By HR Brew Staff
less than 3 min read
Definition:
People analytics is the practice of collecting and analyzing workforce data for the purpose of making better, more informed decisions about talent and organizational strategy.
How can people analytics help HR professionals?
People analytics aims to remove the guesswork from HR decision making. With data on their side, people professionals can more easily identify the challenges facing their current and future workforces—such as lengthy time to hire, high employee turnover, and inequitable pay structures—and make the business case for addressing them to leadership.
Are there any challenges associated with people analytics?
People analytics isn’t a perfect science. Challenges may arise when trying to analyze data of a poor quality, from multiple sources or systems, or without context. Historical data, for example, when used as the basis for decision making without context, can create the conditions for biases and discriminatory practices to proliferate within an organization. There may also be security challenges associated with storing workforce data, as well as ethical concerns related to data derived from employee monitoring or surveillance.
Can you put people analytics into context?
“For at least a decade, HR people [and] people people have been saying, ‘We need people analytics. We need to understand these insights.’ But they have been pigeonholed to…what does the business say that it values, and what is the board saying that it wants to understand about the workforce?” KeyAnna Schmiedl, chief human experience officer at WorkHuman, told HR Brew in February 2025.
