When we talk about people analytics, what it means exactly is bringing data on people to drive specific business decisions. These decisions could be anything – decision to hire, the decision on how to form a team or decision on where to source people.

The concept of people analytics has been here for a long time now. The idea is no radical but the emergence of a pool of data recently has made it much effective to use. New sources of data and the rise of advanced computing allow the companies to do more with data in terms of its workforce.

In an organization, the burden of making justified decisions at a scale right down at the employee level can be extremely challenging. Amid these, HR analytics works as a secret weapon to make things smooth and justified. Also, according to Gartner's Human Resource trends for 2019, 66 percent of HR leaders agreed that building critical skills and competencies for their company was the main priority.

The strength possessed by an organization is equally proportional to its employees' ability to meet its strategic goals. People analytics highlights the capabilities of a company to support employees' growth plan, and can even help them identify emerging skills. Such skills if harnessed can provide an extra edge to the company against competitors.

People analytics works within an organization to bridge the skill gap by directing the authorities from where they are currently to where they strive to be. The technology also monitors how effectively an employee is developing and obtaining new skills.

For any organization, its workforce is its prioritized asset but to manage them cost-effectively may be their biggest challenge today. Optimizing the people's cost through people analytics can be a better way to manage this. The technology works to provide a full organizational view of a company's workforce so that it can know where it stands. It simplifies the people's costs down to the smaller level in order to give an insight into where resources are being spent and how much the organization has to play with.

People analytics gives a better understanding of the ROI that each employee brings to the table. This can enable a fair reward system and give additional training to those who may need it as well.

In an organization, recruiting can be a tough and expensive task and can end up with the wrong candidate being hired. The wrong candidate can have a draining effect on both the organization's time and resources. Here, people analytics can be used to ease out this process. With the use of existing employee data, the tool can help the organization understand the qualities, traits, and skills that comprise a high-performing employee.

Further in the screening process, the tool can help the HR team filter candidates assessing their professional qualifications. It can also help in shortlisting people who made it through the interviews. Applying this mechanism, companies can not only optimize their recruitment process but can also word towards driving better performance across the organization.

The People Analytics exemplifies leveraging of technology to empower employees and reach business goals succumbing to the wave of digital transformation. The implementation of such a tool eliminates the need for data scientists to derive insights from data.

People Analytics also enables the collaboration across the organization by allowing employees to ditch the multiple spreadsheets and instead avail the benefit of a centralized system that holds entire people data in one place.