5 New Workforce Analytics Surfaced by Headcount365
Table of Contents
Workforce analytics 101 - Framing the conversation
Workforce analytics expose the truth of headcount decisions. Headcount365 tracks data points unavailable in traditional systems.
The jobs of workforce analytics
Workforce analytics are a tool to help business solve problems. I’m the first one to experiment with new metrics, but it’s importance is directly correlated to the problems it’s able to solve.
The source of truth for action. What actually happened in a given set of time. How many people did we hire? How many quit? How many backfills? Internal Transfers?
An explanation of why these results happened. Why didn't we hire to plan? Why did we over hire? Why did so many people quit?
Forecast the future. Will we hire the rest of the plan on time? On budget? How many more backfills/attrition is left?
Recommend actions to take. Should we use an agency? Should we give retention bonuses? When should we hire backfills?
Where workforce analytics come from
Every company has it’s own vibe, and while the math of workforce analytics are consistent from company to company, the context of their application is not.
Company Archetype A mix of executive prescident mixed with market perception— this is the environment where workforce analytics happen. Company stage, performance, scaling speed, marketing position, brand, reputation and philosophy provide context for workforce analytics. A rule of thumb in one company might be an exception in another.
HR & People Teams The structure of org design, management ratios, compensation & leveling framework influence the jobs of different workforce analytics as they create the “normal” in every organization. A certain attrition expectation in one company might raise red flags in another.
Recruiting & Talent Recruiting productivity, capacity vs demand, and the ability to create an expectation that matches reality.
Finance Headcount unlocks with sales, total headcount budget, revenue per employee, cost of employment.
Hiring Managers & Budget Owners Headcount requests, backfills, splits, changes, internal transfers, terminations. Everything the business needs from it’s people is requested by the
Applying workforce analytics to the business
Past: Historical data is a workforce performance review. Understanding your history helps you build the narrative for the future.
Present: Real-time trending of actuals is the catalyst for action if expectations are not where they need to be, or confidence in the process when things get busy.
Future: The million dollar question— what happens in the future? Workforce analytics are the data support when forecasting the future.
New workforce analytics (And how HC365 makes them possible)
headcount365 houses all of the data from every user and system in one data lake and can perform a unified analysis without omitting the context, history, or impact that’s lost in spreadsheets. This adds new workforce analytics to businesses that solve real problems.
Plan Change Rate
What is the Plan Change Rate:
Measures the percentage of headcount plans that shift after approval.
What problem does the Plan Change Rate solve?
Workforce planning accuracy
How to apply the plan Change Rate
Context - There are many reasons why plans change. Some of them are one off (Covid) and others are more predictabile (New sales, lost deals etc)
History - YoY tracking of plan change rate helps workforce planners draw the regression line through the variance, and make recommendations to budget & total positions for future forecasts.
Impact- Measuring the impact of plan variance helps justify investments in preventing it. For example, if sales attrition trends up after a certain tenure, its important to build predictive backfills into next year’s recruiting workload.
What makes the Plan Change Rate unique to headcount365:
headcount365 stores all changes, down to the individual requisition, with individual tags for workforce planners to key from, and an AI summary of all activity so executives and other non-technical leaders can understand whats happening. We store this data year over year, and pre-identify trends from the source, impact & reason for change.
Hiring Manager Risk Index
What is Hiring Manager Risk Index?
Ever have a hiring manager who changes every headcount to a director level? Or goes over band every offer? This creates risk to the business, and the hiring manager risk index scores manager behavior by identifying actions that change headcount away from the standards built by HR & Finance.
What problem does the Hiring Manager Risk Index solve?
Distributes accountability for the cultural impact to the root cause of behavior. Increased attrition? Bad reviews online? Low offer to accept rate? This previously subjective metric, helps quantify the impact of bad actors on headcount metrics.
How to apply the Hiring Manager Risk Index
Context - Why are hiring managers making changes to the plan? Who approved them? What stage of the process did they make this change?
History - Hiring managers who use the urgency of the offer process to increase title or compensation are misusing the pressure of results to impact the culture.
