Workforce Analytics and Planning Are Key, According to Visier's 2013 Survey

Visier, the innovation leader in workforce analytics, released on Thursday a 2013 Survey of Employers: “The State of Workforce Analytics and Planning: Practices, Preferences & Plans,” indicating that workforce analytics and workforce planning remain critical topics in many organizations. There is a clearly recognized need to further invest in and improve the use of historical and predictive data to assist the HR function to move to a point where decisions and guidance on people, who represent the most critical asset in the organization, are made less based on intuition and more on statistically sound facts.

Visier commissioned Fisher Vista (HRmarketer) to survey over 400 U.S.-based employers regarding their workforce analytics and planning practices, preferences and future plans. The 2013 Survey of Employers continues the exploration of which areas of the workforce domain North American companies are seeking to measure and understand the most. In addition, this year’s survey addresses the topic of workforce planning. With workforce analytics and planning being complementary processes in the pursuit of a more optimized workforce, the relationship of these two areas provides a helpful insight.

Highlights from the 2013 Survey Results include:

More than 37% of companies do not have a system in place to manage and report metrics on their workforce.
Despite their inherent shortcomings and pitfalls, more than a third of respondents still use spreadsheets to manage and report workforce metrics.
Purpose-built workforce analytics solutions had 85% satisfaction rates, while spreadsheets, similar to the 2012 survey findings, had the highest reported levels of dissatisfaction with 59% reporting being dissatisfied.
31% continue to say they would benefit from easier-to-use analytics tools; 31% felt they would benefit from an improved ability to interpret and present workforce data, as compared to 23% in 2012.
Over 52% of participants will increase their investment in workforce analytics within next 12 months, as compared to 36% in 2012.

There is clear evidence that when integrated with business analytics, workforce analytics improve an organization’s human capital performance and increase its ROI. Analytics is the critical factor that allows organizations to make decisions that are responsive and ready to meet the ever-increasing challenges in the marketplace.

“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.”

Read the complete 2013 Survey of Employers: “The State of Workforce Analytics and Planning: Practices, Preferences & Plans.”