June 12, 2024: Below, please find questions that were submitted in association with a HR Analytics webinar Professional and Executive Education at Rutgers (PEER) delivered with its partner, Emerson Group, on June 11, 2024. 

Please feel free to contact Greg Denis at Rutgers (856-225-6302) if you have any further questions or would like to see how Professional and Executive Education at Rutgers can support HR analytics or other training and development areas in your organization.

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What are the most effective ways to measure engagement and overall employee sentiment with as little information as possible?                  

Depending on the size of the organization, pulse survey, annual reviews, focus groups (town halls) and randomly talking to employees.

What HR metrics do you find to be the most important/powerful in helping to drive business results for the company?

There are many different metrics that one should pay attention to. These will depend on the organization and strategy.  Some of the key ones would be: Cost Per Hire (CPH), Employee Turnover Rate, Employee Engagement Scores, Absenteeism Rate and Compensation/Benefits Metrics.

How do you walk the line between emotion and employee relations?

This is always a challenge given being human.  There are a number of strategies that can help:

• Empathy: Understand employees’ feelings and perspectives. Show genuine concern and listen actively.

• Clear Communication: Be transparent about decisions and changes. Explain the rationale behind them.

• Conflict Resolution: Address conflicts promptly and impartially. Encourage open dialogue.

• Boundaries: Maintain professional boundaries while being approachable and supportive.

• Feedback: Provide constructive feedback with empathy. Focus on growth and improvement.

What materials have you shared with your employees to boost morale? Books, webinars, podcasts?

Employee morale is key to a productive work environment.  Depending on the organization and industry there are many books, blogs and podcasts:

Books:

            Atomic Habits by James Clear

            The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People By Steven Covey

            Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us By Daniel Pink

TEDTalks:

            Simon Sinek: How Great leaders inspire action

            Tony Robbins Why we do what we do

Podcast

            Entrepreneur on Fire

            Harvard Business Review (HBR) IdeaCast

            Lead from the Heart Podcast

            How to Be Awesome at Your Job Podcast

Within Power BI, what metrics does your team use on a weekly basis?

This depends on the business/Industry and Strategy of the organization.  Some examples would be: Cost Per Hire (CPH), Employee Turnover Rate, Employee Engagement Scores, Absenteeism Rate and Compensation/Benefits Metrics.

What formula are you using to calculate the average cost of turnover?

Here’s the formula

Total Cost of Turnover (Includes both direct and indirect costs)

            Severance Pay, Recruitment Costs, Training Costs, Lost Productivity, Morale Impact

Number of Employees Turned Over

            Count of employees that left during a specific time period

Please share how/where you house your metrics ex. Excel spreadsheet. Sharing formulas and ways to keep up with metrics when manually updating the data would be helpful. We don’t have a HRIS that tracks these items.

With all HR data data governance is a key factor in making sure only the people that need access have access. This could be out in the cloud or on premise depending on your organization and industry.  Depending on the organization this data could be in excel, database, sql server, or workforce platform. Formulas for calculations should be evaluated periodically to certify that they are still working properly.  When manually updating the data there should be a clear and transparent policy on when the information is updated weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or quarterly. 

What do you consider to be the best metrics to use to measure recruiter success and why?

There are a number of metrics that you would want to keep an eye on.  Here are a few:

• Sources of Hires: Understand where your most successful hires came from (job boards, referrals, social media. etc.) – This helps in allocating resources to the most successful sources.

• Position Satisfaction: How satisfied are the hiring managers with the candidates being provided for the position. – Successful candidate matches = High Satisfaction.

• Qualified Candidates per Opening: How many qualified candidates are in the pipeline from which source or recruiter. – Higher ratio says resources are being used most effectively.

• Retention Rate: How long a hire stays with the organization. – The higher the retention the less hiring needs to be done.

What do you see as the future of AI on HR Analytics?

We are going to see AI affect all parts of HR.  Starting with streamlining and personalization of the HR processes, which will free up more time on strategy. Being able to stay on top of the vast amount of data that is being collected and being more predictive on these numbers.  Helping spot trends that we were overlooking in the past because of time. There is going to be a lot of change.

What do you see as the core skills and experience needed for HR Analytics? What should employers look for?

Some of the core competencies you will need in HR analytics are Data Literacy, Statistical Knowledge, Technical Skills (Power BI, Excel and Tableau), Communication skills and Analytical thinking.  I would like someone to be curious with the data and back it up with statistics, while communicating effectively to the employee and the stakeholders. 

What is the future of HR Analytics careers? Will AI or other tools change the demand for these positions?

AI is going to be a big change to HR. AI will be a tool that can be used to better analyze the data being collected and help the organization make better decisions based on the data that they have. AI will start by streamlining more of the process and finding more employees. This will save some time in being more strategic.

Impact of AI in HR Industry – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly! What we need to be aware of – tips to use it more effectively and what to avoid.

There is a lot that could be covered on this topic. This is best addressed by a panel of experts and may be a topic in future webinars with Rutgers and Emerson.

How can HR better encourage the C-suite to sponsor lifelong learning plans for non-executives/staff as a company benefit to invest in those individuals who are interested in pursuing higher level positions?

In this age of technology and AI, lifelong learning is going to be critical for all employees to keep the organization growing.  Some ways to encourage the c-suite is to continually emphasize how lifelong learning will help the organization and the employee stressing the business impact.  Tie Lifelong learning to the strategy of the organization.  Using ROI of the learning and how it has made the organization more nimble and growing.

How can a small to midsize business develop some basic HR analytics to start the evidence-based decision-making process? What initial measurements do you suggest tracking?                           

Depending on the organization and industry, some of the more critical measurements would be Cost per Hire (CPH) – understanding the real costs to hire someone, Time to Hire – from application to acceptance of position, employee performance and productivity, employee engagement and satisfaction, retention rates, forecasting future workforce needs, and optimizing the talent acquisition process.  Taking these as strategic as you can with the data that you are currently collecting and future plans on collecting and analyzing more of the information through tools like Excel, Power BI, Tableau and even R or Python.

Best practice on metric goal setting? Is it beneficial to set a goal set against the company’s past practice or against an outside source? Any recommendations would be great.

It all depends on the organization and industry.  But where to start would be with SMART Metrics.

            Specific: Defiance clear and specific objectives (increase revenue by 15%)

            Measurable: Needs to beagle to be quantified. (track lead generation)

            Achievable: Challenging but attainable targets.

            Relevant: Aligned with the organizations short and long term goals.

            Time-bound: set a deadline

There needs to be a balance between past practice and external industry sources.  These will all have to be continually monitored, reviewed and flexible to the ever changing environment.