According to research, over the last 5 years there has been a 242% rise in the number of HR professionals equipped with data analytics skills. It is acknowledge that understanding analytics is not a want but a need in the present data-driven environment.

LinkedIn's 2020 Global trends report suggested that 73% of HR professionals identify people analytics as a significant priority within their organisation, however a lot of them still need help to create a team that is data-proficient.

While some organisations interpret their workplace trends and issues through big data, there are also some that have their hands full simply by collecting data.

The current world looks into Data-Driven Decision Making (D3M), and believes that the key purpose of people analytics is to provide insights to support better decision making.

PeoplesHR is an ideal HR solution for HR professionals eager to get their hands on people analytics enabling HR to work with the top management of the company in utilising people analytics as a problem-solving tool.

Turnover predictions available in the HR solution helps to track attrition levels within the organisation and collates other factors. One can also identify the turnover costs and drill down the critical skills and demographics of top performers. As a result, the organisation is made available with an attrition prediction model.

This is just a glimpse as to how people analytics can support an organisation. But PeoplesHR with people analytics cater to a wide range of HR functions that support the D3M which includes strategic workforce planning, measuring employee performance, evaluating recruiting channels, identifying skill gap, assessing the demand and supply of talent, effective hiring and promotions, improve retention, predict candidate success, competitive intelligence, and organisational network analysis.

At the same time it is important to remember that people analytics is not only about crunching numbers. The uniqueness about it is the interpretation of workforce trends which is combined with the disciplines of data and behavioral science.

It is important to remember that humans are not always rational. If we focus only on data, the organisation will be taken by the same motivations and behaviors that create the patterns we see. Data being simply a decision support, begins to make a lot more sense when it is combined with theory. After all, people are much more complicated than spreadsheets that simply contain their data.

People analytics is still the newbie to the HR field. For those in HR it’s a great opportunity to further identify what information would help make decisions to fix any talent questions they have struggled with. Or if you don't have the sufficient data right away, it's time to build and collect your own information without throwing your hands up.

It’s always best to communicate with your employees on how their data would be used and provide them with the insights you learned when collecting new data from them.

A few tips when handling problems with people analytics is to make sure that you take it one step at a time and that your leadership is aware about it. Refine your understanding and begin with the actual application of the analysis. Even though there might be instances where you need to dig deep and find publicly available data for your use, it's best to carefully focus and identify patterns and understand methods. And it's always advantageous to have an idea in the areas of statistics and psychology.