HR Data Quality: The Foundation of a Successful Analytics Initiative
Starting a People Analytics initiative without first checking and ensuring the quality of your data is like building a house on unstable foundations (yes, your data truly is the base of your Poeple Analytics journey).
Too often, organizations dive into analytics with enthusiasm, without realizing that their existing data quality is insufficient (inaccurate, missing, inconsistent information, etc.). The result? Unfortunately, the analyses will be biased, KPIs will be misinterpreted, and ultimately, the decisions made will be unjustified.
Why HR Data Quality Is Critical
HR data is often spread across multiple systems: payroll software, HRIS, ATS, LMS, Excel spreadsheets, or other in-house tools. In this context, it’s not uncommon to find errors such as duplicates, empty fields, outdated information, inconsistencies in job titles, or hire dates. These “imperfections,” even if they may seem minor at first glance, can have a major impact on the reliability of dashboards and tracked KPIs.
The Risks of Ignoring Data Quality
Overlooking data quality comes with significant risks. It can undermine HR’s credibility with leadership. If results are inconsistent or if KPIs vary from one extraction to another, the HR team risks losing the trust of key stakeholders. Worse still, strategic decisions might be made based on faulty analyses. This could lead you to invest time, money, and energy into programs that bring no real value to your organization.
What an HR Data Quality Audit Involves
An HR data quality audit helps take stock of the situation. It is a structured exercise designed to assess the consistency, completeness, and accuracy of available data. The goal is to identify critical fields to clean or standardize, detect inconsistencies across systems, and provide concrete recommendations to improve the overall reliability of your HR ecosystem.
At Kara RH, we provide a data quality audit service where your information is submitted to several hundred validation checks. For more information, click here.
Building a Strong Foundation for the Future
Investing in HR data quality means laying the groundwork for a sustainable and credible analytics approach. With solid foundations, organizations can finally harness the full potential of their data: better anticipate trends, detect early warning signals, and base decisions on a clear and accurate understanding of reality. In the medium term, this also enables more advanced analytics projects, and in the long term, opens the door to predictive analytics and artificial intelligence.
Before jumping into HR data visualizations, take the time to validate what lies beneath the surface. Investing in data quality is not just a “nice to have”—it’s essential if you want People Analytics to become a true lever for organizational transformation.
