“Josh Bersin of Deloitte believes the cost of losing an employee can range from tens of thousands of dollars to 1.5–2.0x the employee’s annual salary”, Jack Altman said in his How Much Does Employee Turnover Really Cost? article in the Huffington Post. “These costs include hiring, onboarding, training, ramp time to peak productivity, the loss of engagement from others due to high turnover, higher business error rates, and general culture impacts.”
In addition, there are more cost implications and negative impacts to turnover than Altman highlights. You see, turnover isn’t just about bidding farewell to an employee. Moreover, it’s like a secret (or not to secret) code that can reveal whether your business is hitting the bullseye – or missing the mark from the employee standpoint.
Despite knowing the havoc turnover can cause, keeping it at bay can be easier said than done. After all, it’s no piece of cake to consistently find the crème de la crème of the workforce, keep them satisfied, and prevent them from escaping into the sunset.
But in the absence of superpowers, how are you supposed to know if, when, and where problems areas exist, such as:
- Are your rockstars leaving the stage faster than you can say ’employee engagement’?
- Is there a specific issue with the fresh blood in the sales department?
- Are your new hires from a certain recruitment channel beating a hasty dash for the exit sign?
Well, fear not! people analytics is your ultimate weapon for conquering turnover troubles hiding amongst your workforce and making your best employees vanish into thin air.
So, let’s take a closer look at the game-changing ways and means analytics puts the power back in your hands – seamlessly and fast!
Why Enlist HR Analytics in the War on Turnover?
HR analytics harnesses a powerful combination of the following key factors:
- People data
- Desired business outcomes
Put them together and they’ll help you make better decisions around talent acquisition and in a broader business sense. Sounds like a dream, right?
But in the cold light of day, where do you even think about beginning?
For a start, there’s the multiple places you’ve got people data hidden away, quite possibly across an ATS, HCM, HRIS, onboarding tool, LMS and payroll systems, and even in different formats. For example:
- Core HR data
- Assessment data
- Demographics
- Engagement and employee experience
- Health and safety
- Learning/training data
- Promotions and internal mobility
- Recruitment data and sourcing channels
- Tenure
- Time, leave and absence
- Wages, salaries, and bonuses
As for your business objectives, they’re also likely to come from a variety of places, including:
- Customer satisfaction
- Productivity
- Revenue, cost, profit, and loss
- Sales
- Value created
The burning question is, how do you extract, slice and dice the relevant combinations of people data with your desired business outcomes to help identify and retain key talent?
The answer is well executed people analytics.
Bear in mind, people analytics for retention doesn’t mean having a bunch of flashy graphs to impress the higher-ups. On the contrary, it’s about turning the tables on turnover and keeping your A-Team intact, motivated, and ready to conquer the world in alignment with overall business goals. And you can only begin to do this by:
- Truly understanding your workforce
- Deciphering their wants and needs
- Crafting a workplace that they don’t just survive in, but thrive in
That’s the theory. So how does it all comes together in practice?
How HR Analytics Helps You Identify and Tackle Turnover
“Like most company issues, employee turnover generally has clear causes and symptoms,” explained Monika Nemcova, in her Employee Turnover Data Analysis: 8 Tips for Success article for the AIHR. “Performing employee turnover data analysis, considering the associated costs, and knowing the causes will help your company stay ahead of potential issues and mitigate them early.”
In short, when you can understand what’s causing turnover troubles in your organization, you can start dealing with them. For these purposes, HR analytics might confirm your existing suspicions, or throw you a completely unexpected curveball, in areas such as:
- Pay – Been buying people cheaply by skill, sector and/or geography? Your employees are likely telling you so by voting with their feet, especially in highly competitive jobs and sectors where demand for great talent is high.
- Management – If the senior team or a line manager falls short of new hire expectations, they’ll run for the hills en masse. So, unearthing high turnover under a particular manager or in a particular department is a surefire sign to take a closer look.
- Recruitment and onboarding – Overall, new hires shouldn’t be heading for the doors in less than a year if you’ve shown them exemplary recruitment and onboarding processes. It’s time to revisit these areas if you’re shedding too many new hires before their time.
Having quantified insights of this caliber enables you to stay ahead of the curve with your people situation. Additionally, you can leverage it as a competitive edge. Being able to tackle these issues proactively means overall, you’re more likely to be meeting and exceeding the needs of your employees, establishing your employer brand and allowing you to attract more of that high caliber talent.
Nevertheless, making the decision to pursue market-leading HR analytics in your business can be a tall order, especially when you don’t want to invest in heavy lift software. But hold it right there!
What’s the Bottom Line in Terms of Cost and Installation?
The good news is this. With a flexible and scalable HR analytics system like PeopleInsight by HireRoad, you can have all the key analytics at your fingertips without breaking a sweat or your bank account.
And better still? You can be up and running with actionable analytics quickly and painlessly. In fact, in just 10 days you can realistically expect to be diving into and creating a plan of action action to achieve:
- Optimized talent acquisition channel performance
- Recruitment and onboarding efficiency to turn your competitors green with envy
- Better retention strategies in support of broader business outcomes
- Meaningful and effective DEI initiatives
- Improved quality of hire
After all, when you know your people, you know it all. And when you can keep those people engaged, there’s no business challenge you can’t solve by tapping into the beating heart of your organization.
At HireRoad, we believe every business should embrace the power of HR analytics for amplified retention. So, say goodbye to turnover troubles, and get ready to double down with a workforce that’s not just a team, but a family. Ready to give turnover the heave-ho, without investing in heavy lift software? Book a free demo right here and see for yourself how you could be retaining for better business with our light-load but powerhouse system in just 10 days.