Workforce analytics: A 3-minute explainer

What does every organization want? Better business outcomes: higher profits, lower turnover, better productivity and efficiency.

The key to moving the needle on these crucial metrics is simple: your workforce. To set up your organization to thrive, you need to harness the power of your workforce. 

And to tap into your employees, you need workforce analytics. 

What is workforce analytics?

Workforce analytics is the process of tracking and analyzing key employee metrics to make fact-based, data-driven decisions to improve performance and engagement. 

People analytics are no longer under the sole purview of HR teams. Now, this crucial data is used to drive better business outcomes across organizations—everything from sales and CX to operational efficiency, compliance and productivity. 

When an organization uses the data it collects about its workforce to benefit everyone—individual workers, teams and groups, the organization and society as a whole—it creates shared value,” explains Deloitte in its 2024 Global Human Capital Trends report. “The value created at each level can flow between them, reinforcing and amplifying the value created at other levels.” 

Tracking workforce analytics allows organizations to tap into workforce insights, i.e., the stories your data tells: How engaged is your workforce? How reachable are your teams in uncertain times? How confident are your employees in executing current or future programs and strategies? These aren’t questions to answer with your gut. These are questions that can—and should—be answered with data. 

Why is workforce analytics so important?

“In my experience, organizations that use workforce analytics have the most engaged workforces, and they thrive in tough conditions,” explains Tim Ringo, co-author of Calculating Success: How the New Workplace Analytics Will Revitalize Your Organization, in a dated but still very relevant article for HBR: 

“When faced with a major investment decision, how many organizations would bet their success on a gut feeling? How many organizations would rely mainly on intuition when taking a new product to market? Not many. Yet, when it comes to the workforce—one of a company’s most expensive and valuable assets—too many executives rely on hunches, making decisions without making use of relevant data.”

In other words, workforce analytics gives organizations the data and insights to stay agile and responsive and set employees up for success.

Workforce analytics for frontline organizations

While harvesting people analytics is crucial for any workforce, it becomes especially valuable for frontline organizations with massive employee bases across the country—or the world. Collecting and analyzing workforce data is like scaling up your gut. It allows you to make informed decisions to boost your teams’ efficiency and operational agility, no matter the size. 

Capturing these insights might seem challenging, but you can start small. Here’s a list of the top employee metrics every organization should track. (Psst…the right frontline employee learning and enablement platform can make harvesting and analyzing this data a breeze!)