Workforce analytics is the practice of using data about how work happens, such as hours, attendance, application use and project time, to make decisions about staffing, workload and process. It ranges from a few reports on tracked time to platforms that model a whole organization. Small and mid-sized teams usually need the first kind: a handful of trusted numbers, reviewed regularly.
Key takeaways
- It answers questions about teams and processes, not about one person's Tuesday.
- Four levels: what happened, why, what is likely next and what to do.
- Six metrics cover most of what a manager of 10 to 200 people needs.
- The data is personal. Transparency and aggregation are part of doing it properly.
What are the four types of workforce analytics?
Descriptive
What happened? Hours worked, attendance, time by project.
Where everyone startsDiagnostic
Why did it happen? Overtime rose because two projects overlapped.
Needs contextPredictive
What is likely next? At this rate the budget runs out in three weeks.
Needs historyPrescriptive
What should we do? Move one person, or push the date.
Needs judgment
Most of the value for a team under 200 people is in the first two. A clear picture of what happened, and an honest account of why, changes more decisions than a forecast nobody trusts.
Where does the data come from?
| Source | What it gives you |
|---|---|
| Time tracking | Hours worked, by person, project and task |
| Attendance and leave | Present, late, absent and leave days |
| Application and website use | Where the working day went |
| Project tools | Work planned, started and finished |
| Payroll and HR systems | Headcount, cost and tenure |
| Calendars | Time in meetings |
You do not need all six. Time, attendance and project data answer most early questions.
Which metrics matter?
| Metric | Formula | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Utilization | Billable hours ÷ available hours × 100 | How much capacity is sold |
| Capacity | Available hours × focus factor | How much work you can plan |
| Absenteeism rate | Days absent ÷ available workdays × 100 | Unplanned absence |
| Overtime share | Overtime hours ÷ total hours × 100 | Whether workload is sustainable |
| Budget burn | Hours used ÷ hours budgeted × 100 | Whether a project is on track |
| Productivity split | Productive, neutral and unproductive time | How the tracked day is spent |
Each has its own guide: utilization, capacity, absenteeism, overtime and the productivity score.
How is it different from employee monitoring?
They use much of the same data and ask different questions.
| Employee monitoring | Workforce analytics | |
|---|---|---|
| Unit | The individual | The team, role or process |
| Question | What did this person do? | How does work flow, and where does it stall? |
| Time frame | Today and this week | Weeks, quarters and trends |
| Typical output | A timeline, a screenshot, an alert | A chart, a comparison, a decision |
| Main risk | Micromanagement | False confidence in a number |
In practice one product often does both. What matters is which view you manage from. See what is employee monitoring?
What are the privacy rules?
Analytics on people is still personal data.
- People notice. In the American Psychological Association's 2023 survey, 51% of US workers knew their employer monitored them with technology, and monitored workers reported more stress.
- Regulators care about use. The UK regulator lists monitoring that could lead to financial loss, such as monitoring used for performance management, among its examples of high-risk processing that needs an impact assessment.
Do
- Tell employees what data feeds the analytics
- Report by team and role first
- Show people their own numbers
- Keep only the history you use
Do not
- Build league tables of individuals
- Feed scores straight into pay decisions
- Collect data with no question in mind
- Keep everything forever
How do you start?
Pick one decision
"Do we need another hire in support?" is better than "let's get insights".
Choose the metric that informs it
For that question: hours worked, overtime share and queue time.
Get clean data for a quarter
Automatic time tracking and attendance, with rules people have seen.
Review monthly
Thirty minutes, the same charts each time.
Act, then check
Make one change and see whether the number moves.
Which kind of tool do you need?
Time tracker with reports
Records hours, attendance and activity and reports on them. Suits most teams up to a few hundred people.
Start hereWorkforce analytics platform
Adds benchmarks, capacity models and organization-wide dashboards. Suits large employers with analysts.
When you outgrow reportsBusiness intelligence tool
Combines exports from several systems. Suits companies with a data team.
Bring your own data
Analytics platforms in this market include ActivTrak and Insightful. How they compare is covered in ActivTrak alternatives and in BirdsEye vs ActivTrak vs Insightful.
What analytics does BirdsEye include?
BirdsEye is a time tracker with reports, the first kind of tool above. It is narrower than a dedicated analytics platform, and it says so.
Reports and analytics in BirdsEye
- Headline metrics
- Tracked time, active employees, productivity score, idle time and peak day, each compared with the previous period
- Charts
- Productivity split, trend over time, hours by day of week, application usage, time by project and team comparison
- Filters
- Date range, team and individual employee
- Employee view
- Daily breakdown, hour-of-day heat map, application usage and attendance for one person
- Project report
- Totals against budget, by day, hour, person, application and task
- Export
- Time entries and the productivity report as CSV
Analytics with period comparison, project reports and saved views are on the Team plan and above. Managers see only their own teams, and employees can see their own data. See reports and analytics.
Frequently asked questions
What is workforce analytics?
The use of data on hours, attendance, activity and projects to make better decisions about staffing, workload and process.
What is the difference between workforce analytics and people analytics?
The terms overlap. People analytics usually leans on HR data such as hiring, pay and turnover. Workforce analytics leans on how work is done: time, activity and capacity.
Is workforce analytics the same as employee monitoring?
No. Monitoring looks at what an individual did. Analytics looks at teams, trends and processes. The same data can serve both.
Do small businesses need workforce analytics software?
Usually not a dedicated platform. A time tracker with good reports covers the questions a small business asks.