing advanced analytics techniques, such as data visualization, predictive analytics, and statistical modeling, to uncover patterns, trends, and correlations in your workforce data. This analysis will provide you with actionable insights that can drive strategic decision-making.
- Communication and reporting: Ensure that the insights gained from workforce intelligence are effectively communicated to key stakeholders in your organization. Create clear and concise reports, dashboards, or interactive visualizations that highlight the
Best Practices for Success
The bigger the project, the likelier you’ll need enthusiastic buy-in from your COO, CFO, and CISO. Their involvement ensures you have the backing of departments to execute workforce improvements for the entire company.
Make sure you use the data-driven insights you have to demonstrate your current workforce intelligence gaps. Let’s say, for instance, you’ve identified a current issue with turnover, but need more analytics tools to uncover how you might have gotten there and how you can move forward to improve retention or succession planning.
Also emphasize to your C-suite supporters that workforce intelligence technology can also help you improve your company’s security posture with data loss prevention and behavioral analytics.
Common Challenges and How to Overcome Them
One of the biggest obstacles to being able to smoothly integrate new workforce intelligence solutions? Departmental silos.
While analytics departments may have more technical skill sets and understanding of how to put workforce intelligence software to good use, all departmental leaders should strive to learn from each other, report to each other, and find ways to work as a collective rather than as individual teams.
This is why it’s important to create a data-driven culture in which all team members, regardless of their role, have some understanding of your company’s overall goals as well as the tools you use to gather workforce insights.
The Future of Workforce Intelligence
Workforce intelligence has opened up a lot of unexpected opportunities and career pathways we haven’t seen before. Still, businesses should be leery of pursuing workforce strategies and planning for future roles without recognizing the potential impact.
Emerging Trends and Technologies
According to IBM research, 42% of enterprise-level businesses have integrated AI into their operations, and 40% are considering AI. An additional 38% now use generative AI within their processes, which shows how eager companies are to leverage technology in new ways to gain a competitive advantage.
This means we’re seeing an increase in HR teams using AI-powered software and advanced analytics tools for their predictive and prescriptive analytics — and not just descriptive analytics — capabilities.
Potential Impact on the Future of Work
As a result of the AI explosions, businesses are shifting to becoming even more agile and lean so they can become true data-driven organizations and glean valuable insights from their data.
While this is all exciting for any future-looking business owner or executive, we can’t forget the role that HR and people operations professionals still play: advocating for employees and their success.
That’s why it’s so important for companies to emphasize and foster company-wide data literacy — so that they never lose sight of the very human reasons they chose to grow in the first place.
FAQs
What is workplace intelligence?
Workforce intelligence refers to the use of data and analytics to gain insights into an organization’s workforce. It involves analyzing data on employee skills, performance, engagement, and other factors to make informed decisions and drive strategic workforce planning.
What is workforce analytics known as?
Workforce analytics is also known as talent analytics or HR analytics. It involves using data and analytics to analyze and optimize workforce performance, engagement, and employee productivity.
Conclusion
Workforce intelligence is one of the key technological advancements behind the biggest success stories in the business world. With it, data-driven decisions have only become easier and more accessible for even the scrappiest of startups — as long as they implement it in the right way.
If you’re not sure what workforce intelligence looks like for you at this moment, Teramind is here to help. With features for improving performance, productivity, operations, and cybersecurity, Teramind allows you to start small and scale your intelligence processes as your organization grows.
