People analytics is a data-driven approach to managing people at work. For the first time in history, business leaders can make decisions about their people based on deep analysis of data rather than the traditional methods of personal relationships, decision making based on experience, and risk avoidance. People Analytics is using behavioral data to understand how people work and change how companies are managed.

People analytics is also known as workforce analytics, HR analytics, talent analytics, people insights, talent insights, colleague insights, human capital analytics, and HRIS analytics. HR analytics is the application of analytics to help companies manage human resources. Additionally, HR analytics has become a strategic tool in analyzing and forecasting Human related trends in the changing labor markets, using Career Analytics tools. The aim is to discern which employees to hire, which to reward or promote, what responsibilities to assign, and similar human resource problems. HR analytics is becoming increasingly important to understand what kind of behavioral profiles would succeed and fail. For example, an analysis may find that individuals that fit a certain type of profile are those most likely to succeed at a particular role, making them the best employees to hire.

However, there are key differences between people analytics and HR analytics. „People Analytics solves business problems. HR Analytics solves HR problems. People Analytics looks at the work and its social organization. HR Analytics measures and integrates data about HR administrative processes,“ says Ben Waber, MIT Media Lab Ph.D. and CEO of Humanyze. Josh Bersin, founder and principal at Bersin by Deloitte agrees that people analytics is a larger industry than HR Analytics, explaining, „… over time, I believe it doesn’t even belong within HR. While it may reside in HR to begin with, over time this team takes responsibility for analysis of sales productivity, turnover, retention, accidents, fraud, and even the people-issues that drive customer retention and customer satisfaction… These are all real-world business problems, not HR problems.“

People analytics, also known as talent analytics, refers to the method of analytics that can help managers and executives make decisions about their employees or workforce. People analytics applies statistics, technology and expertise to large sets of talent data, which results in making better management and business decisions for an organization. People analytics is a new domain for most HR departments. Companies are looking to better drive the return on their investments in people. The old approaches of gut feel is no longer sufficient.

What Are the Benefits of People Analytics?

People analytics helps organizations to make smarter, more strategic and more informed talent decisions. With people analytics, organizations can find better applicants, make smarter hiring decisions, and increase employee performance and retention.

Examiz tools for people analytics products apply sophisticated data science and machine learning to help organizations more efficiently and effectively manage their talents. Examiz’s analytics suite give organizations options for viewing, understanding and acting on talent data across the entire employee lifecycle. This includes Examiz TEAMS, an intuitive workforce and organizational analytics tool set that helps organizations easily create, manage and execute accurate hiring plans over multiple time horizons, plus gives business leaders deeper intelligence about their people, as well as Examiz MATCH, our predictive and prescriptive analytics solution that equips business leaders with the intelligence to better recruit, train, manage and develop their people.

Partially cited from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytics#People_analytics