Top People Analytics Software Tools (2023)
The best people analytics software rated and reviewed by our HR tech experts. Find information on each platform's standout features and pricing, plus tips on implementation, integrations, and more below.
People analytics, also known as HR analytics, is becoming more and more important for forward-thinking HR teams. It involves collecting and analyzing people data to improve organizational decision-making. According to a study by Deloitte, 91% of organizations use basic data-analysis tools, like spreadsheets, to manage, track, and analyze metrics like employee engagement, cost per hire, turnover rates, gender pay equity, and more. Fortunately analytics tools exist to help streamline the tracking and analysis of such data so you don’t have to manage multiple spreadsheets and/or Excel formulas.
You can find tools specifically designed for data analysis and people insights as well as analytics packages built into other HR systems. To help you make sense of these tools so you find the right one for your company, we put together the following guide; in it, we cover top HR analytics providers, features and benefits, pricing and ROI, and more.
Best HR Analytics Tools
To select the top people analytics software, we thoroughly evaluated over 50 tools, attended product demos, gathered user feedback, and consulted HR technology experts. We looked closely at key capabilities like data integration, reporting, and predictive analytics to determine which solutions truly stand out. Here's a summary of what we focused on:
- Predictive analytics: Advanced analytics that forecast future outcomes are a must-have. We prioritized solutions that help predict employee attrition, hiring success, high performers, flight risks, and other talent metrics through machine learning algorithms.
- Actionable insights: It's not enough to crunch numbers. The top tools in this space turn analytics into clear, actionable recommendations on topics like leadership development, compensation planning, and diversity initiatives. Visually appealing, interactive dashboards make the data accessible.
- Data integration: The best people analytics platforms connect seamlessly with your existing HRIS, ATS, payroll system, and other data sources. This provides a comprehensive view of your workforce and avoids the hassle of manual data entry. We favored tools with pre-built connectors, APIs, and automation capabilities.
We take an in-depth, meticulous approach to ensure we only recommend the absolute best tools on the market. To learn more about our processes, see our guide on how we vet and select HR Tech vendors.
Crunchr
Crunchr is a highly intuitive, powerful, and secure People Analytics Platform, with one integrated experience for HR dashboards, analytics, and planning.
PROS
CONS
Crunchr connects with (non) HR Systems and smartly organizes all data in one clean datastore. Powerful advanced analytics engines scan for inconsistencies to improve data quality, and the people analytics layer creates actionable workforce insights for managers, HR professionals and business leaders. All with enterprise graded security, GDPR controls, and fine-grained authorizations options.
There are three integrated modules: HR Dashboards (Stories), People Analytics, and Workforce Planning. Stories is an HR dashboard creator. Through a demo with Crunch in mid 2022, we were able to see that all HR metrics come pre-built and users can drag & drop widgets to easily create their unique dashboard. Further, the People Analytics module produces actionable insights into talent acquisition, promotions, turnover, diversity & inclusion, spans of control, etc. The Strategic Workforce Planning module guides companies through business transformations.
Crunchr follows a headcount model with a price per employee per year (PEPY). The larger the company the lower the PEPY. A thing worth mentioning is that their prices are rather competitive in the North American market since they are a European company.
Best For
Enterprise customers with 1000+ employees. Current customers are mainly based in Europe and the US, but they often have a worldwide presence. Crunchr is expanding in other continents as well.
ChartHop
Consider ChartHop your single source of employee data for making better decisions. With ChartHop, you can visualize your company data on many parameters such as department, gender, time zone. And the best thing is that it can be fully integrated with your HRIS.
PROS
- ChartHop integrates with several HR/ATS systems to eliminate manual data entry.
- It stands out for its organizational charts, with easy drag-and-drop editing.
- Users appreciate the ability to view, filter, and report on people data in different ways.
- Its Map feature shows where each employee is located, which is particularly helpful for distributed teams to check the working hours of their teammates.
- Charthop nicely integrates with your existing HR and ATS systems. Having everything under one roof means not having to use ten different applications.
