A recent Taleo report has found that as staffing becomes an increasingly measurable part of business, managers’ use of related strategy and key performance indicators will increase by a massive 84 per cent over the next three years.

This figure is on the back of another International Association for Human Resource Information Management (IHRIM) survey which found that 72 per cent of HR managers have no tools to measure the impact of HR on business results.

“The issues that organisations are now focusing on are much more macro, and clearly people are waking up to the fact that these are critical issues,” said Jason Averbook, CEO of Knowledge Infusion, which conducted the survey in conjunction with IHRIM.

“Organisations know that they need to do a better job of linking training, knowledge and performance together. They see that it has been done in silos in their organisation and realise that they need to do a better job of linking them together.”

Workforce analytics is a set of tools for measuring, managing and maximising workforce performance. Measurements are presented in metrics that form numbers indicating the performance of organisations in specific areas.

The Taleo report found that many HR departments have limited reporting capabilities and struggle to collect even the simplest metrics. This is often due to factors such as limited access to data and high costs, as well as technical, political and operational challenges.

According to Taleo, good metrics should be aligned with the business, actionable and predictive, consistent, time-trackable and peer comparable.

As such, Averbook said organisations need to revisit and refine business processes and analytics practices, followed by effective internal promotion of initiatives.

“Many organisations roll out a performance management system or workforce analytics system and simply just put it out there,” he said.

“They don’t do a good job of making sure that people know why these systems are implemented, show people the value of the systems, and so on.”