{"id":194097,"date":"2021-03-12T13:40:23","date_gmt":"2021-03-12T18:40:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.attendancebot.com\/blog\/?p=194097"},"modified":"2025-06-18T04:27:20","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T08:27:20","slug":"employee-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.attendancebot.com\/blog\/employee-data\/","title":{"rendered":"Employee Data: The 9 Powerful Use Cases for HR"},"content":{"rendered":"

Data analytics has been a key part of businesses for years now. But with the rise of multiple tools for tracking and measuring various activities, the quantum of data to pore over is only expanding.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

HR has traditionally been a slower adopter of analytics due to the amount of human intervention that is required in most HR tasks. Now more HR leaders are answering the calls for the adoption of people analytics<\/a> and automation in this space.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In this blog, we\u2019ll take you through what employee data is, how it is collected efficiently and how it can be put to use even by small companies.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n

What is Employee Data?<\/span><\/h2>\n

Employee data is all the personnel information provided to the company throughout an employee\u2019s lifecycle. This ranges from just their name to even their reason for leaving the company.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Employee data can reveal work-life imbalances, management issues and even training opportunities to create high performing teams.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There are three main types of employee data:<\/span><\/p>\n

Regular Employee Data<\/span><\/h3>\n

This data is limited to things like name, reporting manager, department, office location, compensation and other attributes that are used in the day-to-day functioning of personnel planning.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Employee Data Collected for Analysis\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

This type of employee data collection is done for the express purpose of understanding why something is happening. For example, after introducing a new HR initiative pulse surveys are conducted to judge their adoption rate. The purpose of any data collected is to figure out how the initiative was received and how it\u2019s performing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Employee Data Collection without HR intervention<\/span><\/h3>\n

After the pandemic, companies are using even more applications and tools for the operations side of the business. They can range from communication apps like Gmail and Slack to process-related apps like MailChimp and HubSpot. Companies take subscriptions and employees are granted access.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This gives companies access to vast volumes of information that may or may not be useful in people analytics. This category of employee data is where big data analytics can be put to good use.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Employee<\/p>\n

Are Workforce Analytics Feasible for Smaller Companies?\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

Employee analytics to resolve issues isn\u2019t new by any means. But with the rise of remote workplaces, it is gaining more attention than ever before.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Every single technology in the market promises to offer insight into the end-users behaviour and HR applications are no different. With the pressure for HR to contribute more to strategic business planning, it\u2019s becoming more important to decipher these volumes of data into actionable insights.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Although there is value in analysing data from HRIS, often smaller companies may have just piecemeal solutions for them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, IBM is obviously on a kickass full-service HRIS but a smaller SaaS company with 150 employees may just make do with a few HR specialists and Excel sheets. To take it a step further, they could have an attendance and time tracking solution along with a payroll provider. In that case, is there any value in looking at predictive workforce analytics?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Check out the new AttendanceBot integration with Gusto Payroll Software<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Supporters may say that doing so can help HR predict future staffing needs and even shore up employee retention. But skeptics may say that this is just too little data to be making business decisions upon.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But we are of the belief that irrespective of the volume of data, data is valuable. All business decisions, including those made in HR, will only improve if they\u2019re data-driven. It doesn\u2019t matter if you\u2019re just tracking 2-3 HR metrics<\/a> using your currently available tools, but start small and build those up over time.<\/span><\/p>\n

What are the Types of Employee Data Collection Small Companies Should Prioritize?\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

Basic HR Data through an Employee Self Service Portal\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

Data entry by HR professionals takes up a lot of time and can be susceptible to human error. The basic HR data beyond name, designation and reporting manager can be filled by employees themselves. Fields can include gender, emergency contact, blood group, allergies, preferred pronouns and others. Employees can use an Employee Self Service portal for editing many fields.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Attendance Data\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

What is the first HR process to be standardized in any company?\u00a0Attendance, without fail, is always the first.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is integral to track how many employees are coming in for work each day and how many are taking time off. It is often tracked first through Excel or Google Sheets and then done using a dedicated <\/span>attendance tracking system<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But irrespective of the way it is tracked, attendance data can help companies learn about their workforce, employee satisfaction and even future attrition.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Time Tracking Data<\/span><\/h3>\n

Time tracking data is important to figure out when employees punch in and out. This is certainly useful for calculating payroll but can be closely interlinked with productivity metrics too.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Employee Engagement Data\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

When a company is smaller, the cost of attrition feels a lot worse than that in a larger company. That\u2019s when HR begins to look at ways to engage employees and build relationships that tie the employee to the company. The initiatives may range from pulse surveys to eNPS and they\u2019re important to improve retention in the company.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Employee engagement can be improved using this survey data to create policies.<\/p>\n

Digital Exhaust\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

The <\/span>Harvard Business Review<\/span><\/a> coined the term \u201cdigital exhaust\u201d, for all the everyday digital activity done by employees. They believe that every email, message, posts on in-formal threads and project assignments should be tracked. Using these touchpoints of employee data, informal organizational networks and relationships can be tracked.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Although this does walk into the murky territory of big data, HR can do exploratory data dives into data from small teams to build these organizational charts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Employee<\/p>\n

9 Powerful Ways HR can use Employee Data\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

#1 Use Case for Employee Data: Blinded ATSs to Recruit Diverse Talent<\/span><\/h3>\n

We\u2019ve spoken about this in a previous article about <\/span>innovation opportunities in legacy HR processes<\/span><\/a>. An HR tool that can help rid the screening process of implicit biases is blind recruitment technology.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

These solutions redact age, gender, race, ethnicity, education and other factors in the resume screening and interviewing process. It shifts the focus from implicit biases and recruiter \u201cgut feels\u201d to focus only on data-based recruitment. There is an expansion of the hiring pool due to the focus on skills and job experience.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Using blind recruitment technology to strip resumes to data points has been called taking the \u201chuman\u201d out of human resources. But if it helps build more diverse teams, we believe that it\u2019s a risk worth taking.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

#2 Use Case for Employee Data: Effective Onboarding with Basic Employee Data<\/span><\/h3>\n

A number of studies by Deloitte and the Harvard Business Review have made a connection between onboarding and workforce productivity and engagement. Clearly, it is a very important aspect of the new hire process that can directly impact the bottom line of the company.<\/span><\/p>\n

So how can we make onboarding data-driven?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To begin with, every single new hire has jumped through the hoops of documentation and access on the first day in every organization. HR can personalize the onboarding process in many ways using just basic employee data:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n