How SMBs Can Harness the Power of People Analytics

No matter the industry or size of the company, data is king. When properly sourced and managed, streams of data can inform best workplace practices or give you an edge over the competition.

Similarly, there's people analytics, which is your talent data. It highlights numbers, stats, and trends around employees so that executives can improve decisions around hiring and business outcomes.

These marketers and data specialists are using people analytics to help make their business better. Here's how. 

Reduce Natural Bias in Recruiting

"I have worked with several organizations who are using people analytics to reduce the natural biases that we all have. By using data, the unreliable nature of gut feelings is eliminated. However, intuition still has value. A very intuitive person who is very adept at reading people is more powerful than a supercomputer with all of the data in the world. The trick is finding the middle ground between using data to prevent human mistakes, but not allowing data to remove the human element in recruiting."

—Eric Florence, cybersecurity analyst, Security Tech

Increase Employee Retention

"We use people analytics to objectively evaluate our employee processes and increase employee retention. People analytics identifies areas of high and low employee turnover and helps us to understand the underlying reasons. This enables us to focus on employee categories that are more likely to enjoy working with our company and stay with us for the long term.

"It also reveals potential weaknesses in our managerial style, which may need addressing to avoid employee dissatisfaction. People analytics also helps to identify key performers and create tailored development plans for them to ensure they stay with us and don’t look elsewhere for offers."

—Leanna Serras, chief customer officer, FragranceX

Maintain Top Quality Care

"Our company prides itself on fast and secure prescription deliveries to patients' homes. People analytics is a critical component of our success because our employees are directly involved in the supply chain process. We use feedback from our workers and partners at various points in our process – from the doctors' telemedicine reviews to the pharmacists' opinions on medicine dispensing – to ensure that our patients always receive top-quality care from all angles of our service.

—Patrick Casey, director of growth marketing, Felix

Provide a Healthy Work Environment

"While a bit non-traditional, we've used people analytics specifically to empower our employees so they have a healthy environment to work in. The best example is watching the performance of people who receive raises without requesting one. We've discovered this dramatically increases productivity and work satisfaction.

"This policy has ended up helping our most underprivileged employees because they know they'll be treated well even if they are more worried about making requests and demands. It's a win-win – more productivity, a healthier workforce, and better-paid employees."

—Shaun Connell, founder, Writing Tips Institute

Identify Areas of Struggle and Excellence

"As a background checking company, we use people analytics to help small businesses make better decisions regarding the hiring process. We assess an applicant’s past work history and education. We also use people analytics for our own benefit. It helps us measure our employees’ progress and engagement in the workplace. Using data, we can identify areas where people are struggling or excelling, so that we can help them succeed or resolve any issues.

"Overall, people analytics is a powerful tool that can help small businesses make better decisions and improve their workforce. Whether it’s assessing applicants or monitoring employees, people analytics has proven to be beneficial for both the business and its employees."

—Linda Shaffer, chief people operations officer, Checkr

Inform Management’s Decision-Making

"My company uses people analytics to make sense of data and improve workforce management. As a result, our company and our clients are able to make data-driven decisions that lead to better employee engagement, lower turnover, and increased productivity. It helped us answer questions like:

• What factors are most predictive of employee engagement?
• What are the biggest drivers of employee turnover?
• How can we optimize our onboarding process to improve new hire productivity?"

—Boris Jabes, CEO, Census

No Longer Rely on Guesswork or Gut Feelings

"People analytics is providing us with the whole science to make accurate decisions. We no longer rely on guesswork, unreliable systems, or gut feelings. As a small business, we can’t afford to make grave mistakes when it comes to managing employees or recruiting new talent. People analytics is a vessel we can use blindly to make the perfect business decisions, reducing the risks to the bare minimum."

—Kyle Basett, chief operating officer, Altitude Control

A very intuitive person who is very adept at reading people is more powerful than a supercomputer with all of the data in the world. The trick is finding the middle ground between using data to prevent human mistakes, but not allowing data to remove the human element in recruiting.

—Eric Florence, cybersecurity analyst, Security Tech

Act on Feedback to Make Meaningful Changes

"We attribute a large chunk of our success to our practice of acting on feedback and turning it into meaningful changes. We employ bottom-to-top feedback systems so that we can make informed decisions based on the experiences and suggestions of our employees. This enables us to make necessary adjustments in our strategies swiftly in order to boost our efficiency. It keeps our employees engaged with their tasks when they see responsive leaders, and this bolsters our overall productivity rate as a team."

—Claudia Gancayco, chief marketing officer, Leg Master

Diversify the Workforce with Equitable Onboarding

"Thanks to data, we have been able to onboard a diverse team that’s helping us grow rapidly. By identifying biased value propositions in the job descriptions and catering to better interview questions, we have attracted diverse talent to our team. Our whole onboarding process is now structured in a way that we automatically treat everyone equally. Our special scorecard, created with the help of people analytics, has openly defined a set of skills for all the roles – removing the chances of bias."

—Zephyr Chan, founder and growth marketer, Better Marketer

Use Surveys to See How You Stack Up to Competition

"Our small business utilizes employee surveys to gather analytics on our people and make smarter organizational decisions. The surveys are kept anonymous and confidential so team members feel 100% confident in providing their honest feedback. We learn a plethora of information through this, such as factors that lead to employee satisfaction, how we compare to other organizations employees have worked at, the detection signs of poor employee retention and more. With these insights, we are able to act on facts and evidence, not just assumptions.

"Better yet, we can use this information as a benchmark to see how we have improved throughout the years. Our team also compares these benchmarks to our competitors and industry standards."

—Emily Rodgers, Marketing Manager, Drive Research

Photos from top: Getty Images, Courtesy of Brett Farmiloe