Visier Predicts Top Recruitment, Retention, and Compensation Trends for 2015

People Analytics Becomes Critical to Organizations As Economic Outlook Improves

Visier, the innovation leader in People Analytics, today announced its predictions on workforce trends in 2015. As the economy continues to improve, the global competition for talent is heightening. Voluntary resignations in the U.S. are now at a five-year high. The number of new hires has almost reached pre-recession levels, and the unemployment rate, as reported by the Labor Department last week, has fallen to the lowest level since July 2008. With the economy moving in a positive direction, key challenges are emerging around retention, recruiting, workforce costs, generational shifts, diversity, and the role of HR. Organizations will increasingly seek People Analytics solutions to overcome these challenges. “Modern day boards and CEOs understand that data-driven solutions can improve decisions about talent, and, as a result, revenues and profits,” says John Schwarz, CEO and Co-Founder of Visier. “The consequence is that companies must focus on the use of data-driven insights to develop actionable plans to better recruit, retain and motivate employees.” Market demand for People Analytics is on the rise as business leaders increasingly recognize that recruiting, retaining, and motivating the right talent is critical to business growth and prosperity. Equally important is the ability to access and analyze the right information to support talent-related business decisions. Visier announced its predictions on top HR trends in 2015 at the HR Technology Conference in Las Vegas on October 7-10, 2014.

1. Companies will double-down on retention and recruiting

In the improving economy, retention challenges will arise as workers become more confident in exploring new jobs. At the same time -- as unemployment drops -- there will be increased competition for recruiting talent and vacancy rates will increase. Solution: Organizations will look beyond recruiting processes to leveraging People Analytics to improve hiring outcomes. People Analytics provides actionable insights, such as identifying top performers who are at risk of leaving; providing visibility into how compensation, performance, and engagement impact retention; and discovering which recruiting sources deliver the most top performers. With People Analytics, HR will shift from reacting to hiring demands to proactively planning the workforce. HR will identify critical resources, forecast turnover, and develop more accurate hiring plans based on delivering talent for critical business strategies.  

2. Organizations will move their focus from headcount to total workforce costs

Whether it is new workforce strategies that rely more on contingent workers, or legislation such as the Affordable Care Act that impacts spend on benefits, organizations will increasingly seek to understand the complete picture of workforce costs. Insights into salary or direct compensation only tell part of the workforce cost story, and to understand the real impact to the business organizations will expand their analysis to the total cost of the workforce. Solution: With People Analytics solutions connecting data from all HR systems, HR will be in a position to provide an accurate and up to date view into the Total Cost of Workforce. Organizations looking to optimize spending will perform more accurate, scenario-based workforce planning, and make decisions based on their actual Total Costs rather than simply looking at headcount.  

3. Generational shifts will be an increasingly hot topic

The U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that by 2015 millennials will overtake the majority representation of the workforce, as baby boomers retire in greater and greater numbers. Millennials are known to have significantly different expectations for their employment experience. HR will face challenges of engaging and retaining newly hired millennials, while also ensuring the knowledge and skills of retiring baby boomers are maintained. Solution: People Analytics will help organizations predict and better time retirements, and identify critical skills being lost, while also enabling them to understand how to best motivate, train, and retain millennial workers.  

4. Depth of insight into diversity will become more valued

With major companies publicly sharing their workforce diversity shortfalls in 2014, more organizations will feel the pressure to reveal workforce diversity figures in 2015, and ensure their organization looks like their customers. Solution: Empirical studies have shown that diverse organizations perform better than organizations that are largely homogeneous. People Analytics will play an important role in putting theory and ideas into action, enabling organizations to analyze diversity across topic areas such as recruitment, succession, promotions, and turnover, and understand how they compare against industry benchmarks.  

5. From analyzing the past, to planning and predicting the future

With a growing economy comes heightened competition which drives the need for more agile business strategies to take advantage of newfound opportunity - before the competition catches up. Reacting to past trends will not give the business the insight necessary to align and act. HR will look to more sophisticated workforce plans that incorporate data projections and increase workforce decision agility. Solution: People Analytics will deliver insight from analyzing the workforce and allow HR leaders to align the business on the necessary action to deliver on the business strategy. HR organizations will implement regular forecasting to ensure plans remain on track, that the business can react to changing needs, and that the business strategy is on track in people resources and costs. Schwarz says, “As we look towards 2015, we see broad management use of workforce data becoming a strong trend, with more and more companies making investments in workforce intelligence. Many of the HR challenges we anticipate can be overcome with a wide deployment of People Analytics. Our experience is that Applied Big Data solutions like ours make it possible for HR departments to easily, affordably and quickly gain access to actionable insights, and to use this knowledge to develop more optimal workforce plans.”

About Visier

Visier’s purpose is to help people see the truth and create a better future—now. Visier was founded to focus on what matters to business people: answering the right questions, even the ones a person might not know to ask. Questions that shape business strategy, provide the impetus for taking action, and drive better business results. Visier delivers fast, clear people insight by using all the available people data—regardless of source. With best-practice expertise built-in, decision-makers can confidently take action. Thanks to our amazing customers, Visier is the market leader in Workforce Analytics with 5,000 customers in 75 countries around the world. For more information, visit http://www.visier.com. Follow Visier on Twitter @Visier Media Contact: Sarah Grant Visier 514-436-5100 sarah.grant@visier.com Anu Kher Affect PR 212-398-9680 akher@affect.com