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What is people analytics?

HR & Workforce Planning

People analytics is the practice of analyzing data about an organization's people to answer business questions and guide decisions about hiring, retention, development, and workforce planning. It is also called HR analytics or workforce analytics. Most of its data comes from internal systems such as the HRIS, payroll, performance reviews, and engagement surveys.

How people analytics is defined

The CIPD, the UK professional body for HR and people development, describes people analytics as analyzing data about people to solve business problems. It notes that the practice is sometimes called HR analytics, talent analytics, or workforce analytics. The data can come from HR systems, IT systems, and other departments' systems, and from external sources such as salary surveys.

The CIPD describes three levels of maturity:

  • Descriptive: What happened, such as a snapshot of workforce composition or employee turnover tracked over time.
  • Predictive: What is likely to happen next, such as a model that combines historical workforce data, external labor market trends, and financial forecasts to project future workforce needs.
  • Prescriptive: What to do about it, such as interventions designed with stakeholders, with agreed ways to measure whether they worked.

Most organizations can do descriptive analytics, and few can do prescriptive analytics, according to the CIPD.

Standards also shape what gets measured. ISO 30414:2025, the international standard for human capital reporting and disclosure, sets required and recommended metrics across areas that include workforce composition, costs, productivity, recruitment, mobility and succession planning, workforce turnover, and skills, capabilities, and development.

Why people analytics matters for talent teams

People analytics turns questions about the workforce into evidence leaders can act on:

  • Talent acquisition teams can see which roles and teams lose people fastest and plan hiring before gaps open.
  • HR leaders can test whether development, mobility, or retention programs change outcomes.
  • HR and finance can work from the same workforce numbers. ISO 30414 states that effective human capital analysis and reporting needs a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach across the two functions.

The research base is still thin. A peer-reviewed evidence-based review of HR analytics by Marler and Boudreau found 60 articles on the topic, of which only 14 were in quality peer-reviewed journals. The authors concluded that adoption was very low despite evidence linking HR analytics to organizational performance.

Data about people is also sensitive. The CIPD cautions that monitoring data can feel intrusive even when it is lawful, and it recommends explaining clearly what is monitored and why.

How Findem approaches people analytics

Findem is a People Intelligence Platform, and it treats people analytics as a separate discipline that works alongside people intelligence. Findem's guide to people intelligence explains the difference: people analytics measures your own workforce, while people intelligence starts from the person and the market, covering what people have done, where they are now, and how they connect, whether or not they work for you. The guide says most organizations need both. It also says Findem may not be the right starting point if your main need is reporting on your current workforce, such as attrition, compensation, or pay transparency reporting.

What Findem adds is external context. Findem market intelligence compares team composition, experience profiles, tenure, and growth patterns across companies and peers, and shows where talent is concentrated and how it moves over time. It draws on Findem's 3D People Graph, which connects trillions of data points across individuals, companies, and time, built from more than 100,000 data sources.

Findem's talent analytics product is narrower in scope. It compares sourcing channel performance and outreach results for recruiting teams. Across the platform, Findem's AI does not make hiring decisions, and a person reviews the results before they influence one.

Further reading

Related terms

Sources

Frequently asked questions.

In practice, yes. The CIPD notes that people analytics is sometimes called HR analytics, talent analytics, or workforce analytics. The label matters less than the questions a team answers and the data it uses to answer them.

Most of it comes from internal systems such as the HRIS, payroll, performance reviews, engagement surveys, and the ATS. The CIPD adds data from IT systems and other departments, external sources such as salary surveys, and qualitative data such as performance appraisals and exit interview notes.

The CIPD uses these terms to describe maturity. Descriptive analytics shows what happened, such as turnover over time. Predictive analytics projects what will happen next, such as future workforce needs. Prescriptive analytics recommends what to do and how to measure whether it worked. Most organizations can do descriptive analytics, and few can do prescriptive analytics.

People analytics mainly reports on the people an organization already employs. People intelligence, as Findem defines it, starts from the person and the market: what people have done, where they are now, and how they connect, whether or not they work for you. Most organizations need both.

No. Findem says it may not be the right starting point if your main need is reporting on your current workforce, such as attrition, compensation, or pay transparency reporting. Findem adds external context, such as how peer companies build teams and where talent is concentrated.