Business Intelligence is a revolutionary tool for businesses. BI gives organizations the ability to look deeper into their data, connecting information that was once disparate. Obvious areas to apply Business Intelligence include accounting, operations, even marketing. The Human Resources department has a lot to gain from BI, too, and in the long run applying BI to HR can amount to huge cost savings.
Hiring the Right Person the First Time
It costs a lot to hire someone. It costs more to have to hire for the same position over and over because people just aren’t working out. Sometimes it’s bad luck, but it could also be that you’re not finding the right candidates. First, you have to know what kind of person you’re looking for. Answering the question, “what makes a great employee at my company?” is an essential question for an HR department. Looking at data about who has been most successful in the past is a great place to start.
Once you’ve refined this, it’s much easier to use Business Intelligence to also craft the right behavioral-centric questions. These types of questions are great for understanding how a candidate will handle working on a team, conflict, problem-solving, time management, and more so you can get down to what really motivates them.
Engagement and Performance
A recent study by the New York Times reported 45% of Americans work from home at least part of the time. With nearly half of the workforce disconnected from the main office for some or all of their work week, it’s important to make sure engagement stays high. Business Intelligence is able to provide numbers on how engaged employees are and creates opportunities to improve engagement. Cultivating a productive workforce is one of the biggest challenges an HR professional faces. With numbers to back up engagement and performance over time, it’s easier to find individual and team solutions for those who need it.
Even if your workforce isn’t remote, understanding your workforce better than ever will help grow and increase scope of your talent management processes. Through BI you’ll
Learning and Development
Learning and developing your workforce is so important, but it can also be quite the undertaking logistically. Business Intelligence can help an HR leader manage the development and training of their workforce from top to bottom. BI allows for deeper insights into competency gaps by person or by job and skill gaps by person or by group. Once you know what each person, job, and group needs, BI helps to manage training attendance, resource use, costs, and success rate. BI opens up avenues for learning and development to be more consistent for employees and can measure their satisfaction after the fact, as well.
Business Intelligence can save an HR department dollars by making sure the right person is hired the first time, ensuring engagement and performance stay high, and by identifying and ratifying weaknesses and gaps in skill and ability. These three areas are essential drivers for any business and BI ensures HR leaders have everything they need to not only save dollars, but to strengthen their team.
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