Harnessing Workforce Analytics to Elevate BPO Excellence

The outsourcing sector thrives on a vast pool of skilled talent. However, it is not enough to survive today’s fast-paced business landscape. Service providers must optimize their workforce to maintain operational efficiency, service quality, and growth.

Workforce analytics has emerged as a viable solution. It is a data-driven strategy that utilizes advanced data analysis tools and metrics to measure employee performance. The goal is to improve human resource (HR) productivity and retention.

Continue reading this article to learn how BPO companies leverage workforce analytics to empower employees and drive operations.

Overview of workforce analytics

Workforce analytics involves collecting, studying, and interpreting employee data on daily activities and deliverables. The data comes from various sources, such as HR information systems, time-tracking software, performance management tools, and customer surveys.

This approach differs significantly from HR analytics. Workforce analytics focuses on employees’ performance and impact on the entire organization. HR analytics solely captures administrative functions, including recruitment and employee relations.

As providers increase their bottom line while retaining scalable BPO personnel, workforce analytics convert employee data into actionable insights for upskilling or reskilling initiatives.

These key performance indicators (KPIs) assist them in such efforts:

• Talent acquisition and onboarding
  • Time to hire: The average time to hire in BPO and fill an open position
  • Cost per hire: The total cost to fill a single job vacancy
  • Quality of hire: The assessment of new hire performance
  • Source of hire: The identification of effective recruitment channels

• Employee performance and productivity
  • Average handle time: The average time to complete a customer interaction
  • First call resolution rate: The percentage of customer problems resolved during the initial contact
  • Error rate: The frequency of mistakes made by workers
  • Cycle time: The average period to accomplish a specific task or process
  • Output per unit of time: The amount of work an employee produced within a set time frame

• Employee engagement and learning
  • Employee net promoter score (eNPS): The measurement of workers’ loyalty and eagerness to recommend their employer
  • Absenteeism rate: The frequency of employee absences
  • Employee turnover rate: The percentage of workers who leave the company within a specified period
  • Training completion rates: The percentage of employees who fulfill training assignments
  • Learning and development spend per employee: The cost of employee skill development programs

• Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I)
  • Workforce diversity: The representation of varying workforce demographics  (e.g., age, gender, race, ethnicity)
  • Pay equity: The analysis of whether employees receive fair compensation regardless of demographics
  • Promotion rates by demographic: The determination of potential disparities in job promotion for different workforce groups
  • Employee DE&I satisfaction: The workers’ perception of the company’s DE&I efforts

• Customer satisfaction
  • Customer satisfaction score (CSAT): The rate of how satisfied customers are after a transaction
  • Customer effort score (CES): The ease or difficulty consumers experience when engaging with company employees
  • Customer retention rate: The percentage of repeat buyers

How BPO firms use workforce analytics to manage staff

Providing easily deployable and skilled workers is what BPO is known for. Outsourcing companies offer access to world-class professionals at cost-effective pricing. However, they need a structured talent management strategy to maintain excellent workforce performance.

Thus, service vendors implement workforce analytics initiatives. The succeeding sections elaborate on how they use this innovative technique to boost employee and business performance.

Identify skill gaps and training needs

According to Wiley’s 2023 market report, about 29% of organizations struggle to grow, innovate, and compete due to a skills gap. They also believe the issue decreases efficiency and profitability while increasing operating costs.

BPO companies avoid such challenges by leveraging workforce analytics. Their HR departments use KPIs and workforce data to identify underperforming individuals and areas with skills shortages.

Providers then compare the results against industry benchmarks to determine broader talent deficiencies across their enterprise.

Below are other strategies that inform their efforts in developing and implementing targeted skills development and training initiatives:

• Regularly assess employee skills against the requirements of current roles and future business needs to specify capabilities that workers lack.
• Analyze the frequency with which employees access knowledge base articles or training materials to reveal topics they struggle to understand the most.
• Analyze customer feedback to identify causes of negative reviews and prioritize agent training needs.
• Track the frequency and type of employee-made errors to improve work strategies and avoid data breaches that cost $4.45 million on average.
• Study reasons for employee departures, particularly skills-related factors, to pinpoint workforce engagement and training programs to implement.
• Monitor industry skill trends and check their alignment with in-house workforce competencies to address potential gaps.

Improve workforce engagement and retention

BPO organizations use workforce analytics to enhance employee engagement and retention. They optimize the data to understand workers’ sentiments, work strategies, and productivity patterns.

These practical measures help them avoid costly turnover rates and delays:

• Sift the findings from surveys, collaboration platforms, and emails to identify the causes of employee dissatisfaction, frustration, or burnout.
• Look over individual and team performance data to track trends indicating disengagement, such as constantly low productivity, increased output error, or frequent absenteeism.
• Use predictive analytics tools to identify workers at risk of leaving based on historical employee behavior, performance, and demographics data.
• Investigate the cause of employee resignation via exit interviews and use the gathered insights to improve the workforce experience.

Besides determining engagement and retention issues to solve in real time, service providers use workforce analytics software to help recognize employees who frequently perform well and show leadership potential.

This information guides BPO vendors’ investments in personalized recognition, mentorship, and career development programs. These targeted rewards motivate workers to increase their company engagement and loyalty.

Boost recruitment and onboarding

The latest infographics from EMP Trust HR note that 69% of employees who experience proper recruitment and onboarding will likely stay with their employers for about three years. Enterprises that consistently follow this process achieve an average 54% increase in productivity.

BPO organizations attain such benefits by optimizing workforce analytics technology. This innovative approach helps them boost recruitment and onboarding by:

• Pinpointing effective channels to source, hire, and orient top talent
• Creating interview questions around needed qualifications in various BPO roles
• Accelerating the background checks of applicants and new hires
• Personalizing onboarding activities to meet employee needs and demands
• Identifying individuals at risk of early turnover and implementing resolutions accordingly
• Reducing time-to-hire and onboarding process

The bottom line

The BPO sector relies on a skilled and flexible workforce to deliver cost-efficient support services. Amid the rapidly growing market, providers must ensure their employees’ capabilities stay current with changing demands.

Workforce analytics is critical to building more effective and scalable personnel. This advanced solution helps BPO companies determine in-house skill gaps and ways to mitigate their impact on daily productivity and output.

The results of measuring KPIs also inform support vendors on how to enhance their recruitment, onboarding, and training programs. This empowers BPO workers to maintain superior performance and deliver high-quality client support.

Are you curious about how a BPO firm optimizes workforce analytics for better employee relations and services?

Let’s connect and exchange insights. We can also discuss how our well-trained HR professionals can help you maximize the benefits of workforce analytics and improve your human capital management (HCM).