Human beings are a vital organizational resource, so it is essential to manage them well. Human resource managers who use workforce analytics often see dramatic improvements in employee satisfaction and productivity. However, the 2018 Deloitte Global Human Capital report shows that while most business leaders appreciate these benefits, less than 50% have embraced them wholeheartedly.
This attitude suggests that businesses are yet to understand its value fully. If you’d like to learn more about workforce analytics and workforce intelligence, you can read this article.
What is Workforce Analytics?
Workforce Analytics uses data to inform Human Resource-related decisions and activities. It involves improving performance and engagement by analyzing patterns.
The insights provided by workforce analytics affect hiring and firing trends, security policies, financial compensation, and more. The field measures three primary components, namely:
1. Productivity
Workforce analytics looks at company culture and traditions and the way they shape behaviors and practices among employees.
2. Engagement
Workforce analytics uses variables like employee retention and work-life balance to determine the level of devotion workers have towards their employer.
3. Adaptability
Change is inevitable. Businesses cannot survive unless they prepare their employees for change, training them to adapt to unique situations. An organization with flexible workers can weather any storm. Workforce analytics can analyze the adaptability of a business as a whole.
Importance of Workforce Analytics For Construction
Workforce analytics keeps gaining ground because it offers numerous benefits, including:
1. Hiring Policies
The construction industry attracts workers from all walks of life. However, screening the dozens, hundreds, possibly even thousands of resumes that a construction firm receives takes time.
Nevertheless, with a workforce plan backed by, you can search resumes for specific keywords while eliminating the gender and racial bias that occasionally corrupts hiring policies.
Rather than hiring a slew of workers to review resumes, the proper application can identify suitable candidates for your construction firm within minutes.
2. Retention
You can improve your company’s retention rates. Workforce analytics allows you to look at historical trends to determine why your employee turnover is so high. You can identify the policies that repelled talented candidates and the compensation models that have failed to keep existing employees happy.
If conflicts have become rife on construction sites, you can pinpoint and extinguish the sources before those conflicts escalate.
3. Management
Workforce analytics can analyze the activities of contractors and laborers to find the best methods for improving performance and productivity. It will show HR managers how to set performance benchmarks, identify high achievers, locate employees that require additional training, create schemes and mechanisms for supporting struggling workers, etc.
4. Speed
The information collected will show you the weaknesses in your operations, those elements that keep causing delays in your project. This includes lazy subcontractors, unreliable suppliers, negligent supervisors, etc. Armed with this information, you can expedite the activities on your worksites by either eliminating inefficiencies or automating some of the activities.
5. Money
Workforce analytics saves money. Construction projects are massive. They have dozens of moving pieces. This complexity introduces costly redundancies, which also leaves room for fraud.
With workforce analytics, you can figure out what everyone does and how much each task costs. Additionally, you can determine the profitability of each job. This allows HR managers to eliminate waste by eradicating unnecessary positions and departments.
You can also use this information to shape your bids. Experienced contractors understand that it isn’t enough to win lucrative contracts. You must submit the most profitable proposal for your company.
Many firms collapsed because they won contracts by irrationally underbidding their competition.
6. Predictions
With workforce analytics, you can make accurate predictions that affect current decisions. For instance, you can choose to reward an entry-level employee exorbitantly because workforce analytics has revealed the success they could potentially attract down the line.
You can adjust your compensation model to account for the higher rates of employee turnover your data has predicted for the future. You can introduce specialists to engage your workers in response to the conflicts you have observed on other worksites. Workforce analytics allows you to prepare for the unexpected.
7. Engagement
Human beings are volatile. But if you have the correct data sets, you can learn to manage them. Construction companies tend to thrive when employers make a concerted effort to engage their workers.
You have to show the average subcontractor that their opinions and contributions are valued. Conflicts between employers and employees arise when communication breaks down.
Workforce analytics can improve the relationship between workers and their bosses by identifying grievances and making recommendations for resolving them. Labor relations specialists and HR managers can use factual data to address offenses.
8. Safety
The construction arena is prone to accidents, and for a good reason. The industry requires workers to handle deadly equipment. As a result, contractors are at risk of being electrocuted, crushed, poisoned, and more. Those that survive are just as likely to burden their employers with lawsuits.
Analytics can identify safety concerns before they evolve into potentially fatal accidents. The data you collect pinpoints risky behavior among workers. It can also locate repair and maintenance failures on worksites before highlighting effective preventative measures.
This saves lives in the long run and permits construction projects to proceed smoothly, free of injury-related delays and lawsuits.
Industries that people associate with dangerous work environments have started embracing workforce analytics.
While older firms are fighting to maintain traditional methods of managing their workforce, newcomers have embraced workforce analytics wholeheartedly because it allows them to compete favorably against their larger counterparts.
They appreciate the fact that the right tools and datasets will improve their productivity, enhance efficiency, reduce work-related accidents, encourage engagement between workers and their employees, simplify the hiring process, and so much more.
You can even increase your employee retention rates. The key is to collect and utilize the right data sets.