- Charthop’s organization chart is its biggest asset. Their drag-and-drop feature to edit the chart is a hit amongst a majority of the users. Overall, the tool makes navigation throughout the company really easy - you can find the people you need, figure out their responsibilities, and track changes after the latest company re-organization.
- Charthop's goal tracking interface is simple, intuitive, and easy to build. There's not much else you can ask for.
- Charthop's Map feature allows businesses to see where each employee is located. For organizations that work remotely, this promotes a feeling of togetherness, which is crucial for employee engagement.
CONS
- Organizational chart navigation could be improved, particularly the speed at which users zoom in and out.
- Users reported a steep learning curve because of the platform’s overwhelming amount of features.
- The search function isn’t very easy to use and often brings back inaccurate results.
- The user interface is somewhat dated.
- Charthop's organization chart navigation isn't the best. The chart zooms in and out quite quickly, and the gestures aren't intuitive, making it difficult to use.
- Charthop can be a little complicated to figure out. Also, the fact that there are so many features is a little intimidating.
- Charthop's search function isn't user-friendly. There's not much information on how to use it effectively, and it sometimes throws the wrong results.
- Charthop's UI is somewhat dated and clunky.
Though Charthop started out as an org chart software, they’ve built on their platform over the years, marketing it today as an all-in-one solution for organizational management. Charthop features a powerful dashboard that provides visualizations of workforce analytics like attrition risk, diversity metrics, performance trends, and more. This allows users to spot trends and insights at a glance.
Another major advantage is Charthop's ability to integrate with existing HR systems like ATS, HCMs, and payroll software. This consolidates all of your people data into one centralized platform for easy reporting and analysis. Charthop also stands out for its customizable reports and ability to track KPIs that align with specific business objectives. The software makes it simple to share actionable insights with stakeholders across the organization.
Overall, ChartHop is an excellent people analytics tool with its org charts, mapping, and reporting. The consolidated view it provides into people data is quite helpful, despite its navigation and search quirks. For organizations looking to better understand and optimize their workforce, ChartHop is worth checking out.
ChartHop is used by thousands of 'hoppy' customers including Birchbox, DHL, 1Password, and InVision.
ChartHop has three plans:
- ChartHop Basic is free for up to 150 employees. It includes features like employee profiles, SSO, org charts, basic payroll integration, integrations with Slack and Carta, data visualization, and more.
- ChartHop Standard has everything in the Basic plan plus additional capabilities like headcount planning, role-based access controls, people analytics, surveys, custom templates, more advanced HRIS integration, calculated metrics, document storage, and a dedicated customer success manager. Pricing is available upon request.
- ChartHop Premium has all features in Basic and Standard plus more advanced modules like compensation reviews, robust headcount planning, performance reviews, recruiter experience, highly customizable configurations, and more. Pricing is available upon request.
Best For
ChartHop can be used by companies of all sizes. Its scalable pricing ensures there’s something for everyone.
Lattice
Lattice offers DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging) Analytics and Sentiment Analysis. DEIB Analytics allows you to integrate company demographics into Lattice to make better cultural decisions. On the other hand, Sentiment Analysis analyzes and tags every open-ended response with a sentiment score.
PROS
- Lattice features an intuitive, user-friendly interface.
- Its customizable review templates and surveys extract meaningful, targeted data.
- Users users find its 1:1 meeting features comprehensive, with scheduling, templates, agendas, and note-taking capabilities.
- The platform supports goal setting, tracking, and management.
- Lattice allows managers to record their 1:1 meetings with employees in real time. That way, both parties can go back later and revisit what was discussed during the meeting – as well as make sure nothing gets lost in translation!
- The platform has a host of tools supporting employee development and performance-based compensation setting, which isn’t common for the average performance management product.
- Review templates and survey questions are among several things that can be customized to ensure you’re getting relevant data.
CONS
- Starting at $11 per employee per month, Lattice is on the expensive side compared to alternatives.
- While the interface is friendly enough to navigate, its feature breadth takes the average user some time to master.
- Integration options are limited, with some HRIS systems not supported directly. However, Lattice does offer open API integration.
- Starting at $11 per person per month, Lattice’s pricing is on the expensive side compared to competitors.
