Data analytics unlock strategic value from payroll and HR reporting

The data analytics behind payroll and HR reporting are key to unlocking valuable insights into employee trends and taking action to promote positive change.

With the right tools, HR professionals can collate, analyse, and interpret data on crucial measures. They can look at everything from employee performance, turnover, and absenteeism, to satisfaction, diversity, and inclusion.

Beyond payroll reporting: gain business insights for data-driven decisions

The knowledge gained from HR reporting and analytics can help companies make decisions that drive improvements in employee engagement, retention, and productivity. This allows them to meet their strategic goals and address issues in a timely and reliable way.

Payroll data accounts for one of the most accurate forms of data in any business. It supplies a wealth of employee information about age, characteristics, roles, and more. For example, not only can it track trends in absenteeism; it can even forecast future rates based on data points outside of payroll. This helps companies to understand the costs associated with absence and consider how to reduce or manage it more effectively.

We’re starting to move outside of the normal HR and payroll stakeholders to the rest of the business. We can give CFOs and managers insights and trend data into their attrition rates. This is useful in terms of assessing internal costs, how a business is performing, and how to take advantage of business insights to effect change.”

Steve Dunkley, HR Analytics Director, Zellis

Understanding predictive analytics

In predictive analytics, a mathematical engine processes different factors to try to predict the future. It’s only as accurate as the problem modelled. So, if there are subsequent changes to the original factors or organisation, the model needs to be updated. Rather than a one-off effort, predictive analytics is an ongoing and continually changing process. While it’s a very powerful tool, models need careful application to be effective, as they involve change management.

Case in point: St. Vincent’s University Hospital

One organisation that benefits greatly from data analytics with HR and payroll reporting is St. Vincent’s University Hospital. For a decade, the healthcare provider has been using Zellis’ smart technology to better optimise and engage its 4,000-strong staff, taking full advantage of the single data-set environment and business intelligence.

The hospital can diagnose current issues, act quickly, and engage with staff thanks to accurate, real-time, trustworthy data. For example, during COVID-19, it was able to rapidly respond to staffing situations by categorising the virus in the workplace. It presented data to its stakeholders, such as the HSE and the Irish Government, through weekly reports from the Zellis business intelligence consultant. The data is hugely helpful when it comes to staff absenteeism and turnover as well as recruitment and movement between roles, which happens frequently. The hospital can support managers with detail about these HR issues, freeing them up for increased patient care.

We’re trying to match our organisational goals with our day-to-day processes from a HR and payroll perspective. We work with Zellis on a weekly basis to pull that data and push out predictive analysis. We want to be able to predict absenteeism by seeing if a high rate in a given month is down to flu season or COVID-19 re-emerging. We’d like to predict what the workforce is going to look like maybe in a year’s time – will we be hiring more people next year, will we have fewer hires, will we have better recruitment?”

Lydia Brazil, HR Systems Manager, St. Vincent’s University Hospital

Watch this video to find out more.

Latest HR analytics tools

Detailed data analytics have the power to deliver intelligent, actionable insights.

Zellis has produced a series of customised dashboards to assist companies with managing key areas within HR, diversity and inclusion, and attrition.

The HR Director dashboard gives comprehensive insights on headcount, attrition, sickness, and compensation. It supports decision making by illustrating patterns and workforce changes through interactive and clear data visualisations.

The diversity, equity, and inclusion dashboard provides a single, holistic view of an organisation with all critical data points available. It’s a strong starting point in understanding a company’s baseline and shaping future goals by making decisions that are critical to expanding the talent pool, driving performance, and increasing engagement.

With a power business intelligence key influencers feature, the attrition analysis evaluates leavers by age, generation, length of service, and location (mapped) as well as leaving reasons by age and length of service. There’s also a leaver reasons word cloud functionality. The analysis lets companies understand what influences attrition the most so there can be a proactive approach to staff retention. And the appropriate awareness and proactive management of key influencers helps reduce recruitment costs through avoidable attrition.

The future for payroll and HR reporting

In the experience of St. Vincent’s Hospital, it has the HR and payroll data that indicates what’s happening and the analytics that enable it to make decisions about this, be it looking at an employee engagement plan or reviewing the hiring process. From a healthcare perspective, it believes the future is with predictive analysis and enhancing the way it uses its data. Rather than giving last month’s staff turnover rate to a manager and pointing out that it’s higher compared to previous years, the hospital would like to be able to predict next year’s rate and share that information before it’s even happened.

At Zellis, we feel that the future is about showing stakeholders how well data can yield insights. It will involve highlighting the size of a problem or area that needs to be addressed, then using predictive analytics and actual business insights to allow companies to make those changes and drive value.

We’ll move from talking about data and analytics to talking about insight a lot more in the coming years. Although the analytics will be behind it, insight is where everyone wants to get to, and what that means in terms of value from the organisation and value from the employees.”

Steve Dunkley, HR Analytics Director, Zellis

Ready for better insights and a competitive edge?

Zellis technology enables HR reporting, payroll reporting, and workforce management analytics. Our expert consultants help organisations develop a data strategy, build reports, create data visualisations, and extract vital learnings to drive strategy. 

Learn more here.