Analytics at PricewaterhouseCoopers

Question one.

Employee turnover is the act of replacing an employee where the former one has left. The employee may leave either voluntarily or involuntarily (Carter & Goldsmith, 2012). It consists termination, retirement, death, transfers, and resignations. The employee may resign because of various reasons. Some of these reasons may include resigning to go for a more appealing job offer, conflicts with the management, lack of advancement opportunities, failure to be engaged in more tasks that are challenging, boredom, and poor management.

Employee turnover brings with it loss of skills and knowledge that is of much importance to the company.it also brings about diminished productivity and a workload for the employees left behind. This reduces their job satisfaction and increases their tendency of joining their colleagues who have left. Companies get the maximum productivity when they minimize turnover and maximize retention. Companies can use various ways to minimize employee turnover and in turn maximize the latter. A company should interview the employees well before employing them just to make sure they have the right skills, the company should also get creative when it comes to benefits and flexibility of work schedules. They should also recognize and praise the workers who do well in their areas to motivate them. When there is a massive employee turnover, a company may employ analysts who conduct surveys and come up with different possible causes of the turnover.

Some companies such as PwC do not use analytics to solve employee turnover. This may be due to the tedious task of looking for the needed information since it is too difficult and time consuming. The relevant executives always rely on their own intuition and majorly avoid the headache brought by the “analysis paralysis.” Another reason is the cultural bias against adopting a disciplined analytics approach to people. They think that analytics is a cold and heartless way of dealing with people, just like reducing people to cells in a spreadsheet. Another reason may be that they do not realize that different ways may be used.

I would argue that certain shortcomings a company may be going through may have a deeper issue within it and never hurts to see what the HR data has to offer. As in the case of PwC the data would help in predicting and as well reducing the employee turnover long before it could even happen.

Question two

Human resource professionals can develop the much-needed skills by conducting a good survey on how the employees work in the company. They should have to understand the factors captured in the metrics first. They have to understand the real life operation of businesses and the environment that suits it best. Understanding the business rules will help them decide on the type of data to collect. It should also help them put the data into good use.

They should in turn utilize the information gotten from the surveys in rewarding those who do their work well and accurately. This should act as a motivation for them tyto continue with their hard work and in good spirit. They should also make sure that the working conditions of the workers are adequate and conducive. They should know the number of employees supposed to work in a given section and for how many hours to avoid overworking or underworking some.

A HR professional could use resources such as the already experienced employees. They should consult such employees to begin building expertise in this area. They should as well develop a healthy relationship with them not to scare them away. They should treat the employees with the utmost respect if they require the same from them. They could ask for the employees’ opinion on what would make them happy in the workplace. The HR professionals should be observant to learn what employees are likely to leave the job. If they realize that the more experienced workers are the ones likely to leave, they may develop a habit of letting the new employees learn from the more experienced ones at an earlier stage. This will help them escape the problems that come in when a more experienced worker leaves and leaves no one with experience similar or close to theirs.

The HR would also get skills through attending classes either physically or online. Here, they may get to learn from other professionals who have more skills than they do. They may also try attending seminars and workshops to gain more skills

What they learn through all this should help to effectively drive and support the institutions workforce. They should then regularly assess the organization’s performance, challenges, and its needs. This should tally with its expectations and lead towards the achievement of the long term goals. This analysis should start before any changes in staffing, system update and metrics are happens

References

Carter, L., Ulrich, D., & Goldsmith, M. (2012). Best practices in leadership development and organization change: How the best companies ensure meaningful change and sustainable leadership. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

Valentine, S., Mathis, R. L., & Jackson, J. H. (2013). Human resource management.