Impact- Changing compensation or title has a direct impact on the budget & total roles available to hire, but it also has longer term impacts to retention & company perception
What makes theHiring Manager Risk Index unique to headcount365
By unifying the activity from of each requisition from inception, to recruiting, into employment, through termination, the actions can be tied together to develop a risk index over time. In the climate/weather analogy, analyzing this behavior over time helps paint a realistic picture of hiring manager’s impact on culture.
Recruiter Capacity vs Demand Actuals
What is Recruiting Capacity vs Demand Actuals?
Compare predicted vs actual recruiting production as a function of change in demand. If a recruiting team can hire 100 people a year, but the business asks for those 100 people in the first 3 months this reporting will help explain this variance.
What problem does Recruiting Capacity vs Demand Actuals solve?
Predictability of hiring (new OPEX + Revenue as well). It also ensures the recruiting team is staffed for future demand, and the business has intelligence & control over changes that impact recruiting production. (Read more about headcount365’s Recruiting Capacity Management here)
How to apply Recruiting Capacity vs Demand Actuals
Context - Changes impact recruiting capacity (among other things). Recruiting capacity is impacted by attrition, vacations/leave, ramp time of new hires and more. Tracking these inputs help provide context for the following year. A new recruiting team that’s scaling won’t face the same issues when fully staffed the following year.
History - Trends in recruiting capacity as a function of business cycles, new sales, attrition or plan change rate will help workforce planners draw the regression line through requisite recruiting capacity.
Impact- Measuring the cost of recruiting capacity vs the ROI of predictable hiring will help inform investments in the recruiting team. For example, if demand for new sellers is front loaded to Q1 for a recruiter who doesn’t have capacity, the lost revenue from late starts may fund an additional recruiter.
What makes the Recruiting Capacity vs Demand Actuals unique to headcount365
Headcount365 not only tracks planned vs actual recruiting capacity, it does the same with demand aggregating all context, history and impact into reporting for Workforce planners. It combines this intelligence with other predictive metrics like time to fill, budget impact and revenue impact so workforce planners can build a recruiting team that efficiently meets demand.
Headcount Variance by Reason
What is Headcount Variance by Reason
Categorization of headcount variance by metrics by input source and reason.
What problem does Headcount Variance by Reason solve?
Improved workforce planning accuracy. Identify the drivers of change, and develop systems to prevent or account for them in future workforce plans
How to apply Headcount Variance by Reason
Context - Tracking the types of changes and the reasons why they occur. Adding headcount because of a new sale is different than adding headcount due to missing targets. (not getting enough in the first place) Opportunistic changes (increasing salary at the offer stage) have different implications than planned changes (raising comp for all in a given band)
History - Trends in variance help drive accountability as they identify the way different stakeholders interact with the workforce plan.
Impact- Changes impact budget, performance, recruiting capacity, company culture and can be very dangerous if left unchecked.
What makes the Headcount Variance by Reason unique to headcount365
headcount365 underlying data structure is built to capture and categorize changes by variance reason. The data is then enriched with history & impact data to help predict whether these changes will happen again in future workforce plans (Read more about headcount365’s variance tracking here)
Culture Impact Tracking
What is Culture Impact Tracking:
A measure of headcount’s impact metrics tied to a company's cultural health. For example, two employees with the same job title & responsibilities making different salaries will impact NPS, public brand, tenure & future offer accept rates?
What problem does Culture Impact Tracking solve?
Leading indicator for attrition, recruiting production, and compensation adjustments. This is a preventative metric that provides context to short term results. For example, meeting hiring demand by inflating compensation works to get people in the door, but is likely to impact future work
How to apply Culture Impact Tracking
Context - Borrowing against the culture to solve a near term outcome is a normal part of business, but is painful when abused. Tracking these types of changes help manage the “cultural debt” to manage the expectations about repeatable outcomes.
History - Identifying repeat offenders helps correct actions.
Impact- Correlating risk actions to drops in key cultural impact statistics helps drive corrective action.
What makes the Culture Impact Tracking unique to headcount365
Headcount365 is built after personally experiencing the impact of cultural issues at Uber. (They fired the CEO). The solution for this preventable problem is built into the fabric of headcount365, with a Risk report that captures all changes, and an AI agent that draws attention to the issues.