Why Use Real Time Data in HR

As the landscape of work continues to evolve, companies are realizing the importance of real time data and insights to stay ahead of the curve. HR departments are no exception. For HR teams accustomed to having scheduled periods of feedback through planned surveys, it can be overwhelming to suddenly have real time and continuous insights about the workforce. 

While difficult, moving from reactive HR planning to proactive HR management can lead to significant improvements in the employee experience. By leveraging real time people insights, HR can gain a more complete understanding of their employees and make informed decisions about employee engagement, retention, and morale. 

Importance of Real Time Data

Traditionally, HR departments have relied on quarterly or yearly surveys to gather data on employee engagement and experience. However, waiting several months for feedback can be detrimental to the company's success. In a fast-paced business environment, waiting for feedback can hinder progress, and leave employees feeling unheard. In the worst case, valued employees will quit before the HR team even realizes there is a problem to address.

Real time data, on the other hand, provides immediate insights into the current state of employee engagement and experience. By leveraging real time people insights, HR can identify areas where employees are thriving and areas that need improvement. These insights can then be used to make informed decisions that improve employee morale, retention, and overall experience.

Types of Real Time People Insights

There are several types of people insights HR departments can see in real time to optimize employee experience and satisfaction. Here are a few examples:

Company Morale Trends

TruPulse software provides automatic and continuous reporting on employee morale. What’s even better, the data can be segmented by demographic, location, department or any other filtering group a company may be interested in tracking. By seeing how morale changes over time, HR leaders can always have their fingers on the pulse of the employee experience.

Trending Workplace Topics

What is more important to HR leaders than what is on employees minds today! TruPulse keeps a running list of trending workplace topics so you can see when a topic starts to trend and then peaks. By adding in positive vs negative sentiment analysis and emotional breakdowns of topics, you can always know what is important to the workforce without surveying employees. Don’t be caught off guard by issues that spring up out of nowhere, always keep an eye on emerging trending workplace topics.

Cultural Analysis

Companies are often judged by investors, customers and their employees on the cultural values they espouse. HR departments can get real time alerts on cultural issues like harassment, toxicity, profanity and diversity and inclusion to see if they are on track with living their cultural goals or not. By tracking cultural issues in real time, HR leaders will always know when additional training is needed or when the training they are providing is helping strengthen a positive workplace culture.

Benefits of Real Time Data 

Leveraging real time people insights can provide several benefits for HR departments and the company as a whole. 

Proactive Leadership - The biggest advantage to real time data is that HR teams can make proactive changes as they see insights emerge. Solving small problems that are developing is always easier than solving an issue once it has exploded into the general workforce. Real time data gives HR leaders the information they need without having to guess what people are thinking.

More Preparation Time - With real time data, HR can prepare for issues before they become serious. HR teams that see real time data have plenty of time as issues begin to unfold to get programs in development and management support built for them before they grow into a bigger problem that affects engagement, retention and productivity. Solving a problem that has become a crisis is more difficult as the time to develop options, choose strategies and get approvals becomes compressed leading to poor results.

More Credibility - One of the biggest benefits to using real time data is that it provides not only up to the minute employee insights on what people are thinking today, but it also allows you to see how issues are trending over time which gives more credibility to your decisions. Anyone can dispute one survey result and ignore the issue saying let’s see if it shows up again in the future. With real time data, you can track much more closely if an issue begins to grow into a more serious issue or if it begins to tail off as an issue. It is far more difficult for someone to dispute a visible trend in the data measured continuously than something that emerges in a periodic yearly survey.

The Conclusion: There Are Few Surprises with Real Time Data

Real time people insights are becoming increasingly important for HR departments looking to optimize employee experience and satisfaction. By leveraging real time data, HR can identify areas for improvement and take action to address them, leading to increased engagement, improved productivity, and a more positive work environment. While traditional surveys may still have their place, HR departments that leverage real time data from AI based People Analytics software will have a significant advantage in creating a workplace that employees are excited to be a part of. If you are just getting your employee insights periodically, surprises are bound to be frequent, but when you are receiving your people analytics data in real time, you will be able to proactively address issues, you will have more time to plan for issues as they emerge, and you will have more credible data as the trends will be easier to show and more difficult to dispute.