There are many new tools that have launched to help HR leaders with their work. However, many still turn to spreadsheets for talent planning and forecasting.

Spreadsheets remain in use within most organisations and it’s easy to understand why. They are virtually cost free; a flexible ad hoc reporting tool and most people have a basic understanding of how to use them.

HR leaders are expected to, at a drop of a hat:

1. Accurately forecast business demand and goals with resource needs.
2. Assess current workforce capabilities and identify skill gaps, critical roles, and top talent.
3. Optimise workforce mix (full time, part time, gig), headcount capacity, and capability plans.
4. Evaluate ROI of training costs vs. new-hire strategies and identify and design the most suitable strategy.
5. Seamlessly connect financial HC projections with HR talent acquisition and business plans.
6. Align the top-down plan to bottom-up workforce plan across all business groups.
7. Determine strategic locations and integrate workplace services and location plans with workforce plans.
8. Connect strategic workforce plans with operational plans (annually, quarterly, monthly, daily).
9. Predict attrition, identify risk areas, and analyse the impact on the business.

New technologies are rapidly changing the skills needed for the future of the organisation. In order to win in the long term, companies need to plan ahead and optimise their workforce plans for rapidly changing market conditions.

From talent acquisition, learning, workforce planning and productivity to performance management, HR needs to leverage the landscape of workforce technology solutions across the entire employee life cycle. Analytics, virtual working technology, and upgraded learning platforms are among the top priorities for HR. HR leaders are well positioned to bring data-driven insights to talent decisions.

Going forward, organisations can no longer put off people analytics implementation. While there are moves in the right direction, there is more work to be done.

Five areas should HR leaders focus on in the coming year

1. Embrace a mindset shift from intuition to data-driven: Intuition, past-experience, and a general gut feeling have played a major role in organisation-wide policies. With people analytics, HR and leaders can make informed decisions with more confidence. Enabling more frequent check-ins between employees and managers will help businesses detect and address any problems early on.

2. Redefine performance management: With many employees working remotely, gathering and analysing performance information requires a multi-channel digital communications approach with real-time performance feedback.

3. Use real-time data to harness workforce potential: Insights into what work is being done and how people are doing it can help organisations craft new ways of working that bring out the latent potential in every employee.

4. Train HR teams in analytics, strategy, and value generation: By using automated reports, HR leaders can take a proactive approach to addressing issues, reducing mistakes, and improving overall efficiency.

5. Ensure that there is a culture of continuous listening: Transparent communication, continuous listening and getting organisation-wide buy-in are a few ways to reap the benefits from your people analytics investment. Continuous listening could be as simple as conducting pulse surveys or employee lifecycle surveys.

Insights gained internally through data analytics and employee feedback can be combined with observations outside the business for additional inspiration and understanding of external trends.

For further information, including details on the latest trends for HR leaders, download our workforce trends whitepaper