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Stuart Gentle Publisher at Onrec

Talent analytics key to building efficient workforces

Organisations must harness the power of talent analytics to build truly efficient workforces – or risk falling behind competitors which do. That is the advice from global talent acquisition and management specialist, Alexander Mann Solutions.

The call comes in response to a report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), People analytics: driving business performance with people data, which highlights a strong and demonstrable link between ‘people analytics culture’ and overall business performance. The paper finds that 65% of HR leaders who report working in an organisation with a ‘strong people analytics culture’ believe that their business performance is strong when compared with competitors, but just 32% of those in ‘weak analytics cultures’ say the same.

The report also highlights the areas where respondents believe people analytics can be used to address key business challenges. For example, two thirds (66%) trust that this type of data can be used to attract and retain high performing individuals, while three quarters (75%) see people analytics being useful in understanding workforce performance and productivity.

In response to the findings, Erica Titchener, Global Head of Technology and Operations Consulting at Alexander Mann Solutions, comments:

“We have long promoted the benefits of tapping into talent analytics during the talent acquisition process and beyond to inform both immediate and longer-term workforce planning strategies. As such, reports that HR’s visibility of data correlates directly with improved business outcomes is unsurprising.

“Workforce planning is absolutely integral to wider organisational strategy and now every HR team – in theory – has access to huge rafts of valuable data. The benefits of harnessing this information to implement total workforce planning strategies, in order to aid organisational efficiency, should not be underestimated. By digitally tracking the availability of skills, both within the business and externally in the market, leaders can map where permanent workforces can be deployed most effectively, the places where artificial intelligence can pick up process-driven tasks which zap productivity, identify the skills they are lacking, and determine if these can or should be acquired on a full-time, flexible or contingent basis.

“By working in this way, organisations can ensure that teams are performing to maximum efficiency, without skills gaps – or a skills surplus. Ultimately, however a workforce is structured, it should be built to maximise output, reduce costs and increase productivity – and also be adaptable to future needs. HR leaders who ignore the valuable data at their fingertips are side-lining the resource that makes this strategy possible.”