How Small Organizations Can Get Started With HR Analytics

You do not need expensive systems or a data analyst to start HR analytics. Start with one business question, data in Excel and a few metrics you can act on.

The owner of a 60-person company asks HR, “Why have so many salespeople quit this year?” HR feels it is a lot, but cannot say how many, from which teams, how long they stayed before leaving, or why, because the data is scattered across paper files, several Excel sheets and each manager’s memory. This is the best starting point for HR analytics: one real business question.

What is HR analytics?

HR analytics means using data about people in your organisation, such as hiring, turnover, absence and performance reviews, to answer questions that lead to better decisions. Small organisations do not need complex dashboards or an expensive HRIS. A well-structured Excel or Google Sheets file is enough for the first year.

Start with a question, not with data

A common mistake is collecting everything first and deciding later what to use it for, which usually ends in a big file nobody opens. Choose one or two questions leadership genuinely cares about, such as:

• At what length of service do most leavers quit?
• Which roles take longest to fill, and at which stage do they stall?
• Which hiring channel brings people who most often pass probation?
• Which team has unusually high absence?

Essential metrics

Retention

• Turnover rate: the number of leavers in a period compared with average headcount in the same period, split into voluntary and involuntary.
• Early turnover: the share of people who leave within their first year, which often signals selection or onboarding problems.

Recruitment

• Time to hire: from the day a role opens to the day the candidate accepts.
• Source of hire: job sites, referrals, social media or agencies.

Read about recruitment metrics in detail in recruitment funnel metrics.

Workforce

• Headcount by department, level and length of service.
• Absence rate by team.

Keep data clean from the start

Messy data produces wrong numbers and damages credibility. Set simple rules:

1. One row per employee, using an employee ID rather than names as the reference.
2. Dropdown lists for department, position and reason for leaving, so spellings do not vary.
3. One date format across the whole file.
4. Add records as soon as people join or leave, not in a year-end batch.

Example: salespeople leaving

HR at the company above went back over salespeople who left in the past year and found most left within their first three months, and almost all came from teams without a buddy system. After presenting this to leadership, the company decided to pilot buddies and stepped sales targets for new hires, tracking results each quarter. The value of HR analytics is not in the chart but in the decision that follows.

One number that leads to a decision is worth more than a ten-page dashboard nobody uses.

Read results carefully

• Small organisations have few people, so a change of two or three can make percentages jump. Look at counts and percentages together.
• Correlation is not always causation. Use data to raise questions, then confirm by talking to employees.
• Comparing with your own earlier periods is more useful than comparing with other organisations whose context differs.

Handle employee data properly

Employee data is personal data under Thailand’s Personal Data Protection Act. Limit who can access the file, report in aggregate rather than by individual where possible, and take care with sensitive data such as health information. Read the basics in PDPA and employee data, and consult a legal professional about your organisation’s specific situation.

Get started in 30 days

1. Week 1: talk with leadership and choose one business question.
2. Week 2: combine the relevant data into one file following the clean-data rules.
3. Week 3: calculate two or three metrics and find initial explanations.
4. Week 4: present one page with a proposal for what to try and how to track it.

To build Excel or basic data analysis skills for HR work, browse courses from our learning partners, and when you are ready to present to leadership, read HR metrics executives want to see.