To tell the truth, people used to think about HR more as a necessary evil that always comes up when there is bad news.
Now it is time for another change when REAL DATA drives HR.
Even though the use of HR analytics is increasing, many organizations are still lagging behind when it comes to genuinely utilizing and understanding the power behind their data. By analyzing the scaled data, HR can better support business decisions. With these facts, they can move from the bottom line and change their relationship with the senior management team. This way, HR could have a stronger position on the board of a company. They could measure their own and the employees’ performance, and with time they can compare it to different timelines.
We can approach the importance of HR analytics from two sides. On the one hand, without measurable results, HR is not able to prevail at the business level. To represent its interests, HR should be able to conjugate statistics with its achievements. On the other hand, HR analytics is also known as people analytics. It revolves around analyzing people's problems using data to answer critical questions about an organization.
The Games for Business team has gathered some areas that HR should keep an eye on in their daily lives.
1. Employee satisfaction
People are the key elements of running a successful business, and HR is the connection between the company and its employees.
With the recruitment process, an employee’s corporate journey has just begun.
After this critical phase, the next crucial point is onboarding, which will fundamentally define the employee's integration into the workplace.
It is essential to get regular feedback about our employee’s wellbeing. With a questionnaire, we can qualitatively measure employee satisfaction. Still, at the end of the day, we shouldn't forget that human relationships need quality time and good conversations in the company during a coffee break, for example. Dissatisfaction is a major cause of employee turnover. It is vital to act on time and reduce fluctuation.
2. Employee engagement
A strong level of employee engagement predicts higher productivity, better customer service, lower turnover, and many other relevant and positive outcomes.
Our projects at Games for Business have proven that learning participation rates are directly related to employee engagement. At CIB Bank, employees voluntarily spent 3 and 1/3 hours on average with learning about digitalization processes and tools in the system. During Coca-Cola’s corporate strategy training campaign, employee engagement was not only strong during business hours, but 51% of all user activity was recorded outside of working hours. Looking at learning participation rates, we will see the percentage of employees who take part in professional courses and training sessions. Beyond that, we can measure engagement with index numbers like average learning time (usage time of the learning system / the number of users), or average completion rate (the number of users who successfully complete the task / the total number who attempted it). If we look beyond internal learning, PwC, for example, has implemented our system for an employer branding campaign, after which 77% of users changed their opinion about the company in positive ways.
3. Time to Productivity
Employee productivity is closely related to employee satisfaction and employee engagement. Happy employees are more productive. In most cases, the working hours of a company are predefined. Companies are increasingly letting this traditional mentality go. Nowadays, it doesn't matter how many hours you work for a day. What matters is what you have achieved.
Besides the productivity rate, it is even more important to track ‘time to productivity.’ This is the average period needed for newly hired employees to reach the targeted level of work efficiency.
This metric tells a lot about your company's onboarding process. If you use our learning platform as an onboarding system, it is easy to measure time to productivity. Users receive clear goals and activities they are expected to accomplish during a determined period. We can compare individual results with the average time needed to complete the onboarding process.
4. Training effectiveness
To measure the effectiveness of training, you need to measure what people have learned. This can be tricky if you are only running traditional classroom training. In contrast, using a digital learning platform makes it much easier to retrieve data and communicate it to the management team.
Before the training, it is also crucial to have a placement test to assess the average knowledge level in the given topic. After the training, it is also essential to deepen and measure the acquired knowledge based on prior objectives.
One can also measure the participation rate (number of colleagues who participated in the training / number of colleagues invited to the training), how costs are distributed per employee (training costs / number of training participants) or compare user results (comparing individual performance with the average performance of employees).
5. 90-day quit rate
This KPI is a turnover metric that shows the number of hires who leave the company within their first three months. It is often a critical period for many companies.
Typically, it is HR's job to recruit the right people and support their work with a proper onboarding process. Failing to do so will have a measurable negative impact on organizational effectiveness.
That is one of the reasons why Generali decided to implement our gamified digital learning platform for their induction process. Since the application of the tool, Generali has seen an outstanding improvement in its people’s development as well as in the sales revenue. This KPI is particularly relevant when it is combined with other features. You can see turnover rates for specific worker groups such as underperformers, salespeople, millennials or mid-level managers, etc. Take your time to view the data from different angles. The most common way to calculate the 90-day quit rate is if you divide the number of employees who leave the company during their first three months with the number of employees who entered in the same period.