More employee data can make for better employee experience and training, but you have to know how to use it.
Reasonably, having more information about your customer makes it easier to give them what they want – since that extra data makes it more likely that you actually know what they want. Additionally, data about your employees can help you anticipate what they need and in what areas training might help to improve their everyday work experience.
While the focus of a business is successfully assisting the customer, it is just as important to make sure that the employees are trained to help the customer the way you, the business, want them to. Ideally, while data is collected by the programmers, marketers, and support teams about the customers, metrics should also be gathered by HR and management about the employees. This latter may sound a bit too much like Big Brother, but its intent is more benign and is twofold:
1. The company can better assess the capabilities of the employee
2. Once this feedback is communicated, the employee knows where they stand and what to expect
The point of this data is to help a company make informed decisions about hiring and training, or in some cases, replacing an employee. You can improve your current employees through training curriculums based on the data you already have.
Use these metrics and tips to get started:
Performance Metrics
Gathering data on customers is a huge industry. Just looking at one facet of those interactions, we have Zendesk as a CRM provider for the technical support function. They have tracked billions of interactions and are moving into Big Data and using Artificial Intelligence to help their customers improve decision making about customer behavior. If there are similar companies that do this for employee data, what might they be tracking?
Eric van Vulpen of Analytics in HR found 51 trackable metrics in his HR Metrics Cheatsheet, but here are the four main categories.
1. Work quality metrics
2. Work quantity metrics
3. Work efficiency metrics
4. Organizational performance metrics
All of these data points, when collected and collated about an individual employee, can help HR build their individualized performance plans for employees. Put goals and benchmarks to reach into an HR software or project management tool where both employee and HR rep can access the data, and make the employee responsible for moving his or her training along with HR’s oversight and support.
It is true that even with data to back up the hiring choices, some new hires fall short. Should this happen, they can be compared to that median value needed for each employee. If the employees still are not able to get to their target numbers, they can be evaluated for further training or replacement.
Curriculum Suggestions:
- Role-specific knowledge sourced internally or from outside content creators
- Time management skills
- Communication skills
Career Trajectory and Goals
Using the data collected in reviews and employee-set goals, a company can work to see where an employee might go in the organization. Effective use of a talent management system can go beyond the immediate information allowing comparisons with similar data on other employees.
Using the information you’ve collected about an employee’s performance, you can then look where a particular employee might go within the company.
All employees will need some form of career pathing training, but the subjects will by necessity be different. In conversation with the employee, discuss individual career goals and devise a training plan that fits their levels of interest and opportunity, and their eventual place at the company.
Curriculum Suggestions:
- Leadership and management training
- Role-specific knowledge training
- Role-specific certifications
Regulations: What the company needs to do to stay within the law
Regulatory compliance is a major concern of HR teams. Beyond the HIPAA laws that those in the medical fields have had to contend with for years, there are additional data privacy laws in nearly all fields. The data privacy regulations are there to protect the individuals, the purported clients of these companies. Breaches that allow hackers access to customer data can be trivial – serving merely to remind a company that they need to check their security measures, all the way up to having to report the breach to Homeland Security.
The worst regulatory offenses require fines and other penalties that cost the company time and money. This is why it’s essential that the employees understand those regulations and how they need to proceed if a regulation is violated. HR should be on the lookout to include trainings on HIPAA, data security, health and safety as well as sexual harassment, as well as any industry-specific trainings and certifications.
Curriculum Suggestions:
- Role-specific health and instrument safety courses
- Sexual harassment courses
- Client safety and security courses
- Data safety courses
- Certifications and trainings related to financial regulatory issues.
Certifications
Many technology companies offer certifications that prove employees know how to use their software or understand complex ideas. These certifications make employees more valuable to the company and in the job market. Salesforce, Amazon Web Services, and Cisco offer high-value certifications that ensure your employees are better at their jobs and the company doesn’t have to spend money cleaning up mistakes.
Curriculum Suggestions:
- Salesforce Trailhead
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) Training
- Cisco Certifications
- Google Developer Certification
Knowing your employees is the key to keeping them happy and allowing them to function at the level you need of them. Collecting data about them and pairing it with data about your business itself can gain you insights into how best to assist them. Is training the next step, or is this one destined for promotion or that one in need of a certification? Use your current data to start conversations and follow up with the employee to better invest in them.
About the author: Steve Medeiros is a writer for TechnologyAdvice.com. He has an extensive background in technology, software, and customer support. Find him on LinkedIn.
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