The Importance Of Keeping Employee Data Records

No business can stay ambitious and profitable without the support of its workforce. That’s why it’s important to ​​collect employee data to be able to analyze the strengths and pain points of a team and come up with practical solutions to improve the workflow and team efficiency.

Find out more about how you can use employee data and best practices to implement as a hiring professional to efficiently use key insights from collected data.

What is Employee Data?

Employee data is the personal information that a business collects about an employee’s lifecycle throughout employment. The data ranges from basic details such as an employee’s name and hire dates to certain data such as employees’ performance results, engagement statistics, and reasons for leaving the company.

Employee data can reveal imbalances, issues, and training opportunities to create high-performing teams. According to Gallup, engaged employees are those who are involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their work and workplace.

The types of collected employee data

There are several types of collected employee data, which include the following:

Demographic Information

It withholds the type of information about your team members as their age, gender, marital status, educational level, etc. Such information doesn’t withhold any personality details however, it specifies social standings and demonstrates to which social groups they belong.

With the collection of demographic information, you get an insight into staff diversity. See what type of people make up your team and find patterns between workers and whom you tend to hire.

Qualifications

This data encompasses such facts as professional experience, skills, training, and previous job roles. You will receive answers to questions like how long one worked for other companies before turning to you, what responsibilities they had, which tools they used, and which courses they attended.

With the information received, you can improve workforce development strategies and take superiority over internal recruitment. Find gaps in the team and address them through staff training.

Attendance and Time-Off

With attendance records, you can learn a lot about the team. Whether team members always show up on time, do they take enough or too many breaks throughout the day, how frequently do they call in sick or go on vacation, and which leave types are the most widespread.

Attendance and time of data play a crucial role in company productivity. The way employees dispose of their time is important to control since some might take a lot of downtime while others experience moments of excess workload.

Employment length

This information includes the hire date and the contract termination date. Depending on extended breaks from work due to illness, education pursuits, etc, employers might need to consider calculating it with the overall employment period.

After assessing your average employment length, you get an inside scoop on many problems. If many employees quit their jobs within a year of retirement, it’s a clear sign to analyze what you may be doing wrong and change your approach to staff retention. There are many reasons for failure to retain employees, such as workplace climate, low employee engagement, poor management, etc.

Overall performance

Collect the overall performance of one during the employment period. Goals and failures that an employee reached, their valuable contribution to projects, customer ratings, number of sales, overall efficiency, etc.

This type of data is essential for employee appraisals. It simulates underperforming employees to work harder and manifests members that deserve to be promoted or get a raise. Employee engagement reduces absenteeism. A Gallup study shows that highly engaged workplaces saw 41% lower absenteeism.

Best practices on how to collect employee data

Here are current best practices and tips for hiring professionals to collect and use employee data more efficiently:

• Ethics come first. Question yourself for what reason are you collecting particular information and how will you use it. When containing employee information, make sure to have signed release forms allowing to keep such info.
• Data security is a priority. Confirm that all staff, managers, and administrators understand what is the right way to maintain safe employee records. All data should be analyzed to keep only the required details and then encrypted.
• Be transparent with employees about data collection. Inform employees of what information is stored, where it is stored, and how it benefits them. In a major long-term study, companies that had the best corporate cultures, that encouraged all-around leadership initiatives, and that highly appreciated their employees, customers, and owners grew 682 percent in revenue.
• Ensure legal compliance. It’s important to know state, federal, and international laws that reference employee data collection and storage.
• Keep harsh policies on data gathering privacy and usage. Always review and keep all data policies up-to-date. Laws often change, and this will ensure you’re compliant with sensitive data management. What’s more different countries and states have different laws regarding privacy.
• View employee data holistically. Several data points, when combined, can aid in new HR trends and decisions to be made. Spotting patterns, as result, can create new departments and expand operations.