Workplace analytics provide insights into your enterprise based on meaningful data. For some companies, that’s knowing how often your employees are logged on and communicating. For others, the fluctuating level of employee motivation and satisfaction takes priority.

Your business is unique, and the way you work will have an impact on the data you want to visualize. However, it can be difficult to know exactly what you should be tracking and the best way to do this to ensure team productivity isn’t affected.

This article will define workplace analytics and give business leaders an insight into the truly important metrics to track. As your organization has grown and evolved, how you measure employee experience has likely shifted. However, the exceptional level you hope to achieve shouldn’t have.

What is workplace analytics?

Workplace and workforce analytics are rich, actionable insights into your organization and employees. They can help executives set benchmarks, unearth inefficiencies, and make informed decisions based on data.

Enterprise analytics allow you to study individual departments’ functionality and effectiveness, resulting in a high-level perspective on how efficiently your organization is running.

Source

You may wish to track your literal workplace, from real estate renting costs to meeting room occupancy and space utilization. Whereas a Most Loved Workplace® is dependent on one main KPI—measuring a mutual feeling of love between employees and leadership.

What are the usual types of tracked workplace analytics?

There are four main types of workplace analytics:

1. Descriptive: Describes the current state of things or past events.
2. Predictive: Anticipates future outcomes and values to optimize operations.
3. Prescriptive: Suggests what to do based on predictions and past occurrences.
4. Diagnostic: Shows the underlying cause to help focus your efforts.

The data used to visualize these can accurately indicate the employee experience you currently provide. This begins from the time a prospective hire reads your job posting to the moment they leave. It’s not a singular state or attitude, it fluctuates based on daily factors in and out of work, and it’s directly linked to performance.

The types of workplace analytics enterprise-sized companies track can vary but usually covers the following: 

1. Employee engagement
2. Absence
3. Team collaboration and communication
4. Employee productivity
5. Retention and turnover

Remote and hybrid work organizations will track slightly different analytics due to the setup with online workspaces instead of office space. For example, Microsoft Teams allows you to run different reports to get insights into how employees are using the program. Whereas Microsoft Viva Insights is an add-on to Office 365 enterprise plans that helps track productivity and creates real-time well-being experiences to prevent burnout.

Source

If your enterprise uses Zoom for remote work, the analytics dashboard and graphs can allow you to monitor and analyze key usage data and performance information. This can highlight an organization’s online workplace experience if team members rarely meet face-to-face. So, it’s clear where your company may vary.

The truly important workplace analytics you should be tracking

During the pandemic, the future of work quickly shifted to the present as many companies were forced to adapt their current workplace strategies. Since then, online workflows and automated tools have become a necessity over paper-based processes.

Our focus on mental health and well-being has never been more prevalent. While there are apps specifically designed for these, caring about your employees can come in other forms too.

All the truly important metrics you should be tracking are based on employee experience and a love for your team:

1. Love of workplace
2. Sentiment analysis (how employees are feeling)
3. Employee training
4. Sense of belonging (DEIB)
5. Performance management
6. Career development
7. Employee feedback

Source

Your goal is to provide a workplace where everyone feels that they belong. They’re given the resources to align personal goals with professional development and the company’s mission. Employees know that leadership cares about them as people, not just because they want them to provide a good customer experience.

These particular workplace analytics can help you assess your current level and allow you to make meaningful changes based on real data.

What workplace analytics apps/companies should you be using?

The best workplace analytics software is interactive and aggregates all the data you need into one easy-to-use dashboard. Others on this list are companies that dig into your data manually to give you an overview of certain processes.

These are a few of our favorite analytics platforms and the metrics they track:

1. Most Loved Workplace®: Sentiment analysis pulse surveys that result in certification.
2. WorkRamp: Measures the effectiveness of training programs.
3. Workday: Measures the sense of belonging amongst team members.
4. BambooHR: Creates personalized employee data reports in minutes.
5. Lattice: Connects performance management, employee engagement, and career development in one tool.
6. Workplacely: Collects employee feedback with sentiment analysis.

