They say employee data is an organization’s campus. You may also call it a roadmap to places where you have yet to travel. The insights gained from the data guide your actions and strategies for a better future. In short, this data is your organization’s most valuable tool. For instance, even a simple survey on how useful the Cox cable bill pay service is can give lots of insights into the company. If you haven’t started collecting employee data by now, you must read along.

What Is Employee Data Exactly?

Employee data includes both basic and specific information about employees. HR uses basic data like date of birth and ethnicity to create demographic reports on the entire workforce, while particular data like workplace performance is used for making decisions about promotions, training programs, and more.

When compared to the risks of not surveying employees, collecting and monitoring employee data needs an investment of time as well as vulnerability from organizational leadership. Failure to gather employee data can lead to issues such as making tone-deaf judgments, increased employee burnout, and staff attrition.

Here are some examples of employee data:

• Length of employment
• How they get to work
• Performance
• Compensation information
• Employment status
• Certifications and courses
• Other personal details

Why Is It Important to Collect Employee Data?

Employee data helps serve 2 purposes. First, it helps an organization understand the perspective of its employees and anticipate their reactions to new company policies. Secondly, it makes your employee feel empowered since you’re giving them a voice.

Without further ado, here is a rundown of reasons why an organization should be gathering employee data:

Understand Patterns of Loss Like a Higher Turnover Rate

Employee data can help control the turnover rate in an organization. Whenever an employee leaves, take the time to reflect on their average employment length, disciplinary actions, the reason behind leaving, and other useful information. This data will help your HR department understand why do employees quit so often.

Get A Clear Picture of Workforce Trends

Employee data helps decision-makers and the HR department establish a holistic view of the workforce from a demographic, psychographic, and performance standpoint. Instead of focusing on a single employee who may or may not be an anomaly, HR teams can look at the entire workforce to identify patterns, extract insights, and deliver the data to top management in order to make strategic decisions.

Some Best Practices for Collecting Employee Data

When it comes to gathering employee data, questions about ethics are always raised. While you are on this task, follow these best practices to enforce data ethics:

Learn From Your Key Partners

Before getting started with collecting data, the HR team much have a meeting with the leadership (IT executives, data privacy officers, and leaders from sales, marketing, and finance departments) to understand what data to collect and for what purpose.

These are some questions that can help as a starting point:

• What data to use and how to use it?
• Who will get access to the data and where to keep it?
• What rules and processes are in place to safeguard our personal information?
• What rules do we have to follow?

Create An Ethics Code

Take a look at your company’s cultural statement and see how it relates to your data usage. You must understand does HR place boundaries on the use of data while still innovating in talent management. Once there is an ethics code established, it should reflect in your company’s culture.

Be Clear About Your Purpose and Intent

While collecting the data, create a checklist and use it for determining if the data makes sense and fits within the company’s ethical framework.

Whenever a vendor is involved, be extra careful. If you don’t understand what data is being and how it works, it’s always best to ask.

Communicate The What and Why

Not all employees are willing to share their data. Hence, transparency is essential to building confidence and encouraging employees to share information without hesitation.

Ideally, managers must convey the program’s benefits to individual employees, not simply the company. Make sure the material is accurate, concise, and free of jargon. Employees should be able to evaluate (and correct) their own data.

Summing Up

Employee data can be highly useful to an organization, however, there is a great stake if you end up misusing this data. If you are planning to start gathering employee data, make sure to set rules on how to effectively, responsibly, and ethically use this data.  Let your employees know why you are gathering data and how are you planning to keep it safe. This will help build trust and encourage participation with consent.

Not to mention, if leaders want access to valuable data, they’ll have to develop a new “give and take” relationship with employees and give them more authority over their data.