Is there anything more valuable than your HR data?
At first you might disagree.
Poor HR data quality is commonplace in many small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) in the UK, blocking potential benefits.
However, when employee data management is a priority, it can offer real insights into your workforce.
Who is leaving and why? Where does the disease take hold? What do bonuses really cost?
Good quality HR data turns your endless questions into clear answers.
If you want to operate more strategically and improve the hygiene of your HR data, read on.
What is HR data hygiene?
For those unfamiliar with the term “data hygiene,” here’s a quick overview.
Essentially, HR data hygiene is about keeping your staff data accurate, up-to-date and well-organized.
Concretely, this is what HR data hygiene can look like:
- Ensure records are correct and free of duplicates or typos.
- Fill in the gaps so that the information is complete.
- Storing data in one consistent location.
- Delete data you no longer need.
The quality of your HR data impacts every aspect of your business.
HR, payroll, finance and compliance all rely on reliable data.
Get it right and you have a well of knowledge that supports everything you do.
If you get it wrong, you not only limit your own capabilities, but you also expose yourself to risks, errors and non-compliance.
How poor HR data hygiene gets worse over time
Poor HR data hygiene often starts with a simple mistake.
Perhaps a mistake in entering a social security number or a typo in an employee’s address.
On their own, these errors may seem harmless; However, the problem is that bad data doesn’t sit still.
Each subsequent process inherits these errors.
An incorrect detail powers your payroll, reporting, and compliance records.
What started as a five-minute solution turns into hours of reconciliation, failed submissions, and frustrated employees.
How HR software can help you improve the quality of your HR data
So, how can you really improve the hygiene of your HR data? It depends on the systems and processes you have in place.
If your data is spread across spreadsheets and inboxes, maintaining good HR data quality is extremely difficult.
With HR software, you can effectively support the three main pillars crucial to maintaining good employee data:
- Precision
- completeness
- Accessibility
Accuracy of employee data
Your employee data is only useful if it is correct.
The most thoughtful strategic HR decisions become worthless if the data behind them is flawed.
Inaccurate records ripple through everything HR, skewing your reporting, compromising workforce planning, and forcing you to act based on a picture that simply isn’t true.
This is an area where HR software is gaining its place.
A central HR system, with employee self-service, hands much of the data entry to the people who know it best: the employees.
Our HR Director, Lizzy Barry, explained: “A real value add for HR teams of all sizes is giving employees the ability to help themselves when we need them to do something or provide us with information.
“Being able to give them a place to do it themselves not only means the information is absolutely accurate, as they are the ones directly entering the information, but it also reduces the dreaded manual entry. »
HR and payroll integration
Payroll is often the area where bad data is most damaging; If employee information entered into payroll – such as salaries, overtime, bank details, etc. – are incorrect, errors are inevitable and staff will not be paid correctly.
CIPP’s analysis clearly lays out the risk: poor employee data leads to record inconsistencies, failed submissions to HMRC, late payments and a mountain of remediation work.
This is where integration between your HR and payroll systems becomes essential to maintain data accuracy.
Manually moving data significantly increases the risk of errors.
But when the two systems are connected, data flows automatically between them rather than being copied manually.
A salary increase, a new arrival, a change of schedule or a departure, recorded in the HR software, is directly reflected in the payroll.
No need to duplicate input and no chance for the two systems to get out of sync.
data completeness
Every gap in the data is a liability.
Missing information is a metric you can’t measure and a question you can’t answer.
The ICPD recommends that businesses proactively seek opportunities where people analytics can help solve critical problems and co-develop solutions with stakeholders to ensure they are fit for purpose.
To get a complete picture of what’s happening in your business, you need to capture more than just basic data.
For example, you need to capture information about:
- Performance data from assessments and goal setting.
- Records showing who has completed what training and qualifications.
- Reasons for absence and return to work interviews.
- Milestones throughout the employee lifecycle.
To get these rich insights, you first need the right interface to collect a wide range of data.
Within your HR software, for example, having a screen dedicated to leavers allows you to collect key information and can include questionnaires.
This type of functionality can be applied to a range of scenarios, from capturing data during newcomer onboarding to full quarterly review processes.
Additionally, your HR software should also automatically capture and store real-time data on other key staff areas, such as absences and churn.
Turn data into action
With a comprehensive view of all your important data points, you can start implementing meaningful HR strategies.
For example, if you look at absence patterns and team performance in conjunction with service churn, you may notice worrying trends that suggest teams are struggling and managers may need training.
These types of information allow you to intervene before problems escalate.
Data Accessibility
The best data in the world is useless if you can’t access it.
Does this sound familiar? The information exists somewhere, but accessing it is a slow, manual ordeal.
Many HR professionals struggle to bring together information from scattered sources, and once everything has been gathered, cleaned and formatted, the data is already out of date.
You need to easily find, view and share relevant information.
This is the role of modern HR software.
Having all your personal data in one centralized location makes accessibility quick and simple.
In practice, this means customizable dashboards showing the metrics you get every day, from cost of illness to staffing and days lost.
Plus, a library of pre-built reports, which you can schedule and run on-demand, makes in-depth analysis much less time-consuming.
The real benefit for HR professionals is that all the information is live.
Because the data comes directly from the source, your dashboards and reports automatically reflect the latest changes.
Unleash the power of your data
HR data is incredibly powerful, but only when it can be trusted.
Improve the hygiene of your HR data and the information speaks for itself.
If you’re looking for HR software that makes HR data hygiene simple, without being tedious, check out Staffology HR.
Our cloud-based HR software, Staffology HR, removes the burden of managing employee data and allows you to make the biggest impact.
Learn more about Staffology HR here or download the software brochure below.
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