- The platform is feature-rich, which is great but also means that it takes some time for the average user to get acclimated with it.
- The available selection of third-party integrations is rather limited, with a few users complaining that their HRIS isn’t covered. That said, Lattice does have an open API that allows users to plug-in other third party tools.
Lattice simplifies the collection, analysis, and visualization of data about your people. With AI-powered insights, it offers open-ended comments that give you a chance to dig deeper into whatever is being discussed. It also provides customizable visualizations so you can identify high and low performers and employee behavior trends. Based on these analytics, Lattice will also provide you with action plans, ideas, and real-time results tracking to help you improve the employee experience.
Lattice has a large customer base that includes some noteworthy names such as Reddit, Webflow, Braze, Monzo, Valtech, Demandbase, and more.
Lattice offers four pricing plans, including:
- Performance Management + OKRs & Goals: This plan costs $11 per person/month. It includes 360 degree, manager, and peer performance review. It also includes custom question templates, performance reporting, analytics, dynamic org chart, regular business reviews, and performance management training.
- Engagement: It costs +$4 per person/month and includes employee engagement surveys, automated pulse surveys, eNPS, onboarding and exit surveys, engagement and performance insights, real-time pulse insights, engagement training, and regular business reviews.
- Grow: It costs +$4 per person/month and includes competency matrices, growth plans, individual development plans, career tracks, competency-based review questions, growth areas, career vision tools, and development analytics.
- Compensation: It costs +$6 per person/month and includes compensation review setup, bonus plan payout and one-time bonus, commission, manager, supervisor, and admin review, notes, promotion handling, and cycle progress tracking.
Best For
Lattice is best suited for growing and large businesses looking to improve performance and align teams.
I use Lattice multiple times a week. It is used weekly to complete 1:1's with direct reports. It also allows me to do weekly monitoring of managers' usage for completion of 1:1's on a consistent basis. This allows me to report back to leadership and ensure we are consistent. Throughout the year we use it for 90-day reviews for new hires as well as annual reviews.
I like that this tool is user-friendly and allows us to monitor performance management and a view into the consistency of managers. I also like that I can create customized templates for various review cycles at different levels of the organization. Rather than sending multiple review cycles, I can assign people to different templates under one review cycle. This makes it very convenient.
Before Lattice, we did not have a structured Performance platform across the board for our organization. We did not have a way to monitor that managers were completing 1:1’s with their staff or properly completing 90-day and annual performance reviews. We have now been using Lattice since January 2021 and it has been great.
One of my biggest frustrations was not being able to get a live person on the phone. They have since allowed representatives to send links for Zoom calls as part of that solution. Also, within the review cycle the peer, self, and upwards reviews are grouped together, it would be great to initiate them staggered. I will say that when you give feedback they will try to find a way to add a feature. Hopefully, this one will be added soon.
User friendly
When thinking about a performance management tool, think about the needs of your company. What challenges or gaps are you trying to fill? Will you need a live agent/a direct representative or can you navigate with chat support? Look at what you are currently doing and what you want to work on better.
In the past few years, they have made changes to the platform. When we started using Lattice, it was only a chat feature when you needed assistance. Now, if they see you need more help they will ask you to join a Zoom and further assist you. In addition, I can now allow managers to have a downward view into 1:1 so they can monitor their direct reports directly to ensure 1:1’s are being completed.
This tool can be useful for any company that's looking to have better performance management across their organization.
This would not be good for anyone who needs constant immediate over the phone direct assistance. It will also be challenging to anyone that’s not open to change. You have to be willing to see how you can make it work for you because it’s not one size fits all.
OrgVue
Apart from producing insights for a range of parameters, OrgVue also helps you combine your people data with your other business data so that you can formulate business strategies for future scenarios.
PROS
CONS
OrgVue is an analytics platform specifically designed for human resources. This tool helps you plan the future of your organization, understand how M&A will impact your company, understand the present health of your business, and so much more.
Remarkably, they have an interesting self assessment you can take on their site to see how you stack up relative to other people analytics functions.
