In today’s modern and digital workplace, it’s becoming increasingly important for HR leaders to have concrete justification around how and why they form their strategies, particularly when it comes to employee communications and engagement. Much like MLB and NBA sports teams that have embraced the sabermetric revolution (think Moneyball), HR teams need to eliminate guesswork and adopt a data-driven approach in order to succeed and secure their seat at the table.
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When it comes to effective employee engagement, where, when, and how an organization connects with its workforce can make all the difference. Here’s a closer look at how and why data intelligence is an important tool for success and some of the ways companies can overcome the reluctance to embrace it.
Insight on Best Practices
HR plays an important role when it comes to internal communications, but the scope is far beyond corporate intranets and e-mail memos. Today, teams are tasked with understanding the best way to disseminate information to all employees—those sitting behind desks as well as those who are deskless—in order to inform, inspire, engage, and ultimately drive employee satisfaction. Data analytics can play an important role in helping HR teams not only determine the most appropriate and effective content delivery systems but also which content types get the most attention and interaction from employees.
For example, are employees consuming content the most via digital signage, mobile apps with push notifications, or e-mail? Data analytics can answer this question. What format of content do employees prefer and spend the most time on—printed newsletters, short videos, posters in break rooms and elevators? Based on analytics, HR professionals can actually know the ways and the amount of time that employees read and view the important information that is necessary for them in their jobs and personal lives. Based on this, they can alter their ways that will likely save not only time but also money.
Streamlined Processes and Greater Visibility
Investing in data allows for more efficient, effective, and streamlined strategies by eliminating processes that have been used for decades and no longer work and by empowering team members to make necessary and educated changes that do.
Take, for example, companies in industries with decentralized workforces like manufacturing, retail, hospitality, and health care. Until now, HR professionals, whose job it is to ensure the delivery of information to all employees, have had to rely on “trickle-down” or cascading systems to communicate with frontline employees (many who don’t have corporate e-mail addresses or access to intranets). This heavy dependence on multiple layers of personnel to ensure the delivery of information often results in ineffective and unquantifiable results. However, because of the availability of data and analytics, this doesn’t have to be the case, and HR professionals can know specifically whether and to what extent information is getting to all employees.
Overcoming Barriers to Adoption
While it’s clear that data insights can be a valuable resource for workforce trends, too often HR is hesitant to step out of its comfort zone. Most veteran HR practitioners were trained in an era where data measurement was not expected or even possible. In fact, a recent study from Bersin by Deloitte shows 60% of HR pros lack basic data literacy. In today’s data-focused business environment, HR must prioritize closing this skills gap. Whether it’s bringing in an outside party or encouraging data-minded employees within the company to help train HR, data intelligence is vital to establish and support a top-down buy-in on an analytics-backed approach to HR.
The good news for HR practitioners is that most businesses recognize the need to equip their teams with the necessary resources to thrive in today’s business landscape. Findings from the Economist Intelligence Unit show that 82% of companies will either begin to or will implement a greater emphasis on big data use in human resources by the end of 2018. Without it, HR teams will lack the visibility to make strategic decisions that will truly bring value to a company and its employees overall and, in turn, might be seen from the C-suite as outdated—or worse—obsolete. 2018 is the time to adopt the tools available and take a leap forward into the future of work.
 As a corporate communications consultant for the past 20 years, Jeff Corbin is pioneering the use of technology in the communications industry as the founder of APPrise Mobile, a business-to-business/enterprise native app platform that includes theEMPLOYEEapp®, for internal communications; theIRapp®, for public companies; theCOMMSapp™, for external communications; and theCONFERENCEapp™, for investor, analyst and other conference and event communications. Prior to APPrise Mobile, Jeff served as the CEO of KCSA Strategic Communications in New York City.
Jeff is a licensed attorney and before joining KCSA practiced securities and bankruptcy law in New York City. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and a law degree from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. You can follow and connect with Jeff on Twitter, @jcorbinIR. |