Using Data to Determine Shifts

May 11, 2022
Publication
MRA Edge
Engagement & Retention
Organization Development
HR Metrics
Read time: 4 mins

Having the right data points at your fingertips is important but understanding what the data means can be just as impactful. Knowing the data can teach you a lot, but alone it may not be enough. Data can initially be used to formulate tangible goals. Later, it can be partnered with milestones to determine the level of success you have achieved.

Establish Metrics

Think of metrics as tools to help you better understand employees and get to the desired results more quickly. Establishing metrics helps to provide a framework for progress and will help keep things on track.

Organization-wide metrics can help show the impact that data-driven projects have on the entire business. This information may be gathered using different approaches:

  • Ranked metrics are questions rated on a scale of 1 to 5 or using a range of responses from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” Using these metrics can help gauge feelings toward a specific topic and can be used internally or with customers.
  • Initiative-focused metrics are tangible metrics that can be tracked and tied to specific items to determine organizational progress in focus areas.
  • Benchmarking metrics from organizations with similar demographic composition or challenges are used to determine the way an organization operates. These can be used for benchmarking with competitors or peers.

Keep in mind that not all metrics will tell the full story. When measuring anything, such as the success of DE&I programs, there are often additional considerations. Demographics comprise an array of socioeconomic information and may have a strong influence on established metrics. They include:

  • Gender/gender identity
  • Age
  • Race and ethnicity
  • Religion
  • Nationality
  • Disability

This is often voluntary information and not all applicants and employees provide a response, so it can be difficult to get a true picture of the demographic makeup or your organization. This may skew the data collected, especially if one of the characteristics has a strong influence over the results.

Identify Patterns

One way to help identify patterns is to ensure that the data is organized properly. Each employee is experiencing something different, so segmenting data into similar employee groups and demographics can provide different data sets to help you realize where action needs to be taken. Looking at cumulative data can give you a generalized picture, but breaking it into categories, such as gender and age, can show a more specific picture and may produce different results. For example, the same question may get different responses when asked at a location where the average age of employees is 28 than where it is 47. Identifying if there is a response pattern based on age can help determine if there is a relative action to be taken.

Keep in mind that not all data will have a strong story to tell by just looking at it. Some patterns can be clearly seen within a simple tabular set of data. Using a chart, line bar, pie chart, or scatter plot can help present a clearer story, especially when higher or lower data sets can be a strong indicator of progress or decline.

Analyzing Trends

If an annual survey shows that 70 percent of respondents say the organization needs to work on DE&I efforts and the following year the survey reveals that 80 percent of respondents say that DE&I efforts need to be worked on, it could be treated as a trend. When you are analyzing data, trends may be increasing or decreasing in nature. Before considering any data sets a trend, it should be investigated to determine if there are outside factors affecting the data set. These factors could be:

  • Demographics such as age or gender
  • The number of participants
  • Updates to the question from prior surveys

If there are factors that begin to influence the outcome of an annual survey, such as introducing a new benefit, the change in responses could be viewed as a trend. Trends can be discovered over short-, medium-, or long-term periods of time and data can oscillate. However, keeping the goals and metrics in mind can help determine acceptable data swings.

If a data set swings a lot in a short amount of time and the participant pool is generally the same, it typically means something happened within the organization and employees are speaking up.

Quantity and Quality

Qualitative responses can be equally as important as quantitative responses. These questions focus on the emotions, perceptions, motivations, and attitudes of participants to provide insight as to why a question is answered in a certain way. Keep in mind, if an employee takes the time to respond, he or she wants to be heard.

Trusting your intuition and personal experiences can also help when looking for trends and patterns. If there are differences between personal experiences and what the results are showing, it may be worth investigating.

Choosing the right questions will aid in understanding the challenges employees face, what they think of the organization, and which improvements to make. Whether these improvements are effective depends on the way the questions are asked, analysis of the results, and the end applications. Data-driven decisions should be shared with employees. Not only will they want to hear the results, but it can also help build trust by keeping the lines of communication open.

For more information on creating custom surveys for your organization, contact Brittany Rittershaus, Surveys and Graphics Specialist, at [email protected] or 262.696.3371.