People Analytics

Lora Logarušić

/ 2023-09-13

At iOLAP, we take data seriously. Data is at the core of what we do. We began with data and it has been essential to our 20 years of ongoing success. Our clients continue to benefit daily from our expertise in data & analytics. Using cutting-edge technologies, our teams deliver innovative and modern solutions to our customers.

Because we as a company leverage data to unlock our client’s untapped potential, it inspired us in HR to leverage data to help our organization improve critical business outcomes. And now I am here to inspire you.

With the advent of advanced technology and the proliferation of data, a new discipline has emerged to revolutionize the way companies understand and optimize their workforce: people analytics.

People analytics collects and applies organizational, people, and talent data to enable organizations to make informed decisions.

Besides the obvious competitive advantage, there are other benefits, including:

Making data-driven decisions by analyzing hiring data and improving the recruitment process
Shaping organizational strategy through HR initiatives
Realizing cost savings – for example, organizations can realize cost savings by reducing turnover or job promotion costs
Improving candidate and employee experience
Identifying inefficiencies by looking externally into business processes and operations and by looking internally to highlight areas that can be improved within HR itself.
Uncovering trends

Due to the priorities within our business goals, the areas of People Analytics we focus on are Talent Acquisition (Recruitment Metrics & Funnel), Candidate experience, Employee engagement & satisfaction, Workforce Statistics, and Quality of Hire.

Because this blog post would turn into a master’s thesis if I covered everything, today we will focus on Talent Acquisition.

How did we determine our focus areas?

These are the questions and steps that can help you to start your people analytics journey:

What are our business objectives? - Start by aligning the HR department's goals with the overall business objectives. Understand the specific challenges and areas where analytics can make a significant impact. For example, improving employee engagement, reducing turnover, or optimizing the recruitment process.
What are the best practices in the market that we can use? – Start by doing research on best practices in the market (Google is your friend here), then write out all the best practices that align with the business and HR objectives. These metrics should be measurable, relevant, and provide insights into the desired outcomes.
Do we have data available? Is it reliable? - Evaluate the availability and quality of the HR data within the organization. Determine if the necessary data is being collected and stored in a structured and accessible manner. If you do not have data available, determine if and how you will collect the data. Please make sure that privacy policies and consents enable you to use the data. It is of the upmost importance to follow all relevant laws and regulations when it comes to data collection and data retention.
How will we analyze it? – Research and understand the various analytical techniques and tools available for HR analytics. This could include descriptive analytics (summarizing historical data), predictive analytics (forecasting future outcomes), or prescriptive analytics (providing recommendations for actions). Consider the suitability of each technique for addressing the identified HR challenges.
Is it worth it? - Evaluate the costs and benefits associated with each analytics initiative. Consider the investment required for data infrastructure, analytics tools, resources such as HR analysts, and time. Assess the potential return on investment (ROI) in terms of improved HR outcomes, cost savings, and enhanced decision-making.
Pilot, Evaluate and Refine - Start with a pilot project to test the effectiveness and feasibility of the chosen analytics initiative. Gather feedback, monitor the results, and evaluate the impact on HR outcomes.

This might all seem intimidating, especially if you feel like you do not have the bandwidth or if you think that it is out of the scope of your skills and abilities. You might even think that your company is too small for this – wrong, the earlier you start, the easier it will be later. The smallest start can, through time, accumulate impactful insights.

What exactly do we track?

Before we dive into it, I would like to remind you that this may not apply to your organization or your HR department. These are just a couple of metrics that help us right now to make informed decisions and propose necessary changes.

Recruitment Metrics

Since Talent Acquisition has been the main priority for our HR department for the longest period of time, it was a natural step to turn to data to improve our recruitment process, estimate it’s effectiveness, and identify bottlenecks.

After researching best practices in the market and cross-referencing them to our needs, we have identified which metrics provide the best insight for our Talent Acquisition team.

1. Time to Hire

It represents the time between the moment a job opening is published to the moment the candidate accepts the job by signing the employment or business contract measured in days.

Date of job post opening – date of candidate contract signing = time to hire

Example from one of our reports:

Insights: The length of time it takes us to hire different seniorities or roles. It helps our staffing team to plan and prepare beforehand. This also shows the efficiency of our TA process.

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2. Time to Fill

This represents the time in days between the moment a job opening is published and the first working day of the candidate. This is important because we can control our selection process to some level.Notice periods and candidate availability are out of our control but theystill impact our staffing process.

Date of job post opening – date of joining(start date) = time to fill

Insights: if you are open to contracting options or if you are located in multiple geographic locations, differentiating between time to hire and time to fill is important. It essentially shows how quickly different seniority levels in different geographic locations will likely start working after signing an employment contracts.

3. Source of Hire

This metric helps to keep track of the effectiveness of different recruiting channels and which platform(s) we should invest in the most, in terms of job post publishing or marketing campaigns.

With each new hire we record how they found out about the job opportunity. Some examples of our source of hire categories are headhunting, social media, LinkedIn, referral, relationship and similar.

4. Offer Acceptance Rate

(Number of accepted offers/number of sent offers)*100 = offer acceptance rate

Insights: what are the common reasons for rejecting offers, are there trends for some seniorities or roles.

