Workforce Analytics and Planning Trends for 2013

Visier’s report, The State of Workforce Analytics and Planning: Practices, Preferences Plans , has shown that workforce analytics and workforce planning continue to be crucial to the strategies of many organizations. The results of the survey showed a clear need for further investment to improve the use of data to assist various HR functions so that critical decisions are made on statistical facts rather than intuition. Workforce analytics and planning are complementary processes and the survey worked to show how the relationship between the two areas aids in the development of a more optimized workforce.

Highlights from the survey include:

• About 37 percent of companies lack a reporting and managing mechanism for workforce metrics;

• Over one-third of respondents still use spreadsheets for the purpose of managing and reporting workforce metrics;

• Purpose-built analytics solutions were found to have the highest satisfaction rates at 85 percent while spreadsheets recorded the highest levels of dissatisfaction at 59 percent;

• Nearly one-third of respondents say analytics tools would be more beneficial if they were easier to use while the same number (31 percent) said that the tools would be more beneficial with improved interpretive and presentational functions for workforce data; and

• About 52 percent of participants expect to increase investments in workforce analytics in 2013.

“This is the second consecutive year the survey indicates that organizations are aware of the value of purpose-built solutions for workforce analytics as measured in ROI on human capital and in user satisfaction,” according to John Schwarz, Founder and CEO of Visier. “Equally important, the survey shows that enterprises are planning to adopt a more sophisticated tool for workforce planning to assist with the response to insights discovered in the analysis process. For those organizations still trying to make do with spreadsheets, the results are particularly stark and the call to action clear – move to ‘best-practice’ analytic solutions.”