Some of orgvue's clients and partners include Mars, FedEx, Johnson & Johnson, Bain & Company, KPMG, Accenture, and Zurich.
orgvue is available in three packages. There's 'spectrum', which aims to let you see your organization as a whole. There's also 'position & roles', for understanding your businesses current and planned costs. Finally, the 'people' plan lets you create reporting packs on your organizational structure and share them with stakeholders. Each of them has many other features, many shared across the three plans. However, the pricing for each is only available once you book a demo.
Best For
Given their varying plans, orgvue could work for companies of multiple sizes, from small businesses that want to be more data-driven to enterprises with mounds of data to analyze.
splashBI
SplashBI's people analytics tool helps you understand data from four key areas: human capital management, talent management, talent acquisition, and diversity and inclusion. It also comes with a guide for people analytics, webinars, and best practices resources.
PROS
CONS
SplashBI helps HR teams to understand what is happening in their organization and plan for the future. It’s one of the easier tools to setup within this landscape, with pre-built integrations and reporting.
SplashBI’s AI engine can help HR teams understand what causes candidate drop-off in the recruiting funnel, what’s driving turnover, are promotions fair across the organization, and much more.
SplashBI is trusted by Best Buy, HD Supply, Macy's, Gymboree, and Popeye's.
SplashBI's pricing is available only upon request, but they do offer a free trial.
Best For
SplashBI is used by many types of organizations in widely-varying industries.
Tableau
Tableau deploys the best-in-class technology to provide detailed data solutions. Some of its capacities include building business dashboards, maps, survey analysis, and time series analysis.
PROS
CONS
Tableau is a data visualization platform that is not specific to HR, but that we find many people analytics teams get value from. Their products can pull in data from your various tools/data lakes, and then use a variety of visualization formats to display real time analytics dashboards that include charts, maps, graphs, etc.
Their platform offers many products, such as Tableau Prep, Tableau Desktop, and Tableau Online. Each of them fits different use cases, which may warrant a deeper look into their offering.
Tableau is favored by organizations like Charles Schwab, Dubai Airports, Whole Foods, and Verizon.
Tableau's pricing is organized depending on how much of a deep dive you'll need into data:
- Tableau Creator is the most powerful suite of product they offer. It starts at $70 per user per month on any deployment option.
- Tableau Explorer is a suite of self-service analytics. It starts at $35 per user per month on the public cloud or on-premise, or $42 if its hosted by Tableau.
- Tableau Viewer lets teams view and interact with dashboards on Tableau Online. It starts at $12 user/month on the public cloud / on-premise, or $15 if company-hosted.
Tableau also offers a free trial and data management add-ons or resource blocks.
Best For
Tableau is well-suited and priced for teams at all sorts of organizations, and even data-driven individuals.
I use Tableau to view and track talent acquisition data. To be more specific, for recruitment and the time it takes to fill vacant positions. I am able to see data that addresses the total number of hires, average time to fill, hires by source, hires by employee type, and days to fill positions by department. This information is extremely useful when it comes to enhancing our diversity recruitment strategy. I can download various reports to support goal creation towards reducing the time to fill. I am a visual person and the graphs and charts make it really easy to get a quick visual snapshot of what is going well and what we need to improve upon.
As previously mentioned, I am a visual learner. The graphs and charts make it easy to see data in a quick and visual way. Honestly, navigating through the different reports and the amount of data that is provided through those reports are very helpful in tracking and reporting progress.
My company purchased Tableau to have a more efficient and effective way to analyze and visualize important data. I started using this app over 4 years ago in a different organization. However, the functionality of this app is amazing in how it provides real-time data and a variety of reports. It provides instant feedback and makes the app interactive, engaging and fun. I am not a tech-savvy person but I enjoy using this app as it is very user-friendly.
From what I have experienced, one of the cons of this app is there's no auto-refresh of reports. This means there is a level of manual (minimal) effort to refresh data. Also, in order to create complex rich data, you have to have some knowledge of SQL.
This app has highly interactive data visualizations which makes it different from most of its competitors. I prefer this tool and no other.
The criteria I think people should think about when buying this type of tool is performance. Is the app strong and secure? I think they should research whether the app is mobile-friendly or not. Lastly, is it a simple user interface software? I feel these are basic functionalities that will make app usage better.