Most Loved Workplace®

Few organizations can say that they put the love of employees at the heart of their processes and have employees return that love. If you think you’re applicable, becoming a Most Loved Workplace® is a simple, five-step process:

1. Fill in some details and automatically receive a customized white-label Love Of Workplace Index™ Pulse Validation to send directly to employees
2. It only takes 3-4 minutes to complete and is confidential (with no personally-identifying information required)
3. We tabulate all responses (including the written application and additional research) and will consider all certified companies for the annual Top 100 Most Loved Workplace® issue of Newsweek Magazine
4. You become officially certified as a Most Loved Workplace® and can take advantage of additional badging licensing rights for marketing usage for a fee
5. Promote your certification to the world and appear on our site

WorkRamp

WorkRamp’s all-in-one tool helps businesses to design impactful learning programs for employees (and customers). Empowering your team members to learn and develop professionally is a big driver of satisfaction.

WorkRamp lets you measure the effectiveness of training programs, analyze trends, and measure team performance. As well as furthering your employees’ skills, the platform encourages you to deliver ongoing improvements.

You can track specific metrics, such as:

1. Course completion rates
2. Active learners
3. Course ratings
4. Instructor ratings

Then use the feedback to improve engagement levels and the knowledge your employees are gaining from each course.

Workday

DEIB (diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging) practices should be written into your employee experience. Workday focuses on the ‘B’ that measures the sense of belonging team members feel when their workplace accomplishes the three other factors.

The VIBE Index™ (value, inclusion, belonging, equity) takes into account everything from hiring and promotions to find out how your people feel and where you stand. It may bring up some tough questions, but these are critical for accelerating progression and taking action to make meaningful changes.

Here are a few of the elements the tool helps you to offer:

1. Personalize experiences to recognize individuality and make sure employees don’t feel like just a number
2. Nurture a culture of belonging with pulse surveys and feedback
3. Connect employees to mentors, forums, and resources for personal and professional development

Bamboo

Without analytics software, HR professionals can spend roughly 17 hours per week on average creating reports. With Bamboo, it only takes minutes, and the platform is so effective as it allows each user to choose and arrange targeted insight widgets on their homepage.

This means personalized dashboards that will differ for executives, HR, and managers:

1. Recruiters can focus on time-to-hire data
2. Managers can see which employees have been without a pay raise for the longest
3. Executives can keep tabs on every part of the company’s growth

This visual data is compiled into charts and graphs to ensure strategic, impactful decisions at every level.

Lattice

Deep insights into your team are one of the most powerful ways to make confident decisions. Lattice connects performance management, employee engagement, and career development all in one tool.

It gives executives and HR the ability to track behavioral trends and support employees throughout their careers through simple dashboards. You can choose the categories that matter most to your company and see how each employee measures up, such as:

1. Leadership
2. Potential
3. Empathy
4. Engagement

Lattice even includes research-backed suggested actions and real-time tracking to help you drive strong cultural outcomes and improve your employee experience.

Workplacely

Workplacely is a plug-in for larger human resources platforms like SuccessFactors and Workday. This new SaaS tool focuses on workforce analytics like sentiment analysis and thematic analysis (identifying and interpreting patterns in data) to assist companies in becoming a workplace employees love.

The process can be broken down into four easy steps:

1. Import your feedback through a .csv file, textbox, or customizable survey
2. Analyze sentiment and filter through both positive and negative emotions
3. Receive personalized recommendations tailored to your organization/team
4. Choose and share your most positive comments on social media

Final thoughts

Plenty of workplace analytics tools can make measuring these important metrics a much simpler process. However, there’s something you can do personally to make a difference on top of all this. Whatever the size of your organization, consciously place love for your employees at the center of your business model to ensure every decision is based on the best interests of your entire team.

While others are tracking the amount of time team members spend working, dare to be different and focus on the experience you’re providing and the results that come from valued, respected employees.