The CHRO has a stronger voice than ever before given that the most pressing organisational challenges are now people centric. With an eye on the year ahead, Activ8 Intelligence demonstrates how offering an analytics solution to your customers is key in responding to the CHRO’s strategic business priorities.
While for some CHROs, the focus is on remote and hybrid working, for others it is on recruitment and retention in a competitive post-pandemic talent market. In the UK, data from the ONS shows that that number of people working from home is declining, job vacancies are increasing, unemployment is falling. In a labour market of peaks and troughs, where should the CHRO’s focus be in 2022 and how can analytics support them?
The top five challenges for CHROs in 2022
- HR alignment to business goals. Boards want to spend more time on talent. In PwC’s 2021 Corporate Directors Survey, respondents ranked talent management at the top of the list for the first time: “COVID-19 and the evolution of the workplace have created a need to manage workforces in a new way, demanding more of boards’ time”, says the report. The pandemic put HR in the spotlight, now the CHRO needs to rise to the challenge beyond managing the immediate crises of COVID-19. One way that the CHRO can do this is to present powerful, trustworthy insight from data, using analytics to enlighten and inform the board conversation at the strategic level.
- Employee experience. “The employee experience is trickier than you think!” says HR thought leader, Josh Bersin. It is – because each employee lives a different experience from their first encounter with recruitment to becoming part of an alumni community. By mapping and managing the employee end-to-end experience, organisations can reduce turnover, increase productivity, lower absence and increase employee engagement. The role of analytics here is central – enabling the CHRO to monitor trends over time, measuring the success of HR investments and being alerted to any anomalies in the data relating to the employee lifecycle.
- Attracting – but more importantly retaining – talent. Unemployment in the UK continues to fall and job vacancies are at a record high (1,219,000 vacancies September to November 2021). Other major economies including the USA and Australia report similar trends. In this environment it’s more critical than ever to retain talent, and for the HR team to be able to spot the early danger signs of losing high performing employees. The true cost of losing an employee includes not only recruitment costs but training costs and time, lost productivity and knock-on effects on culture and engagement. Analytics has a role to play in ensuring the CHRO has their finger on the pulse when it comes to reward, absence, training, performance and the employee value proposition.
- Workforce planning. The skills that organisations need and how and where they access them is rapidly changing. If your organisation is planning to source in-demand skills such as UX, AI and cybersecurity, how will you do it? Recruit, grow your own, or outsource? In order to be future proofed from a talent point of view, the CHRO needs a comprehensive view of the current skills mix and a clear line of sight to potential future skills gaps. Using analytics, the CHRO can combine data on skills, location, promotion, succession, recruitment and future talent demands to guide effective data-led workforce planning.
- Nurturing organisational culture. Certain aspects of culture are experiencing attrition and instability as a result of hybrid and remote working models prevalent in some sectors. In the UK, 67% of employees feel remote working has changed company culture forever. Concerns about remote and hybrid work include discrimination, lack of progression and increased stress levels. Analytics plays a powerful role in alerting the CHRO to changes and anomalies in working patterns, absences, recruitment and promotion. Once identified, data-led action plans can be put in place to address threats that are detrimental to company culture.
The business case for offering an analytics solution
The challenges facing CHROs are varied and at Activ8 Intelligence, we believe that HR analytics has the key to many of the answers. By offering relevant, timely and trustworthy data-led insights, the CHRO has the power to drive the talent agenda.
To find out how we help embed data-driven HR analytics solutions into our partners’ offerings, please get in touch to request a demo of our HR analytics platform.
