Your employees are your most valuable asset—your business couldn’t function without them. But to get the best performance from your workforce, you need to make sure they’re happy, engaged, and productive.
With Gallup assessing that low engagement in work costing the global economy $8.9 trillion (9% of the global GDP), it’s crucial that you optimize the employee experience in your organization. That’s where predictive workforce analytics comes in, forecasting the needs of your current and future workforce.
In this post, we’ll look at the definition and benefits of workforce analytics and share some use cases and tips for success.
What Is Predictive Workforce Analytics?
Predictive workforce analytics is the process of using historical and real-time employee data to predict future outcomes relating to performance, productivity, and engagement. It involves statistical modeling, data mining, and machine learning.
Gathering and analyzing this data provides insights into employee behaviors and trends. For example, you can make predictions about employee retention rates and skills gaps and get ahead of potential problems before they happen. Similarly, HR teams can make better decisions about hiring and training.
While traditional workforce analytics only looks at past data to identify issues, predictive workforce analytics highlights ongoing patterns to forecast what’s likely to happen next. This enables you to take a proactive approach.
And with modern software, you don’t have to be a specialized workforce analyst to understand what the data is telling you. These tools include clear patterns and trends, which means you can remove the guesswork from your business decisions.
How Does Predictive Workforce Analytics Impact Employee Experience?
Predictive workforce analysis isn’t only about optimizing productivity and efficiency. One of its most important uses is to create a better employee experience and a supportive company culture (with the knock-on effect of improved performance).
By analyzing how your staff work, how effective they are, and how they feel about their jobs, you can find opportunities to enhance their well-being. For example, you can predict who’s at risk of quitting, then talk to them and see if there’s a way to keep them on board.
Workforce data highlights issues that might have been overlooked, such as signs of burnout. According to Future Forum, 42% of the global workforce say this is on the rise. Check who’s working long hours or on weekends, and encourage them to take breaks or delegate tasks. Could you adjust staff schedules for a better work-life balance or replace inefficient tools?
You’ll also be able to identify and reward top performers, and support career aspirations with targeted training and upskilling. Predictive workforce planning lets you make better strategic use of your staff, sharing the workload fairly to make sure nobody is overwhelmed, overworked, or overlooked.
The Key Applications of Predictive Workforce Analytics
Predictive workforce analytics is useful for every corner of your business. Here are some of the top use cases.
Recruitment and Hiring
Predictive analytics for HR offer data-driven insights into the recruitment and hiring processes. The data predicts when you’ll need more staff by forecasting growth and seasonal spikes in demand. It enables you to anticipate future skills requirements so that you can plan to hire in specific areas.
Accurate data also helps you justify the cost of hiring. For instance, nonprofit organizations with budget restrictions can combine predictive workforce analytics with insights from nonprofit accounting software to create a transparent and forward-thinking recruitment plan. This will guarantee accountability and appropriate staffing levels to continue their mission.
With predictive workforce analytics, you can evaluate your success in attracting potential candidates and onboarding them smoothly and adjust your tactics where needed. You’ll be able to discover which methods are most effective—not just during recruitment but in terms of long-term retention, too.
Performance Management
Predictive workforce analytics helps you evaluate individual employee performance, as well as assessing business performance as a whole. Analyze how team members communicate and collaborate with each other, and identify any bottlenecks that impact workflows.
By analyzing employee behaviors, you can anticipate your company’s ability to reach its goals. You can also watch for behavioral changes that could affect performance, such as a downturn in employee engagement. You can use predictive modeling tools to see how these trends might change if you adjust the variables.
As we have mentioned, you can use analytics to find out which employees are exceeding expectations, which allows you to pinpoint who’s likely to excel in a more senior position. This can be particularly useful when you want to expand your business and promote people internally.
Equally, you can identify different skills and weaknesses in staff members to create well-balanced teams. For example, while some might have a high level of clinical expertise in healthcare, they might not be as skilled at or interested in managing a team. By identifying different people’s motivations and skills, you can construct well-rounded teams that reflect individual goals and preferences.
Financial Planning and Budgeting
With predictive workforce analytics, business leaders find it easier to set budgets for everything from hiring to training to company benefits. By forecasting resource requirements and the ROI of investments in people and technology, you can make sure you’re spending on the right things.
The financial planning aspect is also essential for predicting the viability of future strategies. Could your startup handle rapid growth? How would global expansion or a merger affect productivity? Could you introduce a four-day workweek without impacting revenue?
Analytics also helps you make data-driven decisions around working locations. If you’re confident that staff are happier and more productive when they work remotely, you can save money on real estate. Plus, you can streamline your tech stack by looking at trends in technology use and ditching costly, inefficient software that nobody’s using.
What to Consider When Implementing Predictive Analytics
Predictive workforce analytics has many benefits, but there are a few things to think about before you go ahead and get started.
Initial Steps to Adopt Predictive Analytics
First of all, you need to establish your business goals and what you want to analyze. For instance, are you aiming to find out why employee turnover rates are higher than you’d like? Do you want to future-proof the company by filling skill gaps among current employees?
If your organization generates a huge amount of workforce data—for example, if it is a contact center with multiple branches—then decide which information is most relevant to avoid getting swamped. Plan how often you’ll gather data and carry out analysis. You will need to do thise on a regular basis).
It’s vital that you share your plans with the whole workforce. Tell employees what you’ll be measuring and why it matters, and make it clear that you’re not “spying” on them. Address their concerns and build trust through transparency. Stay aware of data privacy rules, especially if your company is international.
It’s also worth encouraging individuals and teams to analyze their own data, to involve them in the process, and foster accountability. You never know, they might spot something you haven’t thought of! Just make sure you have a robust communication system and feedback loops in place.
Integrating Data Sources for Comprehensive Analysis
For maximum impact, you’ll want to collect data from every part of the organization and at every stage of the employee lifecycle. This will involve a lot of data sources, and you’ll get the best results if you integrate them so that all the data is in one central place, ready for analysis.
Full analysis requires data from multiple tools to plan effectively—from applicant tracking software to financial and accounting tools to project management and internal communications platforms. By collecting as much data as possible and integrating your data sources, you’ll get a much more comprehensive view and be able to make better decisions.
Let’s take the case of a wealth and asset management firm that’s looking to expand internationally. By offsetting its workforce analytics data with data from its financial services software, your company can gain a thorough understanding of how to plan the workforce across multiple entities for enhanced performance and growth.
Choosing the Right Tools and Partners
It’s vital that you have the right tools and resources for effective predictive workforce analytics. Carry out thorough research into workforce analytics tools to find the best one for your needs. Importantly, you’ll also want to check your current tech stack and make sure that your existing tools will seamlessly integrate with the new software you choose.
The best predictive workforce analytics solutions will feature data-modeling and data visualization capabilities. They will also incorporate workforce analytics dashboards and reports that make it easy to see trends at a glance but also drill down into the details when you need to. User-friendly design, robust security, and solid customer support are also essential.
Look for an analytics solution that doesn’t rely on intrusive employee monitoring such as keystroke logging and screenshots. The software should be able to build a picture of productivity and engagement without recurring to arguably controversial tactics such as these.
Final Thoughts
Predictive workforce analytics gives you a glimpse of the future by using historical and current data to forecast likely business outcomes. By creating statistical models for things such as employee satisfaction, turnover, and skill gaps, you can adjust your talent management and recruitment strategies, improving the employee experience.
Remember that it’s crucial to gather data from all sources and analyze it regularly, using the right workforce analytics software. Valuable workforce insights into engagement, productivity, and performance lead to data-driven decision-making and a future-proof business.