I feel that Tableau has evolved in its visualization functionality. If you are a person who uses MS Excel or Google Sheets, Tableau takes these apps to another level with scientific data.
Tableau is very good for an organization that has the need for high data analysis in a visual format.
Tableau is not a good fit for smaller companies with little or no need for high-volume data analysis.
Sisense
Sisense allows you to analyze your people data on various dimensions. From helping you unearth the causes of employee attrition to letting you find who to hire, Sisense does it all in a transparent and seamless manner.
PROS
CONS
10,000 users at over thousands of companies use Sisense to manage and visualize data. Their tool is not geared towards HR analytics, but has the flexibility to take in data from your HRIS, ATS, performance management system, etc and display that data in ways that are intuitive and useful for business users.
Sisense is used by companies like Nasdaq, Luma Health, PRG, Air Canada, and Crunchbase.
Sisense provides price quotes depending on your project type, number of users, data volume, and project timeline. They have a "no-surprise" pricing policy, where everything you'll need, from software to services, is included in an annual subscription plan.
Best For
Sisense can be a good bet for startups, small businesses, medium corporations, and large businesses alike.
Visier People
Powered by AI, Visier deconstructs your people data and makes it simple to understand. It boasts an expert-driven analytics, specialized data management, and pre-built analytics.
PROS
CONS
Visier is a company that comes up in the majority of HR analytics conversations as they’ve built a robust and purpose built tool for people analytics teams.
Their offering is used by over 5,000 of the world’s leading companies to understand basically everything about their organizations: retention, how it’s changing, where your TA funnel is breaking down, where it’s going in the future, how it stacks up to peer companies.
Simply put this is a very robust people analytics tool.
Visier’s People Analytics platform is used by many recognizable names including eBay, Ford, Amgen, Sonos, and more.
The pricing of Visier’s people analytics tools depends on the size and needs of your business. The best way forward is to contact their Sales team or request a demo.
Best For
Enterprise and Mid-Market organizations.
Orgnostic
Orgnostic takes a unique approach to people analytics. Their platform can take your raw data and turn it into a story-like report that provides insights, recommendations, and beautiful visuals that are easy to understand and share.
PROS
- Each HR metric within Orgnostic is accompanied by an explanation, including the definition, formula to calculate it, and in some cases, insights you can get from the metric.
- The tool is available for any type of HR tech stack combination. You can do the self-service onboarding if you use one of the integrated HRIS or ATS products, or have their team connect your data manually (same if it comes from another type of software like an LMS). Spreadsheet integrations are possible too.
- A free trial is available for the Pro plan, letting you see all the functionalities of the platform to test it out before you decide if one of the plans is for you.
- Orgnostic's security features and practices are impressive. They have a SOC 2 certification and are quite transparent in how they manage your data.
- Each HR metric within Orgnostic is accompanied by an explanation, including the definition, formula to calculate it, and in some cases, insights you can get from the metric.
- The tool is available for any type of HR tech stack combination. You can do the self-service onboarding if you use one of the integrated HRIS or ATS products, or have their team connect your data manually (same if it comes from another type of software like an LMS). Spreadsheet integrations are possible too.
- A free trial is available for the Pro plan, letting you see all the functionalities of the platform to test it out before you decide if one of the plans is for you.
- Strong security practices, SOC 2-certified.
CONS
- On the free trial, unless you have an HRIS or ATS that integrates with the tool, you’d have to reach out to their team for a manual connection. While this process can run very smoothly, it does take away from the self-service aspect of the trial.
- Insights, one of the key differentiators in Orgnostic’s offering, is only offered in the Pro plan (see our pricing section for more details).
- On the free trial, unless you have an HRIS or ATS that integrates with the tool, you’d have to reach out to their team for a manual connection. While this process can run very smoothly, it does take away from the self-service aspect of the trial.
- Insights, one of the key differentiators in Orgnostic’s offering, is only offered in the Pro plan (see our pricing section for more details).
