The Key to Fact-Based Decision Making – Relevant and Understandable Workforce Data
by Lois Melbourne
Business decisions, small and large, have far-reaching impact on businesses and the people working within them. Thus, executives and managers are seeking more fact-based decision tools. Yet, in this age of data overload, large numbers of facts can paralyze the decision makers. How can they wade through the data to make it meaningful? Here comes the responsibility of the technology departments.
“Please make data easy to access, understand, and drill-down into.” That can be a tall order. Kathleen Lau from Computer World presented the case that more employees will need access to information and will be savvy about their use of the data in the article, IT pros must get smart about analytics. Not only will employees ask for data, they’ll want to drill-down into the specifics and drill-out to see the big picture. They’ll want to see trends, as well as track specific types of data. None of them will want to learn SQL in order to fetch data from every angle they need it. They deserve tools that do the processing for them, so they can quickly get to the meaning of the data.
When I look at Aquire’s customers and consider all the different ways they’re served workforce data, the list is very extensive, and yet the specifics are critical. A manager can look at the big picture while still making life changing decisions for the individuals within the business. As a manager or a team does their talent review for promotions or future planning, like succession or replacement positioning, they need the most extensive employee profiles possible. Nothing can be buried or excluded, or the decision will be flawed.
When workforce planning involves historical trends in order to consider possible futures for the workforce, the workforce data must have integrity and needs to be easily organized. Too many reporting tools are designed to be thrown onto any data system and provide reports with rows, columns, and a few pie charts slapped in there for good measure. Yet, it’s critical that spot solutions are provided to give the workforce data the respect it needs. Can you really consider using the same reporting tool developed for financial reporting to provide you with the measurement of your Talent Management initiative?
Yes, you can measure the success of your talent management programs, if you have the right tools to measure your talent pipeline. A very specific need within Talent Management is the ability to see how many people are being developed within a business and getting promotions or developmental lateral moves. If IT only provides a tool already on their shelf to extract workforce data from an applicant tracking system or the HRIS system, you’re likely to suffer through a lot of manual effort entering workforce data into spreadsheets and then charting or graphing the results. I recommend you look for specific tools that can address the workforce data challenge. Then you will feel much better about the decisions you make, as you’ll know you had the right facts and you understood the relevance of data.
Cheers,
Lois
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