In the intensely competitive modern market, it has become increasingly essential to maintain a well-functioning, productive team. But how can you tell whether or not your team is functioning to the best of its ability? Workforce intelligence is key.
It is all about understanding your team’s strengths, weaknesses, and dynamics. When you can gather information about your team members, study it, and use it to make informed choices about how to get work done better, more cost-effectively, and with more efficiency, you have harnessed the power of workforce intelligence.
What is workforce intelligence?
Workforce intelligence is the practice of gathering and analyzing team data on performance, skills, and behavior. It involves putting your team under the microscope to gain a clear understanding of what’s working and what’s not.
It’s about finding clever ways to use data to make decisions that benefit your business. Workforce intelligence is instrumental in using data to look for patterns and trends that reveal how people in your teamwork.
With over 55% of HR managers struggling to reduce employee turnover, meet recruiting targets, and adequately fill skill gaps, workforce intelligence is now more important than ever.
Image sourced from resources.gloat.com
Let’s explore its importance in the workplace in more detail.
Provides workforce data insights for informed decision-making
One of the key benefits of workforce intelligence is that it provides you with actionable insights that can help you make informed decisions. By analyzing your team’s performance data, you can identify areas where you need to make changes or improvements.
Maybe they are having trouble with a particular task and you can provide the missing link. Or maybe it turns out that they need additional resources to get the job done properly. Either way, by noticing the symptoms ahead of time, you can take proactive measures to nip the problem in the bud.
Identifies behaviors and trends that impact work productivity
What else can workforce intelligence do to smooth conflicts and team harmony? Using data, you can identify what’s slowing down your team by rooting out behavioral or performance trends. Studying data on your team’s work habits reveals patterns that might hold them back.
Perhaps recording a dip in employee productivity in the afternoon may tip you off that your team could use a pick-me-up. You can try introducing short breaks in the afternoon or providing snacks to keep the troops fed and ready.
Determines factors influencing employee satisfaction
Workforce intelligence is also crucial in helping you gain insights into what variables hold the key to employee happiness. What do each of your team members like (or dislike) about their roles that, if changed, would boost their level of satisfaction?
You might find out your team really values flexibility and autonomy, and that could spark an idea on how to give them more control over work scheduling or independent projects.
This creates an open conversation between you and your team that illustrates that you value their input – and that you actually try to act upon it if possible – which goes a long way in creating a happy and productive work culture.
Analyzes workforce data for recruitment optimization
Lastly, workforce intelligence can guide your recruitment by comparing the data you collect about your existing team’s skills and performance to inform who you want to bring in next.
When you are hiring new employees for your team, you can leverage workforce intelligence to improve the recruitment process.
Business and HR tools such as time tracking, project management, and employee feedback software will arm you with real-time analytics and multidimensional insights. These tools will allow you to see your team from every conceivable angle and understand their strengths and weaknesses, which can inform your recruitment goals and targets.
By being more specific about what you want in the talent marketplace, you’ll have a better shot at finding a good match for your work culture.
How to leverage workforce intelligence for team harmony
Now that we’ve covered what workforce intelligence is and how it can benefit your business, let’s dive into some practical ways you can use it to foster team harmony.
Address skill gaps by providing targeted training
One way to use workforce intelligence is to identify skill gaps within your team and provide targeted training to address them. By analyzing data about your team’s performance and expertise, you can pinpoint areas where additional training might be needed.
If you notice that certain team members are consistently underperforming, you can use this valuable insight to provide targeted coaching or training in sales techniques.
Analyze team dynamics and collaboration methods
One of the first steps in leveraging workforce intelligence is understanding how your team works together. Data about how your employees communicate and collaborate in the workplace can help you identify areas of friction and inefficiency.
The results might show that one person is making too many comments in discussion, while another never speaks up at all. Based on this information, you can do everything you can to make sure that no one gets talked over, and everyone is heard.
Perhaps you start a round-robin structure for discussion, and/or everyone is mandated to talk to at least one other person one-on-one.
Monitor workload distribution and stress levels
82% of employees said that it’s important for their employer to see them as more than just an employee.
Image created by the author – statistic sourced from Gartner
Workforce intelligence can help you achieve this by monitoring workload distribution and stress levels within your team. You can track data about how much work each individual is doing and how they’re handling it. This can help you offer proactive support to prevent burnout.
To achieve this, the best thing to do is to use a combination of approaches. Look into professional services automation software solutions to gain insights into how much time different projects are taking up and signs of long hours or over-working. These solutions can also automate complex processes, so you can not only spot difficulties but also alleviate them.
For a more qualitative approach, don’t underestimate the importance of employee feedback and suggestions. These can often indicate sources of stress and unfair workloads that would otherwise be overlooked, such as balancing childcare obligations or the need for new training.
Utilize workforce data for feedback and performance reviews
Of course, workforce intelligence can help with your performance reviews and giving people feedback. With the available data on each team member’s strengths, weaknesses, and achievements, you can provide more detailed and targeted feedback and reviews.
Through data about how each team member performed, you can find out what they are good at and what you need to do to help them develop further, allowing you to give more meaningful feedback to your staff and individual development plans that are more appropriate for each employee.
Spot opportunities for improvement within the current workflow
Analyzing your team’s current workflow and using workload management software can highlight where productivity could be improved. Perhaps you’re noticing that certain tasks are being handled more slowly than needed or that certain steps in the process are creating bottlenecks that are slowing things down.
With that information, you can work with your team to eliminate inefficiencies, improve operations – and help to increase productivity by making sure that everyone is working as efficiently as they can.
Formulate team communication and alignment tactics
Workforce intelligence can also help you formulate effective team communication and alignment tactics. Businesses prioritizing employee communication and collaboration in the workplace can reduce turnover rates by up to 50%.
Image created by author – statistic sourced from zippia.com
By understanding how your team communicates and collaborates, you can identify the best ways to keep everyone on the same page and working towards the same goals.
This is crucial in the retail and sales setting, where communication often makes the difference between a good and bad experience. Your team members can go the extra mile for your customers when everyone knows what they’re doing and has the most up-to-date information.
One way to achieve this is through retail business management and accounting software, which allows you to connect your entire business to one central system. With inventory, sales, CRM, and order processing data all in one place, you can connect teams, empower employees to make effective decisions, and foster new, collaborative solutions as everyone can access the big picture.
Implement cross-functional training and development
Lastly, through workforce intelligence tools and employee training software with analytics capabilities, you can pinpoint the potential for cross-functional development. Through insight into your team’s skill sets and strengths, cross-training can become an option.
For instance, your organization might employ a marketer who’s interested in data analysis. With minimal training, you could help them cross over to data science, gaining new skills alongside more diverse career prospects for the organization.
Promote diversity by ensuring representation and inclusivity
Workforce intelligence can also allow you to promote diversity and inclusion: by looking at the makeup of your existing workers and groups of workers, you can use these insights to inform changes in recruitment and retention that promote diversity.
Wrapping up
Workforce intelligence is one way to guarantee that your team works together to the best of their ability and the benefit of your bottom line.
Drawing upon data about power dynamics, how well they’re working, what they’re doing, what their skills and backgrounds are, even how their work relates to your office design, you can marshal resources toward a productive and harmonious workplace and business.
From tweaking your recruitment process to providing appropriately targeted training and development, to aiding with issues such as diversity and inclusion, workforce intelligence can help you gain a competitive advantage.
So why not give it a try? With the right tools and strategies in place, you can create a more harmonious, productive, and successful team.
