All HR and Talent Leaders need access to timely and relevant information to support decisions and drive performance. However, in many mid-sized organizations the status quo consists of a painful process of compiling data manually to produce metrics. This represents a significant time-sink and leaves little opportunity for analysis or recommendations. Presentations to Executives consist of conventional ‘rows and columns’ reporting on the basics that fail to demonstrate the contribution or impact HR is having on the business. With cumbersome processes, addressing ad hoc or changing business questions is difficult. The reality is, when questions are asked this often requires a re-cut of the data, sometimes starting from scratch, and results in a time-lag of days or weeks to get to the answers. Leaders know this is far from the ideal in terms of serving the business.
HR Leaders in mid-sized companies know that insight and opportunity lie in connecting data sources and implementing an approach to analytics. As a mid-sized company however there are challenges getting to an analytics solution related to limitations of resources and time. The reality is mid-sized organizations are large enough to have outgrown the do-it-yourself spreadsheet approach, but aren’t so large as to be able to dedicate resources to build a solution internally or invest heavily in an outsourced enterprise solution.
Partnering with a workforce analytics solution provider is one way mid-sized companies can accelerate their capabilities and start reaping the rewards of analytics and insight quickly. We’re not alone in this thinking. Karen O’Leonard of Bersin by Deloitte talks about this in her Research Bulletin A Hop, Skip and a Jump: How to Accelerate Your Talent Analytics Capability. Click on the link for an exclusive download of this paper – available to First Reference readers for a limited time. In this article and in an upcoming Bersin by Deloitte webinar, Karen O’Leonard explores how workforce analytics solution providers deliver quick, accurate and up-to-date access to foundational metrics out-of-the-box. They connect data across sources to reveal business impact. With immediate access to data and analytics HR team members are freed from the mundane activities of data gathering and manipulation and can spend time on value-add contributions related to targeted analysis, making recommendations and stimulating dialogue with the business.
We couldn’t agree more. The upside of implementing an analytics approach in HR is huge and for mid-market companies, partnering with an external provider offers a powerful way forward – without a huge investment in time, resources or money.
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