by Konstantin Tskhay​

November 13th

The State of People Analytics 2025:
My Two Cents on Research

↓

Hi, Friends,

It's been a few months.

I've been on an extended vacation, visiting my family abroad and then travelling through Japan.

Let's do a quick news update first:

Upon my return, I spoke about the concept of Employee Lifetime Value (ELTV) with Daneal Charney at Tech Talent North.

For those who don't know, Employee Lifetime Value (ELTV) is the productivity and performance you get from your employees over their tenure. It's super useful to discuss this with the board or your C-suite.

Interested to see how you stack up?

We are conducting a research study and will provide the benchmarks to those who complete our 6-minute survey here.

---

Next, we are having another people analytics meet-up in Toronto. The group has grown to 440 people, and this time, our host is Sun Life with a Panel of Skills and AI Afficipnados:

​Alycia Damp, PhD is the Head of HR Science at Hireguide and holds a PhD in Industrial Relations and Human Resources.

​Jonathan Kreindler is a former strategy consultant and the cofounder of Receptiviti. This analytics company helps organizations understand the psychology of their customers, audiences, employees, and people who matter to their business.

​Matt Lewis-Strauch is the Head of Future of the Workforce at Sun Life and works with leaders to reimagine the 'who, what, where, and how' of work.

I am super excited about this.

---

Finally, let's get to the newsletter, where we will discuss the latest and greatest report from HR.com on The State of People Analytics and some of my own takeaways.

For those who don't know, I serve on the advisory board for HR.com in People Analytics, where we gather to talk about the report data collection, processing, and interpretation.

Anyway, here are some of my own quick key takeaways:

1. HR is still behind when it comes to People Analytics
2. However, it continues to own the function
3. The main reason is the focus on HR things

Let's dig in!

#1. HR is still behind when it comes to People Analytics.

Just look at this chart—only a few respondents have indicated their people analytics efforts are effective. This is the same as we saw in previous years, and 44% of laggards are not helping our cause.

This is despite a relatively large proportion of respondents believing that people analytics help make talent decisions that improve business outcomes.

What is going on here? Why discrepancy?

Let's dig deeper.

#2. HR continues to own people analytics efforts

In most cases, HR as a whole or someone in HR is responsible for people analytics in organizations.

​People Analytics education and new technologies may have improved companies' ability to collect and interpret people's data in the last two years compared to the previous two years.

Yet, notice that these numbers never exceed 25% "very good" rating, reminding us how far we still have to go.

I think the next insight is where the true explanation for the discrepancy comes through, however:

#3 People Analytics has not fully embraced business outcomes

Just look at the drop in how HR uses analytics for sentiment and attitudes versus focusing on strategy, workforce planning, and business outcomes:

You can see that People Analytics is mainly done for HR, not the rest of the organization with most of the insights being effective for HR leadership, and less so used by other groups:

Further, we see once again that People Analytics only integrates other non-HR data into analysis relatively rarely! Less than 25% responded "Always" or "Often" here. Aye.

Even then, most organizations don't use too much external data in analysis.

So, all in all, perhaps, it's not only the issue of whether you are using analytics, whether you have fancy software to support you, or whether you hire the head of people analytics.

If your analytics are not helpful to the business and drive decision-making, why are you running analytics in the first place?

So here is a challenge for you:

Next time you run People Analytics, connect it to the business problem rather than default to the typical analyses of engagement and retention we love so much!

I wonder today if HR has become complacent or comfortable analyzing things we know well.

Perhaps, to unlock the true insight, we must focus on things that truly matter to the business growth.

Ciao!

K

P.S. Don't forget to complete a short survey here to get ELTV benchmarks and show your senior leaders how you stack up to your peers.

---

Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:

#1

If you’re still looking to get started in People Analytics, I recommend starting with my affordable course:

​Practical People Analytics: Build data-driven HR programs to 10x your professional effectiveness, business impact, and career. This comprehensive course will teach you everything from building an HR dashboard for business results to driving growth through more advanced analytics (i.e., regression). Join your peers today! ​
​

#2

If you are looking for support in your human capital programs, such as engagement, retention, and compensation & benefits, and want to take a more data-driven approach, contact me at Tskhay & Associates for consulting services. Or simply reply to this email!