Orgnostic makes HR metrics easier to understand, share, and act upon by presenting them as stories. Once you connect your data through one of their many integrations (they can support all kinds of HR tech stacks) you can delve into metrics like chapters such as leadership, employee wellbeing, and talent management.
Yes, each metric is presented with a dashboard, but they also accompany this with a definition of the metric, an explanation of how they calculate it, the data source, and an insight delving into why that number is important and how you can act upon it.
Hotjar, FintechOS, Payhawk, GetYourGuide, Blinkist
While we certainly suggest checking out Orgnostic’s pricing page for more detailed, interactive, and up-to-date pricing, we can share that they have the following pricing plans:
- Free: This includes 1 HRIS and 1 ATS integration, Data Health audit, 3 months of data history, and access to over 120 built-in metrics. This plan has actually improved a lot, since before it only included a handful of metrics.
- Pro: This starts at $4 per employee per month if you have 2 employees, less if you pay yearly, and less as you scale up in headcount. To give you an idea of how it scales, a company with 100 people would pay $200 per month, and one with 1,000 would shell out a monthly $1,800. The Orgnostic Pro plan includes everything on the free plan, plus unlimited integrations, advanced data segmentation, automated reporting, e-NPS surveys, the magic link sharing capabilities, and more.
- Tailored: Orgnostic also offer a custom plan with unique people analytics and additional data science support. Actually, if you have more than 5,000 employees, all of their plans go into the custom pricing model.
Lastly, do bear in mind that the Pro Plan is available for a 14-day free trial and you don’t need a credit card to sign up.
Best For
Orgnostic is used by enterprises in IT or tech within Europe and the US. Thanks to their free plan, it can also be useful for SMBs (100-1000 employees), scale-ups, and growing companies. When we first came across the product, the typical Orgnostic customer didn't have a People Analytics team and was comfortable with other roles, mostly HR, handling the platform. Since then, they have focused more and more on the enterprise sector and can work with the analytics team within such companies in several ways. For instance, as a tool for distributing People data to HRBP levels.
One Model
One Model are the makers of a People Analytics solution that’s a data extractor, integrator, warehouse, visualization, and predictive model building engine. As their name suggests, one solution that can take care of all your People Analytics needs.
PROS
CONS
People analytics teams often have the problem of not being able to structure data from their multiple HR (and non-HR) systems and visualize it within the same tool. In fact, One Model’s research suggests that 92% of organizations struggle understanding their data. So, this is one of the things that they set out to solve. Their platform takes data directly from your HR systems (ATS, HCM, surveys, etc) via APIs and integrates it into ready-made dashboards, queries, and more.
One Model also allows for full customization of the dashboards, reports, and ML/AI-based predictive analytics. The data can be ‘destined’ out to other systems (S3, SFTP), and can also be viewed via PowerBI or Tableau. They can also enable you to use machine learning to construct models that predict attrition, headcount growth, time to fill on open reqs, quality of hire, etc.
HR leaders use One Model for their People data needs at companies like Squarespace, Santander, Paychex, Deloittte, and many others.
One Model’s pricing is a single annual fee based on employee count. While their actual price would vary depending on your size and the plan you choose, one thing we can share is that they don’t have service fees or SOWs.
Best For
One Model’s People analytics offering is best-suited for large companies and enterprises.
Use-Cases: Why use HR analytics software
In general, companies turn to people analytics tools to build high-performing teams, inform business decisions, and ultimately improve their bottom lines by spending less money. On a more granular level, you can use them to optimize your human capital management and impact your company’s overall success—whether you’re working in person or remotely. For example:
- Identify top talent: If you’re looking to fill a certain position, you might be able to find the right candidate internally. Performance-related data can show you if a current employee might be a good fit for a new or open role. Likewise, you can analyze people data from your applicant tracking systems and/or in your talent communities to see which external candidates to prioritize.
- Understand career pathing: Map career path scenarios for your employees and use relevant data to optimize them and better understand what will motivate each individual employee to grow. From there, you can design clear career advancement plans for them so that managers and employees alike are on the same page.
- Improve DEI: Track your diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives to see where there might be gaps and opportunities for improvement.
