What is Employee Data Segmentation?
Employee data segmentation is a crucial part of people analytics. It looks at survey results based on a grouping of one or more employee attributes – the characteristics that make us unique. This data is typically found in your Human Resources Information System (HRIS). Information missing from your system can be captured in a new survey. The main intentions behind using an employee segmentation model are to easily find where there are issues. To see the smoke before there’s fire. And to see the positives happening in your organization so that you can replicate or emulate them elsewhere. Like a painter who arranges and mixes paints on a palette to create compelling works of art, employee attribute lists can be arranged and mixed in survey reporting to create compelling insights that lead to great work experiences for all. To segment frequent pulse surveys and more extensive employee engagement surveys, results can be split into groups that share common characteristics. A variety of other attributes and different sentiment factors can be blended to paint a picture far more detailed than one painted using broad brush strokes. For example, rather than looking only at aggregate (broad brush stroke) employee engagement survey results, you can look at how GenX women with diverse cultural backgrounds feel about team and collaboration, their direct manager, communication. What are their sentiments around job satisfaction or training and development? How does this compare by business unit or region or with their male counterparts? What’s happened since the last survey? Did results move up or down?Employee Attributes Lists: Then and Now
Traditionally when employees fill out surveys, organizations have included questions like: What department are you in? Who is your leader? One of the problems with these types of questions is the increased risk to data integrity. People can and do accidentally make the wrong choice (inadvertently identifying as a member of marketing instead of sales for instance). Plus, people are less apt to give real feedback because of a perceived lack of confidentiality. Sophisticated survey tools have changed all that. Nowadays leading employee survey platforms import demographic employee attributes directly from your HRIS.Employee Segmentation Examples
The number and types of employee characteristics you can divide into groups are as expansive as the information in your dataset.
Business-based employee demographics
Employee attributes lists can include business-based employee demographic information such as:
- Business function (Finance/Professional Services/Sales/IT/Engineering/Operations)
- Job level (C-suite/Director/Manager/Individual contributor)
- Business unit
- Country, region, or location
- Compensation level
- Full or part-time status
- Union or non-union
- Blue or white-collar
- Tenure
- Stage in the employee lifecycle (new hire, mid-career, broaching retirement)
- Last performance rating
People-based characteristics
Employee survey results can be segmented by people-based characteristics that have little to do with your organization and everything to do with the individual. People-based attributes include, among others:- Gender identity
- Sexual orientation
- Religion or belief system
- Ethnicity
- Language
- Socio-economic status
- People with a disability
- Age
- Generation
- Traditionalists (born between 1922 and 1945)
- Baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964)
- Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980)
- Generation Y or millennial (born between 1981 and 2000)
- Generation Z (born after 2000)
- Marital status
- Family size
- Caregiver status
- Education
- Personality type
- Interests
Sentiment-based factors
Analysis can also segment responses by sentiment-based attributes involving:- Motivation factors
- Engagement factors
- Orientation towards change
- Work/life balance
- What makes employees feel valued
- Loyalty to the organization
Keeping Employee Engagement Survey Results and Other Feedback Confidential
In the WorkTango world, it’s our job and firm conviction to “project and protect” the voice of employees. This gives your employees the confidence to share candid views. And gives you reliable data on which to make impactful decisions. Employee ID, email address and name are excluded from attribute filter list choices as well as employee engagement or frequent pulse survey reports. As your arms-length survey partner, this information is accessed and used exclusively for distribution and response rate reminder purposes. When it comes time for employee survey reporting, if the number of people on a team doesn’t meet the minimum threshold (we recommend five at least) data will never be lost but will only be reported in the aggregate.