HR data cleanliness in practice

Is there anything more valuable than your HR data?

Initially, you may not agree.

Poor HR data quality is rampant in many small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in the UK, hindering the potential benefits that can be gained.

However, if managing employee data is a priority, it can provide real insight into your workforce.

Who is leaving and why? Where does disease spread? How much does the bonus actually cost?

Good HR data quality turns your endless questions into clear answers.

If you want to operate more strategically and improve your HR data hygiene, read on.

What is meant by HR data cleanliness?

For those unfamiliar with the term ‘data hygiene’, here’s a quick overview.

At its core, HR data hygiene is the practice of keeping your workforce data accurate, up-to-date, and well-organized.

Now, practical HR data hygiene is:

• Ensure records are correct and free from duplicates or typos.
• Fill in the gaps so that the information is complete.
• Store data in one consistent place.
• Delete data you no longer need.

The quality of your HR data impacts every part of your business.

HR, payroll, finance, and compliance all depend on trustworthy data.

Get it right, and you’ll have a wealth of knowledge supporting everything you do.

If you make mistakes, you not only limit your own abilities, but you also open yourself to risk, error, and non-compliance.

How bad HR data hygiene has become over time

Poor HR data hygiene often stems from simple mistakes.

Perhaps the National Insurance number was a typo or the employee’s address was mistyped.

These mistakes may seem harmless; However, the problem is that bad data doesn’t stick around.

Every subsequent process inherits this error.

Incorrect details are entered into your payroll, reporting, and compliance records.

What started as a five-minute fix turned into hours of reconciliations, failed applications, and frustrated employees.

How HR software can help improve the quality of your HR data

So, how do you actually improve your HR data hygiene? It depends on the systems and processes you have in place.

If your data is spread across spreadsheets and inboxes, it’s very difficult to maintain good quality HR data.

With HR software, you can effectively support three key pillars that are essential to maintaining good employee data:

• Accuracy
• Completeness
• Accessibility

Accuracy of employee data

Your employee data is only useful if it is correct.

The most well-thought-out strategic HR decisions are useless if the data behind them is wrong.

Inaccurate recording impacts all aspects of HR, messing up your reporting, disrupting workforce planning, and causing you to act on an incorrect picture.

This is an area where HR software finds its place.

Centralized HR systems, with employee self-service, hand most of the data entry back to the people who know it best: employees.

Our HR Director, Lizzy Barry, explains: “The real value-add for HR teams of all sizes is giving employees the opportunity to self-serve when there is something we want them to do or information they need to give us.

“Being able to give them a place to do that not only means the information is truly accurate because they’re the ones entering the information directly, but it also cuts down on the dreaded manual entry.”

HR and payroll integration

Payroll is often the area most impacted by bad data; If employee information entered into payroll – such as salary, overtime, bank details, etc. – is incorrect, errors are inevitable and staff will not be paid correctly.

CIPP analysis clearly lays out the risks: poor employee data leads to record discrepancies, failed submissions to HMRC, payment delays and backlogs of correction work.

This is where integration between HR and your payroll system becomes important to maintain data accuracy.

Moving data manually significantly increases the risk of errors.

But when the two systems are connected, data flows automatically between them, rather than being copied manually.

Salary increases, new starts, changes in working hours or leave, are recorded in the HR software, immediately entered into the payroll.

There is no need to duplicate entries and there is no chance for the two systems to get out of sync.

Data completeness

Every data gap is a liability.

The missing information is the metrics you can’t measure and the questions you can’t answer.

CIPD recommends that the business world proactively seeks opportunities where human resource analysis can help solve critical problems and jointly develop solutions with stakeholders to ensure they are fit for purpose.

To get a complete picture of what’s going on in your business, you need to collect more data than just the basics.

For example, you should capture information about:

• Performance data from assessments and goal setting.
• Records of who has completed training courses and qualifications.
• Reasons for absence and return to work interview.
• Milestones across the employee lifecycle.

To gain these rich insights, first, you need the right interface to collect diverse data.

In your HR software, for example, have a special graduate screen that collects important information and can display questionnaires.

This type of functionality can be applied to a variety of scenarios, from capturing data while onboarding new starters to comprehensive quarterly review processes.

Additionally, your HR software should also automatically capture and store real-time data on other important people areas, such as absenteeism and churn.

Turn data into action

With a complete picture of all your important data points, you can start implementing a meaningful HR strategy.

For example, if you look at absenteeism patterns and team performance in relation to department turnover, you may see worrying trends that indicate the team is struggling and the manager may need training.

This type of insight allows you to take action before a problem escalates.

Data accessibility

The best data in the world is useless if you can’t access it.

Does this sound familiar? The information is there somewhere, but accessing it is a slow and manual process.

Many HR professionals struggle to gather information from scattered sources, and by the time everything is collected, cleaned, and formatted, the data is out of date.

You need to easily find, display, and share relevant information.

That’s the role of modern HR software.

Housing all your people data in one centralized location makes accessibility fast and simple.

In practice, this means customizable dashboards display the metrics you achieve every day, from sick costs to headcount and lost days.

Plus, a library of ready-to-use reports, which you can schedule and run on demand, makes in-depth analysis less time-consuming.

The real win for HR professionals is that all the information is available instantly.

Because data is pulled directly from the source, your dashboards and reports reflect the latest changes automatically.

Unlock the power of your data

HR data is very useful, but it can only be trusted if the data is trustworthy.

Improve your HR data hygiene, and the insights will prove it.

If you’re looking for HR software that makes HR data hygiene simple, non-laborious, check out Staffology HR.

Our cloud-based HR software, Staffology HR, removes the burden of managing employee data and empowers you to make the biggest impact.

Learn more about Staffology HR here, or download the software brochure below.