5 HR Analytics Hacks for Happier Employees and Better Company Cultures

A great company is made of amazing employees.

But you may find that they’re not knocking down your door to be a part of your company. Maybe you aren’t seeing the level of recruits that you had hoped for, or maybe you’re losing top employees you worked hard to acquire.

Nobody likes losing good employees. And nobody likes hearing that a perfect candidate chose another place to hang their coat. But how do you ensure that the perfect candidate chooses your company? And once you have that person, how do you keep them? Happy employees generally stay where they’re at, so how do you keep them happy and motivated?

While there are many things that contribute to employee satisfaction and company appeal, here are 5 analytics that we think can help you find and keep the best employees, while adding to your culture:

1. Employee Development Analytics

It’s important to keep track of your employees (but not in a creepy way of course). Getting them in the door is not enough. You have to monitor their development within your company. Go beyond the annual review by regularly checking in on what was agreed in the employee’s yearly development plans. What were identified as areas for development? What has been committed to from an employee or manager perspective? Have any actions been made, or is that employee just floating? It’s important for a company’s development that employees feel they are developing in their skillset and their role in the company, so monitoring this development is crucial for your company to be a functioning, and improving, machine.

One tool we like is Yaktrak, which may be useful for you and your team to get employee development analytics started.

 And there’s also Duuoo (currently in Beta), which helps create more meaningful 1:1’s.

2. Attrition Analytics

There’s nothing worse than having a great hiring process ultimately result in the loss of that employee. Don’t throw away all the hard work put into procuring talent. Make sure you’re keeping talent by monitoring attrition rates and looking to proactively keep those rates low. Sure, every company is going to lose this person or that person, for x or y reason. Attrition is inevitable, but it should be happening at a very low rate.

One way to combat attrition is to look at rates across departments and teams. It could be that employees are leaving because of a specific manager. Monitoring attrition rates at separate levels can indicate the cause of loss and help you rectify the situation.

We like tools like Glint and Culture Amp, that help you deep dive into employee engagement and allow you to have a clearer view over attrition and other metrics.

3. Manager Analytics

As discussed in the last segment, managers are important. They can often dictate the majority of an employee’s experience. And the best source for this information is often the employees themselves. Surveys and focus groups comprised of your employees can tell you more about your company than can be merely guessed at from numbers and data. And, of course, to get the most accurate information employees must know that the data collected is anonymous. You won’t get honesty unless you assure them of anonymity. 

We like Impraise, both for managers, but also for providing more meaningful feedback within the team.

4. Recruitment Performance Analytics

What does it feel like to be recruited by your company? While you may have long forgotten the recruitment process, there are many out there looking at empty inboxes or feeling frustration at speaking with four different interviewers with no indication of where they may be at in the hiring process. You might get some insight into this by mining comments from past recruits or hopefuls online. Whether we like it or not, online comments can make a big impression on people looking to apply with your company. Make sure that your online presence -- not just the one on your site but your aggregate presence including online reviewers -- is a positive one. Websites like Glassdoor can be great sources of this info. Indeed also offers company ratings from employees and rates the best companies to work for. Knowing that potential recruits are hitting the job boards frequently, it’s fair to assume that they’re reading your company’s rating as well.

What do you do if your company ranks low, or if you find a lot of negative comments? There may be little you can do about what others have written, but you can take what they’ve said and use it to improve that process for future recruits. You can’t eliminate the information that’s out there, but you can try to change that image moving forward by changing your company’s recruitment tactics or level of communication with recruits.

5. Culture Analytics

How an employee feels about their company often has a lot to do with subtle details of their environment. These include the workspace, the social interaction, and the general feeling or mood felt at the company. Is the CEO/management creating a welcoming atmosphere? Is management authoritarian and hostile or humble and respectable? How do employees interact with one another and with management? Is there harmony or is there tension? While this can be one of the more difficult analytics to quantify, it is certainly felt by all employees.

While it may be best to monitor this analytic by direct observation, it can be helpful to view comments about your company on the web. You can access these kind of comments on websites like Linkedin, but be prepared for some brutal honesty. LinkedIn is also a great place to grow your cultural presence and connect with your present employees and future recruits. Make sure your company has a LinkedIn presence and posts regularly.

If your company is suffering from a lack of talent, or you’re just not where you expected you would be, there could be several reasons. Utilizing these analytics can expose weaknesses in your company that you can rectify for a more positive experience for recruits and employees moving forward. After all, you don’t want to be a good company with good employees. You want to be a fantastic company with amazing employees.