People Analytics for Employee Experience
How can my organisation use people analytics to improve employee experience? What’s a good starting point?
Prevalence of analytics and automation in HR has been on the rise in the last couple of years. According to Mercer’s Global Talent Trends Study 2020, 50% of top HR executives and 47% C-suite executives are concerned about employees’ expectations of a consumer-grade digital work experience. But, before we delve into the use of people analytics in EX, let’s first look at what employee experience (EX) could mean. Employee experience is the intersection of an employee’s expectations, the environment, and events that shape their journey. Thus, a good starting point for using people analytics to improve employee experience would be to identify the various touch points in an employee’s life cycle and look for opportunities to energize the experience. Here are a few examples:
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Enhancing the recruitment experienceProviding open positions to candidates based on their competency, experience and areas of interest as they create an account on the recruitment portal. This will not only help the candidates in finding an opening that matches their profile but will also help in building a strong pipeline of eligible candidates for targeted talent acquisition
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Providing visibility into career opportunities & upskilling talentSimilar to recruitment, people analytics can be applied in showcasing a future career path to employees, shortlisting open opportunities for lateral movement within the organization based on current skills, area of interest and past movements of employees in similar roles. Analytics can also be used in Identifying areas of growth and upskilling employees to make them future ready
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Personalizing total rewardsCustomising the basket of total reward for employees based on preference and demographics. For example, this could include proposing flex benefits based on employee’s age, family, marital status, salary levels etc. Please check out Mercer Marsh Benefits Darwin for more details. Similarly, analytics can be linked to increment budgets in organisations where it is decentralised to optimise the distribution of budgets and aligning it with employees’ preference. For example, senior executives may prefer more stocks in their pay mix while entry level professionals may prefer more cash in hand
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Smart Performance ManagementGathering inputs from sources such as dashboards, trackers, Information Systems with minimum involvement from the employee for real-time goal tracking, productivity management, course correction and feedback to employees
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Focused engagement & CommunicationsData from pulse surveys such as Mercer|Sirota Engagement Snapshot can be instrumental in understanding the employee journey and creating personalised experiences for them. Analytics can also aid in Target Interaction Models (TIM) to identify the moments that require personalised human touch (meetings or calls) while other experiences can be simplified and automated (emails, notifications). We are also observing an increase in uptake of AI-enabled chatbot solutions to provide quick support, grievance redressal, query resolution and real-time employee pulse monitoring
In the post pandemic world, when majority of the workforce will be in a hybrid mode of work, it will be imperative to adopt a customer-centric approach for our employees in the same way we do for our external customers. As organizations move towards digitising their business models, use of people analytics to improve the employee experience will provide a competitive edge in attracting, growing and retaining the best talent in the industry.
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