- Fair compensation: To make sure you’re paying employees a fair salary and/or to help you with salary negotiations, look at relevant data. This includes information on how an employee compares to their team as well as what that particular role typically pays in the overall job market.
- Skill gaps & talent shortages: To help inform who your next hires should be, you’ll be able to use HR analytics tools to identify gaps in skills, core competencies, and talent. That way, you can be strategic about who you hire and ultimately save time and money on recruiting and talent acquisition efforts.
Considerations & mistakes to avoid
HR analytics tools help streamline and optimize the management of your people data and insights. But you’ll want to be careful in how you use them so that you’re not relying on bad data, putting too much emphasis on data alone, or risking compliance and security issues. With that, here are four considerations and common mistakes to avoid as you implement HR analytics systems:
- Don’t forget about human components. If you rely too heavily on data, you might not get the full picture. Don’t forget to incorporate actual human feedback and other factors that can help provide the right context for certain analyses.
- Make sure you have clean data sources. You’re going to want to build a high-quality database of your people and business metrics. This means cleaning your data to ensure nothing is out of date, inaccurate, or incomplete. If you don’t do this, your reports could be all wrong and you could end up making decisions that actually aren’t in the best interest of your people and/or your company’s bottom line.
- Don’t let overwhelm prevent you from starting. Setting up an analytics program can feel daunting--especially if you’re not a technical person and/or if you’re working with an old database. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t move forward with an HR analytics tool, though. In fact, they are built to make your data analyses less overwhelming. And, many tools offer customer support and onboarding/trainings to help you get set up the right way.
- Be mindful of GDPR and other compliance issues. Between GDPR (or General Data Protection Regulation) and other compliance measures, you have to be extra careful with your data security efforts as well as what personal information is stored where—and whether it’s being used with the proper employee consent. The last thing you want to risk is a data or privacy breach that exposes information like an employee’s social security number, salary, etc.
Benefits & ROI: How HR analytics tools can help your human resource teams
As we’ve mentioned, there are a lot of benefits to using HR analytics programs. Together, these benefits can help your company make better decisions when it comes to hiring, culture, strategy, and growth. You’ll be more confident that you’re hiring the right people and focusing on the right initiatives at the right time. Unpacking this a bit further, here are the benefits of using an HR analytics tool:
- Better hiring decisions: Use historical hiring data to find trends between things like candidate qualifications and backgrounds; for example, if you’re hiring for a technical role and see from your data that self-taught applicants often fail to have the necessary qualifications, you might want to focus your resources on candidates with the proper training.
- Reduced turnover: Discover trends that lead to employee turnover. Is something consistently happening to cause your people to jump ship? When you can pinpoint a problem, you can create a solution and increase retention in the long-run.
- Improved productivity and performance: You’ll be able to better identify where you should spend your resources. This goes for both company goals and strategies as well as people investments.
Pricing: What HR analytics software costs
Pricing is typically based on a per user per month cost that is either billed monthly or annually. While the unit price itself varies by provider and based on the features you need, we’ve seen it range from $12.00 - $70.00 per user per month. Make sure to discuss pricing in detail on your demos so you know exactly how much you’ll pay and what you’ll get in return.
Features: What to expect from people analytics tools
People analytics programs offer a variety of features and functionality to help you understand key HR metrics so you can make more strategic decisions for your workforce planning and company strategies. Such features include:
- Performance management: Track how each employee and team is performing. For example, what kind of impact are they making on the company? You can track employee performance through features like 360 reviews, goal tracking, 1:1s, feedback, and praise.
- Employee engagement: Understand and track your company culture by collecting feedback from your employees and measuring how your employees engage with the organization. Administer surveys, pulses, even eNPS (or your employer net promoter score—i.e. how likely an employee is to recommend your company to a friend or candidate).
- Org charts: Create dynamic, real-time org charts that are always up to date. Add customizations or filters so you can ensure you’re meeting your DEI and other requirements. For example, you can visualize your org charts with an eye on gender, location, tenure, ethnicity, even Myers-Briggs.
- Salary benchmarks: Create appropriate salary ranges for a particular employee and/or role, then build career plans around them so you can better plan and budget for promotions, raises, etc.
