1. What is Workforce Intelligence?
Workforce Intelligence is part of the A-INSIGHTS solution and offers unique insight into companies' personnel and staffing trends based on their associated members on professional networking websites.
Looking at workforce intelligence is relevant because:
Staff expenses accounts for 15-20% of total costs for food companies on average, making it the largest cost item after cost of goods sold
Moves in workforce have predictive power for what will happen next - staffing trends are often the first sign of new strategic initiatives
Use the Workforce Intelligence insights directionally to understand staffing dynamics. Most companies have a coverage of 30-50% of the FTE count in the annual report, mostly because blue-collar roles are less covered (as opposed to white-collar roles). Also geography plays a role in coverage because some countries (e.g. Germany and China) are less represented on global professional networking websites.
2. What insights can I get with Workforce Intelligence?
Workforce Intelligence offers forward-looking insights on several themes:
Track staffing trends and anticipate strategic moves: Workforce trends can offer strong insight into a company's (future) strategy. For example, increasing headcount in a particular region or function can signal market expansion or upcoming product development.
Analyze organizational structures and obtain clear benchmarks: Having a clear overview of companies' workforce can help to identify operational (in)efficiencies. For example, analyzing Sales and Marketing roles across companies can help identify what kind of workforce setup is successful (also be relating it to the financial performance of the companies in question), and provide a clear benchmark against the effectiveness of the own Sales and Marketing teams.
3. What is the general methodology behind Workforce Intelligence?
The basis for our Workforce Intelligence coverage are company pages on professional networking websites. We try to map all associated professional network pages to the overarching company it belongs to, e.g.:
We periodically review these pages to ensure our coverage is as good as can be, but feel free to reach out to us in case you feel like certain pages might be missing.
After determining the pages to follow per company, we extract all associated profiles that belong to these company pages. We then process the raw information found on these profiles in several steps: We aggregate the individual pages to the overarching entities, apply data cleaning, ensure the raw job titles from the experiences are mapped to standardized categories, and highlight specific leadership positions.
We stick with start and end dates as listed on people's profiles to determine the new joiners and leavers in a particular quarter:
If someone started their position in February, that person counts towards joiners in Q1
Similarly, if someone's experience at a company ended in February, that person counts as a leaver for Q1
4. What's the update frequency of Workforce Intelligence?
We update all workforce data quarterly. This is done in the first week of every new quarter to be able to paint the right picture on the past quarter.
5. What should I take into account when interpreting Workforce Intelligence?
Workforce Intelligence is a very powerful and compelling addition to the A-INSIGHTS solution and provides unique insight into companies' personnel structure and trends. Nonetheless, the nature of the underlying data comes with some guidance that is important to take into account. We recommend using the Workforce Intelligence insights directionally to understand staffing dynamics, with emphasis on white-collar roles.
Coverage of Workforce Intelligence vs. the FTE count from the annual report
Most companies have a coverage of 30-50% compared to the FTE count from the annual report. There could be several reasons as to why the coverage of Workforce Intelligence does not match the FTE total from the annual report:
Frequency of use of professional networks within certain job groups: White-collar roles are generally well-represented on professional networks, while people with more blue-collar roles are typically less likely to have a profile on professional networking websites. Therefore, the coverage in Workforce Intelligence likely understates blue-collar roles such as manufacturing and production. White-collar roles are typically well-covered, which means the Workforce Intelligence insights should paint a representative picture of developments within these groups.
Frequency of use of professional networks within certain countries: The popularity of professional networking websites also varies among countries. For example, countries like the United States and the Netherlands are typically covered well in Workforce Intelligence, while countries like Germany and China are not - this is simply because the use of professional networking websites in these countries is less popular.
Privacy settings: Not all users of professional networks can be covered - some user profiles have very strict privacy settings, meaning they can't be picked up and are therefore missing from the coverage.
Fulltime vs. parttime workers: FTE counts in the annual reports are about full-time equivalent, while profiles on professional networks can also apply to part-time contracts
Self-reported information
The information on professional networking websites is self-reported by the users. Therefore, no guarantees can be given on the accuracy, completeness or up-to-dateness of individual profiles.