1. Get strategic – identify a question/problem and use the data available to understand that problem, rather than trying to wade into a sea of data without a strategy. Do you want to know where to focus your employee engagement efforts? Are you hiring the right people? Why is your talent leaving you? Is engagement impacting your customer experience? To what extent are your disengaged employees impacting others? How can you profile what your most engaged employees look like?

2. Build a story – show how the data can be put to use and turned into real results. It gives you the ability to say: “Look manager A, you have three employees who, based on historical data, we think fit into a high risk group for potentially leaving. These are the types of things that actually could get them to stay.”

According to Inc. Magazine, over 50% of employees who leave their organisation of their own choosing do so within a year of their start date. Forbes shows that 41% of organisations have problems retaining high performing employees. Putting your insights to use to hire and retain the right people for your organisation could change these figures.

3. Play to your strengths – if managing big amounts of data is not your thing, outsource it to someone else. Big data is daunting and without a programme in place that consolidates it and identifies patterns it is just big data. As Booking.com says: “We never tell a hotelier how to run their hotel because that’s their core business. A hotelier would never tell us what the best words are to bid on in Google Search because we’re the experts in that. Having everyone leveraging their strengths and working towards a common goal is the perfect partnership.”

4. Think flexibly – don’t be afraid to start again if answers don’t match the hypothesis, but also know that it is possible to bring in multiple trend, benchmark and hierarchical comparisons. You may be surprised by the results, but that’s no bad thing. That’s the insight you need to progress.

Through tracking the journey that employees take, you are able to predict the future. This doesn’t mean focusing on individuals or removing the sense of confidentiality or anonymity. What it does mean is that an individual’s journey becomes part of a bigger picture, used to pinpoint trends and maximise insights to inform business strategy.

To find out more, read our case study: Don't be staggered by data, be overwhelmed by insights