- Integrations & Reports: Connect to a variety of data sources (i.e. existing HR tools) to maximize data tracking and analytics, find insights, and develop reports to visualize trends, gaps, and opportunities.
- Shareability: Easily share insights and reports with your team. You can send links to reports, download visuals for presentations, and more.
- Security: Because these tools have access to a lot of sensitive people data, they offer top-notch data privacy and remain compliant with necessary security and risk guidelines.
- Predictive analytics: Pull data from different HR systems into your analytics platform of choice to identify what future outcomes will look like for a given HR-related category. This is done using a combination of machine learning, visualization, and artificial intelligence.
- Variety of KPIs: You’ll be able to measure a number of KPIs as they relate to your talent analytics. Such analytics include everything from staffing to social media to overall human resource management—which you can use to get actionable insights on how optimize your HR processes and find business success.
Questions to Ask in Demos with People Analytics Software Vendors
Asking probing questions when evaluating people analytics software is crucial; you definitely want to understand each platform's capabilities and whether they’re able to solve the particular problem(s) your team is facing. If you aren’t sure what to ask though, we’ve put together the list of questions below to help you out:
- What types of data can your system integrate and analyze? You'll want to ensure it can connect to your various HR information systems and databases to access data on compensation, performance, retention, engagement, etc.
- How customizable are the dashboards and reporting? Look for capabilities to tailor views and build reports to meet your specific organizational needs and metrics.
- What kinds of predictive modeling does the system offer? See if it can forecast things like flight risk, high performers, recruitment success factors, etc.
- Does your system offer benchmarking data? The ability to compare your metrics to industry standards can provide useful context.
- What data visualization options are available? Interactive charts, graphs, and data visualizations allow for insights to be discovered more easily.
- How automated is the system? Seek a high degree of automation in report building, data integrations, notifications, etc. to ease the workload on your team.
- What skills are needed to use and manage the system? Understand if IT resources are required or if HR can handle themselves. Seek intuitiveness.
- How is data security and privacy handled? Make sure adequate protections and permissions are in place.
- What support options are included? Look for onboarding help and ongoing training and support.
- Can the system scale and grow with organizations' changing needs? Ensure flexibility.
Implementation: Setting up HR analytics tools
How to implement a data analytics solution depends on a few key variables:
- Existing HR tools. Do you need to integrate an insights tool to other HR tools you use, so that you can centralize data in one place? If so, what’s involved with the integration processes? Will you need to engage your IT teams for help?
- Breadth of features. How many features you want might impact how long it takes to get up and running. This also comes back to integration requirements.
- Your data. Do you need to clean up an old database first or are you starting fresh? Remember, it’s vital to be working with “good” company and employee data so that your reports and insights are accurate. So if you need to clean up your system, you’ll want to budget the right time and resources to do so before you implement anything.
- Compliance requirements. What risk and compliance measures will you have to apply? Will you need to allow employees to opt in to share certain personal metrics? Discuss with your risk, compliance and/or legal teams and check with your analytics provider of choice for their compliance 101 guidelines.
All of these implementation variables should be discussed in full during your demos. That way, you’ll be primed for success and have less surprises or roadblocks along the way.
People Analytics Software FAQs
What is people analytics?
People analytics, also known as HR analytics, are the interpretation of data pertaining to employees that assist with decision making for HR and TA teams.
What is people analytics software?
People analytics software are solutions designed to manage, track, and report metrics such as employee engagement, gender pay equity, turnover rates, cost per hire, and more.
What does people analytics software do?
People analytics software allows you to form actionable insights based on in-depth data. It helps you identify top talent, understand career pathing, improve DEI initiatives, offer fair compensation, and recognize skill gaps and talent shortages.
What are some benefits of people analytics tools?
Benefits of using people analytics tools include reduced turnover, better hiring decisions, and improved productivity and performance.
Next steps for your HR data
At the end of the day, workforce analytics can help streamline the jobs of your recruiters, help you make strong business cases with stakeholders, and give HR leaders and your entire HR department more control over things like the employee experience.
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