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People Analytics: The Key to Understanding Talent Retention

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Talent retention is a critical aspect of HR. It impacts your organization’s stability, productivity, and overall success, while high attrition rates can be disruptive and costly. HR operations know this. But they often struggle with:

  • Identifying the root causes of high turnover
  • Implementing effective strategies to boost talent retention

But fear not! In this article, we’ll discuss how people analytics can transform your talent retention efforts. Plus, we’ll delve into how a data-driven approach provides valuable insights into employee satisfaction. Ultimately, these insights can be used to develop strategies that ignite retention levels.

If retention is high on your agenda – and what business isn’t prioritizing retention right now? – you’re going to want to pay close attention.

Understanding Talent Retention: Its Importance in HR Operations

HR covers a range of functions crucial to creating and maintaining a supportive and productive workplace culture. These functions include (among others):

  • Recruitment and hiring
  • Onboarding
  • Compensation and benefits
  • Performance management
  • Training and development
  • Employee relations

When these functions are working together in harmony, they promote employee engagement. In turn, employee engagement nurtures positivity and buy-in, contributing to overall business success.

Talent retention is at the heart of employee engagement. So, poor attrition rates might lead you to put more effort behind things like:

  • Pay reviews
  • Planning and implementing relevant benefits
  • New and/or more training programs

All of these factors can amplify job satisfaction levels and lead to improved talent retention. This is because employees who feel valued and supported are more likely to stay committed to their roles and the business’s overall goals.

But, there’s just one small catch… When your employees are running for the hills, it’s not always apparent why. And when you don’t know why, you’re powerless to do much about it.

The Role of People Analytics in Identifying Influential Factors

Identifying the underlying causes of high employee turnover can be challenging. This is where people analytics is a game-changer. It harnesses the power of data-driven insights. And this, in turn, empowers you with an inside track on the factors influencing staff satisfaction and turnover.

Better still, you can analyze multiple data points from different sources and even different formats, including:

  • Existing HR systems, such as your ATS, onboarding software, L&D software, HCM or HRIS, payroll, etc
  • Anecdotal input from written records, such as performance reviews, 1:1s and exit interviews
  • Manual spreadsheets

And what happens when all this data and numbers are combined and crunched in a way that wasn’t impossible but really hard before people analytics?

Expect an overview of your people situation on rocket fuel! And in terms of talent retention specifically, this might mean finally getting to the bottom of unanswered questions like:

  • Which teams are consistently over or under performing?
  • What are the issues or reasons behind these successes and shortfalls?
  • What’s causing regular staff churn in some teams or sites, but not others?
  • Is onboarding, L&D, pay or management a factor?

At the end of the day, this data-driven approach gives you a deeper understanding of the employee experience in your business. As a result, you can pinpoint areas that need improvement and develop targeted strategies to boost retention. It’s perfectly possible when you can identify the patterns and trends causing the issues in the first place.

Strategies to Improve Talent Retention: Insights from People Analytics

Do, you’ve identified the problems. Now, it’s time to do something about them. For this purpose, insights from people analytics forearm you to implement more impactful talent retention strategies, such as:

  • Personalized training and development programs
  • Competitive compensation packages
  • Initiatives to improve work-life balance

All in all, you’re equipped to make better decisions to address the specific pain points and challenges faced by your people.

Additionally, you can also adapt your retention strategies in real-time. It’s just a case of continuously monitoring and analyzing your employee data. This agility ensures your strategies remain relevant and effective as your people-scape evolves.

Here’s how a real Hire Road client leveraged people analytics to develop an exciting new initiative to attract and retain a highly desirable under-represented group.

Case Study: Real-world Success Story in Using People Analytics for Talent Retention

  • The Client: Kerri Smiley, Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Mattamy Homes, one of North America’s largest home building companies
  • The Challenges: Despite doing their best with manual reporting and analytics, the HR Team were held back, spending too much time generating vanity metrics.
  • The Solutions: Their limitations made people analytics a compelling option, for not only saving time and resources, but generating higher quality data to inform and dictate best practices.
  • The Results: Kerri and her team pinpointed unusually high turnover rates amongst millennial female HiPos. As a direct result, a new initiative – “WiN at Mattamy” – was born. It supported the development and retention of the identified URG, in turn strengthening the organization’s future fitness.

“We were able to drill down into key metrics and look at promotion and attraction rates of males versus females and identify a turnover issue among millennial, high-performing females”, Kerri explained. “Armed with this insight we were able to demonstrate our need for the “WiN at Mattamy” program.”

The Future of Talent Retention: Ongoing Evolution with People Analytics

HR operations are playing an increasingly pivotal role in driving business growth. This includes planning and delivering potent recruitment and talent management strategies to drive the business forwards. In the fullness of time, people analytics has become even more integral, evolving from desirable to essential.

And the upshot of being able to extract deeper insights from your exponential data? More precise and targeted strategies for talent retention, thanks to your newfound ability to:

  • Refine Talent Categorization – Recognizing the unique qualities of each individual within your workforce is crucial. When you can get under their skin instead of treating them as numbers, you’re more likely to achieve success by –
  • Pinpointing high-performing staff and keeping them engaged
  • Planning personalized career pathways
  • Gathering valuable insights to identify and retain talent within distinct segments
  • Evaluate Talent Retention – Imagine metrics like employee satisfaction, turnover rates, and absence figures. They’re captivating insights, empowering you to earmark retention challenges and deliver strategies to address them.
  • Double Down on Internal Career Mobility – There’s something magical about metrics around the availability of internal mobility opportunities across diverse talent segments. They equip you to identify current and future rockstars ripe for career advancement. Following this, you can reinforce your talent retention through consistent measurement, identifying internal mobility prospects, and devising focused initiatives.

In essence, people analytics is a powerful tool for understanding and improving talent retention. This is because you can develop strategies that address the specific needs and concerns of your workforce by analyzing what turns them on and off. And truthfully, are there any HR professionals don’t want to adapt and stay ahead of the curve of the talent retention stakes?

At HireRoad, our HR analytics software is the perfect solution for tracking movement in your organization and boosting your talent retention efforts. After all, your people are your biggest investment. Retaining top talent allows you to cultivate an engaged, high-performing workforce.

Are you intrigued to get a holistic view of people analytics for insights into the success and challenges of your employees? Book a free demo and see how you could be supercharging talent retention in just 10 days.