People analytics aren’t a trend. They’re becoming a necessity as companies grow and thrive in the market.

Why do you need them? Ian Cook, VP of People Analytics at Visier, shares insights around the importance of tracking people data and some basics you can start with.

1. The first type of people analytics intelligence you need to access is what we call capacity. It focuses on understanding what do you need to do to keep your business staffed at the right level? The core input to this is called headcount. The number of people who are working for you on a given day. That headcount number tells you, I have got this many people to serve my customers, run my logistics, make my product, and check my accounts receivable. But then there's ins and outs, factors that adjust that headcount. When we're looking at this notion of capacity, the people I have to animate my business, we recommend you start looking at information about leaves, often called resignation. It's a word that's been in the market a lot. How long do people stay? Are there certain people that exit faster than others? Are there certain roles or locations from which people leave more frequently? Is there a profile? Keeping a detailed eye on the people performing that work for your business and then understanding that it means you're prepared to maintain people capacity helps you identify the drivers for that flow so that you can respond as you need to.
2. Another thing to keep in mind is how many people are starting in my business? There's this really core foundational understanding similar to what you would do with cash flow. You want to understand their flow of experience, their flow of relationship capacity. Finding out if you’re constantly replacing junior employees, or are you adding depth and building experience and being able to grow my business up so that more and more people can take on more and more responsibility? How is the flow of people into and out of my business helping me maintain a stable and productive team? Running a small to medium-sized business can actually be harder than running a big one. There's less money overall. So it means there's less opportunity for waste. A bad decision can be a more significant percentage of the business. It's not just how much does everybody get paid? It's not just that cost piece. It's actually, how does the movement of people, how does the adjustment of people, affect my costs? So capacity and cost to the foundations, having this type of intelligence automatically at your fingertips is transformational in helping you run the business from here.

For more in-depth information on this topic, check out the video below.