50% of HR managers are time-strapped by manual number crunching

Dive Brief:

A recent HR technology survey by IT services firm I telligence found that a plurality (45.2%) HR managers devote the bulk of their HR analytics and reporting time to building custom reports. The survey also found that 50% of the respondents input data manually, making it more difficult to meet reporting deadlines.
Other frequent analytics activities cited by respondents include checking the accuracy of data across reports (37.1%) and merging data from several sources (27.4%).
Itelligence surmises that the lack of technological tools or means for integrating data are the reasons they spent so much time manually inputting data. That time crunch hasn't impacted accuracy, however; a combined 75.8% said they believe their data is either "somewhat" or "very" reliable.

Dive Insight:

HR leaders have long identified analytics and reporting as key among their responsibilities, so it's not surprising that so much of their time is being spent on those activities. What is surprising is that so many HR professionals are still handling the tasks manually.

As the overseers of their organizations' employee data, HR professionals know best how to respond to queries about workers' status, compensation and benefits, recruiting and hiring, compliance and other functions. HR just needs the tools that can quickly and more accurately perform the reporting, merging and cross-checking that analytics demands.

Going forward, a lot of that improvement will be met by artificial intelligence, and business leaders say they're already confident that AI will cut down on mistakes. But a truly effective analytics strategy will require the right talent, too. A team doesn't necessarily need a full staff of data scientists — you may not be quite ready for that (yet) — but it's past time to start thinking how data can be used creatively within the organization.