The Importance of Gathering and Using Employee Data
Every business has a few types of fundamental resources on which it is built and runs every day. Naturally, the firm’s employees would have to be included among the most important of its resources. Workers on all levels and in every department contribute to the outcomes of the entire business. Thus, companies need to understand their employees to be able to predict and improve their future results. In order to do it, data-driven businesses gather employee data for future reference and analysis. The importance and utility of this practice are the main topics of this article.
The Many Types of Employee Data
Employee data can have many categories, depending on what exactly we take this concept to mean. The working definition of employee data could specify it as the information that the employing organization gathers about its employees.
This data can be very basic demographic and contact information, as well as some job-related facts. The basis of it would be the following data points.
- Age.
- Sex.
- Place of residence.
- E-mail, telephone number, and other contact information.
- Job title.
- Education.
- Years of experience in the relevant field and the time of employment in the firm.
- Current salary.
However, there are good reasons to expand the knowledge of the employees by collecting more in-depth data. This could include data on skills, hobbies, and interests, reasons for applying for the job, and, finally, reasons for leaving when the employee chooses so.
This would form another category of employee data that could lead to a different kind of HR intelligence. Both groups of information are important and supplement each other.
Another way to broaden the concept of employee data is by adding information from third-party sources. Thus, this data would include not only what the company knows about the person from its internal data collection but also what has previously been known about them. An example of this could be previous salaries in other positions which would allow drawing insights about the changes in the employee’s employment conditions, specifically, the financial side of them.
We could also add the data generated by the employees themselves to this category. For example, public reviews of the previous employer as well as all the data in the posted job applications would thus be considered employee data. This type of information would inform about the employees’ attitudes toward themselves as well as previously encountered employment conditions.
Importance and Benefits
Gathering and utilizing employee data has many potential advantages for the employer. Naturally, a lot of information is needed simply to be able to contact the employee and manage human resources. However, even in-depth data on the workforce is incredibly useful for improving business results.
Firstly, understanding your employees better will increase the rates of talent retention. You want to have the best workforce staying with your company for a long time and helping you build its success. By knowing what they like and dislike at home and at work you can improve the working conditions.
Secondly, analyzing the data on when and why particular kinds of employees leave will let you prepare for the future. You will know when some positions are likely to become vacant and can work on filling them in advance.
Additionally, employee data helps to compete for the best talent in the labor market. As part of HR intelligence, such data will help you improve your hiring practices and pitch your offers in a more attractive manner than the competitors. This can lead to efficiently hiring the best fit for your open positions and advancing your business goals in the face of competition.
Furthermore, employee data can help analyze your industry. By knowing the trends in the labor market, you will have a deeper understanding of the current state of the general market conditions. This can lead to better business strategies and, once again, help you beat the competitors, this time, in selling your products.
Finally, employee data is a valuable asset that can be sold when depersonalized. This kind of data can provide important insights to investors. Thus, hedge funds and other financial firms are always on the lookout for it. Therefore, even employee data that is no longer useful to you can be monetized.
All this adds up to the great importance and value of employee data. Make sure to collect as much of it as possible while following strict legal and ethical regulations of data collection. Data collected without overstepping any boundaries will still be more than enough to create an outstanding workplace atmosphere and advance your business goals. Thus, it will benefit not only you but your employees as well.
At the end of the day, employee data is an important addition to the types of information utilized by data-driven organizations. There is no limit to what it can do in combination with other kinds of alternative data.
