People analytics: how to use data to assess and develop skills

Companies today collect an enormous amount of data on people: performance, feedback, training, daily activities. But this data often remains unused or disaggregated, without generating useful insights for development or corporate training.

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People Analytics, if applied strategically, can change this dynamic. In particular, they offer great potential when geared toward skills assessment and development, transforming fragmented information into informed decisions and measurable growth paths.

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What are people analytics?

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People Analytics represent the application of data analytics to the world of human resources. It is not just about collecting biographical or administrative information, but about extracting useful insights from the behaviors, skills, performance and interactions of people within the organization.The goal is to support more strategic, rapid and evidence-based decisions, not subjective perceptions.

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Some examples? Monitoring the evolution of a team's skills in real time, identifying high-potential profiles for internal mobility, analyzing training completion rates, or discovering correlations between engagement and performance. A company can, for example, use the data to figure out what skills are lacking to address a technological transformation, or to design targeted training interventions based on specific gaps revealed during assessment.

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People Analytics thus become a bridge between data and decisions, helping HR and managers work more accurately and proactively, improving the effectiveness of actions on talent, development, and performance.

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From generic data to useful insights: the value of people analytics

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Thanks largely to technology, many companies have already equipped themselves to collect HR data, but they struggle to translate it into concrete actions. The real potential of people analytics lies not in the amount of data, but in the ability to integrate it and read it in the right context. This is especially true when it comes to competencies. Analyzing competency data allows you to:

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• understand what skills are really present in the company;
• highlight gaps between different roles, teams, or locations;
• support individual and collective development plans;
• identify hidden talents or high-potential people;
• improve the quality of decisions in recruitment, training, promotion.

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When this data is collected in a structured way, people analytics becomes a strategic ally of the HR function, helping to connect people to business objectives.

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Skills assessments: the first step to generating reliable data

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To use people analytics effectively, you need to start with quality data. This means adopting skills assessment tools that are standardized, consistent with the business model and capable of returning objective indicators, not opinions.

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Structured skills assessments are the starting point: they enable the collection of comparable information across people and roles, highlighting strengths, areas for development and observable behaviors.

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With this data at hand, analysis becomes more useful and HR decisions can be based on evidence, not perceptions. Training, for example, does not start from a generic catalog, but from real needs that are detected and tracked.

Skills development: data to design better

People analytics is not limited to the assessment phase: it becomes an engine for designing targeted, measurable and continuous development paths. Thanks to competency data, it is possible to:

• customize educational offerings according to specific needs;
• monitor skill evolution over time;
• adapt training content and formats to the maturity of the individual;
• assess the real impact of upskilling or reskilling interventions;
• strengthen the culture of feedback and continuous growth.

In this way, competency management becomes a dynamic, iterative process connected to strategic goals.

Integrating skills and data into HR decisions

One of the biggest challenges is to bring competency data into strategic HR processes, such as:

• performance reviews;
• internal mobility;
• succession plans;
• talent management;
• employer branding.

Having a clear and up-to-date view of skills enables action with greater precision and transparency, reducing bias and enhancing people's potential.

People analytics thus become not only a reporting system, but a cultural change tool that helps the organization become more aware, adaptive, and growth-oriented.

Skillvue: clear data, better decisions

Skillvue supports companies in collecting and interpreting skills data through AI-based tools validated by HR experts and psychometricians. Skills Assessment Agents enable structured assessment of soft skills and hard skills, generating useful insights to guide training, mobility, feedback and talent management.

The data collected are aggregated into customizable dashboards, which are useful for comparing teams, roles, locations and monitoring the evolution of competencies over time. This way, Skillvue transforms the concept of "people analytics" into a concrete lever for people and organizational growth.

Assess and develop skills with real data. Learn about Skillvue.

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