5. Reasons for rejecting the offer

In addition to offer acceptance rate, it is also valuable to have data on the reasons behind rejected offers. This is something we always record so that we can see if we are missing the mark on something before extending the offer. For example, some of the common reasons for rejection are: Role, Financial, Personal or Counter-offer.

Insight: if you notice that for a specific role there are a number of people who have rejected the offer due to the role requirements, you can escalate that to your hiring manager to possibly reconsider the approach to the job’s design and expectations.

6. Demand

Demand is tracked by calculating the number of positions open in a given period of time, categorized by total number, seniority, department, or status.

Insights: identifying trends to coordinate our recruitment efforts. If there is continuous growth in demand, it provides leverage for expanding your TA team. If we identify patterns in rising demand in particular periods of the year, we can accordingly plan the workload, vacations, etc.

7. Talent Acquisition Workload

When a new position is opened, we track how many are currently open to estimate the workload of the Talent Acquisition team. Based on the number of recruiters, we can estimate when the TA team has Low workload, Medium workload, High workload. To ensure optimal productivity, one recruiter should hold no more than 4 positions. This means that if there are 3 recruiters:

1 to 12 open positions = Low workload
13 to 21 open positions = Medium workload
More than 21 open positions = High workload

The average number of positions per recruiter is tracked as well, to estimate the workload per recruiter.

Number of positions at a time/number of recruiters = workload(positions) per recruiter

Insight: if you notice that your TA team is in Medium or High workload, you can re-prioritize other tasks and responsibilities to elevate pressure. Also, if this is a common occurrence, it opens up the conversation whether to add an additional member to the team.

8. Throughput

Throughput represents the total number of new hires for a given time frame, differentiated by full-time employment,contracting or subcontracting.

Insight: in which periods of the year is there a higher number of onboardings, for which roles do we usually hire contractors and how does our growth look through the years. Essentially, this metric shows the output of our recruitment efforts.

Recruitment Funnel

A recruitment funnel, also known as a hiring funnel or a recruiting funnel, is a framework that defines each stage of the recruitment and selection process. It helps keep track of how candidates flow through the candidate recruitment funnel and provides insight into what needs to be done in order to make the hiring process more efficient.

A standard recruitment funnel contains:

Number of candidates
Number of screenings
Number of technical interviews
Number of offers
Number of hires

We differentiate it by total numbers and across different roles.

Example from one of our reports:

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You can track progress individually or as a team, or both.

Insight: if there are bottlenecks at any stage of the selection process, do we filter enough? How do we stand on candidate pipelines during the process and for the different roles?

External data collection

Don’t forget to leverage the data that is collected through the Applicant Tracking System and other recruitment tools. For example, since our Talent Acquisition team has LinkedIn Corporate accounts, we can use the data gathered from LinkedIn’s reports of our job posting on LinkedIn and from our headhunting efforts.

Among other things, LinkedIn can provide you with:

Views on Job posts (unique and total)
Apply clicks on Job posts
Completed applications (if you use LinkedIn as ATS and do not redirect)
Completion rate
InMails sent
Accepted InMails
Declined InMails
No Response InMails
Response rate

Insights: Which jobs are more attractive? Which jobs make sense to promote? Are there any tech profiles that are more likely to respond? Are there any time periods when potential candidates are more likely to respond? Do we need to change our approach method to potential candidates?

Protip: you do not need LinkedIn Corporate to track the response rate or to estimate if you are taking the right approach to potential candidates. You can set up your own tracking method in Excel on how many messages have you sent, to which profiles and if/how did they respond. It is more manual, but before Corporate – that is how we did it.

What comes after tracking?

Naturally, you would not just keep all this data in Excel and look at it from time to time – if you want a true return on investment, you should generate useful reports that can show where you are doing okay or where you can improve upon.

Our practice is:

Track regularly.
Create reports in PowerBI or PowerPoint on a quarterly, half year and yearly basis
Analyze and compare results within the year and against the previous years
Interpret results, look for anomalies, identify trends and generate action items
Adjust existing processes or implement new practices that tackle uncovered trends

Simple as that.

Conclusion

Since Talent Acquisition is an important part of our business objectives and our HR team, it made sense to use everything in our arsenal to make improvements and establish the best possible practices. As I mentioned, we track multiple other metrics as well, but we can cover that some other time. The important thing is that People Analytics helps us to engage with our employees, ensures best practices are implemented and that satisfaction levels are kept at high numbers. So, with the right strategies, tools, and data-driven culture, you can empower your HR team and drive sustainable growth by effectively managing and developing your most valuable asset: people.

So, have I inspired you to dabble in People Analytics or just tired you?

Sources for additional information:

AIHR. (n.d.). Benefits of HR Analytics

AIHR. (n.d.). People Analytics

AIHR. (n.d.). The Most Important Recruiting Metrics You Should Be Tracking

Factorial. (n.d.). Recruitment Funnel: Everything You Need to Know

JOIN. (n.d.). Recruitment Funnel

PeopleHum. (n.d.). Recruitment Funnel - Everything You Need to Know

Vervoe. (n.d.). Recruitment Funnel: What Is It and How Does It Work?

NHGlobalPartners. (n.d.). Recruitment Funnel: A Comprehensive Guide

ML6. (n.d.). Top Talent Acquisition Metrics to Track in 2022

Recruiteze. (n.d.). Top 7 Metrics Every Recruiter Should Measure