Your Company Needs to Collect Data
THOMAS BOYER, ASSOCIATE
In the age of technology, data is becoming increasingly available to companies of all sizes. With many softwares and systems collecting information, all of that data can make it overwhelming to understand what is worth analyzing or even worth collecting. Starting simple can be a great way to learn what data is beneficial and what problems need to be solved. This article covers the importance of collecting a variety of data, recommendations of data to consider, and key steps to take before starting.
WHAT INSIGHTS DOES DATA PROVIDE?
Data can provide insight into a business's efficiency, profitability, and culture. To ensure your company is headed toward success, consider the following topics:
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion:
All companies have access to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) data even if they don’t realize it. Most interview-hiring processes include a question on ethnicity or race, gender, and occasionally sexuality. Each of these data points can be made available to the company. This data is typically not associated with a particular candidate in order to remain impartial during the interview process, but rather clustered to provide a high-level overview of your candidate pool. Segmenting application data between different demographics can offer your company a unique perspective on its applicant pool.
Are minority groups included among your applicants? Is one gender more prominent in the applicant pool? Answers to these questions will help ensure your recruitment process is reaching a variety of diverse groups. Additionally, applicant pool data can provide further insight into the company, addressing whether a pool of candidates accurately matches the values and culture of the firm.
This data can also be utilized with a company’s current workforce. Either through office surveys or with the same application data from above, companies can assess the ethnic and cultural make-up of their workforce. Studies also show value in diversifying one’s labor force. Read more about the benefits of workplace diversity in this HBR article.
Project Timelines & Pricing:
Time-tracking is a solid way to assess the length a task or project typically takes, and the productivity of employees and teams within your firm. Understanding a project’s average duration can allow management to prepare accurate project timelines and drill down on resource allocation in specific areas of your firm.
Knowing the actual duration of a project and its phases can offer insight into your firm’s profitability. What is the relationship between the price of your good or service and the labor cost spent to produce it? Data on how long firm activities take may help highlight processes that can be performed more efficiently to keep costs down. Information on project duration can also provide insight into your team’s capacity and help drive decisions on marketing spend, employee hiring, and long-term growth. Although prices in most circumstances should be based on market dynamics and your customers’ willingness to pay, instead of simply setting prices to cover costs, time tracking in some cases can reveal that your prices are not in fact covering the cost of production, suggesting that some further inquiry is necessary to confirm that this cost-to-price ratio is aligned with your firm’s overall strategy.
Measuring Innovation:
Another simple method of utilizing data is to measure innovation. An article by Forbes notes several metrics worth tracking to gain a better understanding of a firm’s innovation. One particular metric is the “idea kill rate,” where a company keeps tabs on the number of ideas that were enacted successfully and the amount that fizzled out. This may include a wide range of fresh ideas, from pitching new products to improving basic work processes.
The concept can be adapted to measure which projects are achieving targeted KPI’s or segmented by employees to reward those bringing forth successful and beneficial ideas.
This type of information also partners well with time-tracking efforts, which track average project durations, activities that yield the greatest success, and how time compares to average cost or revenue from various projects/ideas.
Monitoring Employee Health:
Providing an organization with employee health data may seem like a risky endeavor, but, given the pandemic, industries are seeing rising interest from both companies and employees to make a shift.
A BBC article notes that the overall goal of health tracking centers on performance optimization. Through the use of integrated apps and health monitoring devices such as smart watches and patches, companies can be alerted when employees show symptoms like fevers and set precautions so that sick employees stay home.
Some health-tracking companies even allow direct access to care from telehealth providers. These methods will not only keep employees healthier, but also ensure the entire office space remains healthy and productive. This data can be used by a company’s HR department to develop effective wellness programs and incentives to encourage employees to remain active and healthy.
These third-party health partners also allow companies to: determine hours in which health is monitored, assign metrics for items like temperatures and heart rates, and set levels of confidentiality to ensure employee data remains protected and ethical.
SIMPLE DATA YOU CAN TRACK RIGHT NOW!
With many methods likely already at play within your organization, data collection does not have to be a complicated process.
Employee Data: The most basic approach begins with tabulating employee data. This can include attrition or turnover rates, diversity of the labor force, the average age of employees or years of experience, and time until promotion. Most HR divisions track this information through employee files or an online database where these metrics are already tallied.
Time-tracking: If your firm does hourly billing, as with most law or consulting firms, chances are there is time-tracking data ready to be exported to a CSV file and analyzed. Otherwise, accounting and project management software, like Quickbooks and Freshbooks, have built-in time-tracking tools. Forbes also lists eight useful time-tracking applications, each with free and paid options.
Health initiatives: Fitbit and Apple offer a variety of packages to help organizations meet their wellness goals while bulk orders of devices help reduce overall costs. Additionally, some of your employees may already own these products or similar brands. Check to determine which option is best suited for your employees and see what data is made available before selecting a provider.
WHAT PROBLEM ARE YOU SOLVING?
Before jumping into data collection or analysis of a data set, the most important question to ask is: “What problem am I solving?”
Leading collection and analysis with an issue to solve will ensure collection methods and information gathered are actually beneficial to the project.
However, do not let it influence your outcome. For example, you can question which projects are most profitable and thereby collect data on employee labor costs. However, hypothesizing one project type is more profitable than another could lead you to skew your results. It is important to remain impartial with data collection and allow for it to tell its own story without manipulation. Therefore, solving general or less specific issues tends to provide greater insights.
CONCLUSION:
With so much data at our fingertips through everyday work processes, there is a great chance that your firm’s questions and answers are already hidden in the numbers. Remember, data does not need to be complex. Often, simple collection methods and analysis lead to key insights.
Additional Resources:
Kellogg School of Management: A Leader's Guide to Data Analytics