The Certified Human Resources Analyst

By Zulk Shamsuddin

The Certified Human Resources Analyst ™ credential is a world-class certification that demonstrates the attainment of a defined level of technical knowledge and experience in human resources analytical practices and ethical behavior. It forms the basis of the assessment that applicants must pass to gain the Certified Human Resources Analyst ™ credential and inclusion in the Register of The Global Academy of Finance and Management® Certified / Chartered Professional. Individuals with several years of experience in human resources analysis are encouraged to acquire this certification.
Stand out above the crowd with the Certified Human Resources Analyst certification and get noticed by top recruiters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781794899360

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 Zulk Shamsuddin, PhD / GAFM ACADEMY

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-7948-9936-0

INTRODUCTION

The Certified Human Resources Analyst ™ (CHRA) credential is a world-class HR certification that demonstrates the attainment of a defined level of technical knowledge in human resources analytical practices and ethical behavior. It forms the basis of the assessment that applicants must pass to gain the Certified Human Resources Analyst ™ credential and inclusion in the Register of The Global Academy of Finance and Management® Certified / Chartered Professional. Individuals with several years of experience in human resources analysis are encouraged to acquire this certification.

This book shall guide you to prepare for the CHRA examination that is accessible online via the GAFM Academy digital certification services. Stand out above the crowd with the Certified Human Resources Analyst certification and get noticed by top recruiters.

Benefits of Becoming a Certified Human Resources Analyst

Personal recognition from your peers in HR Analyst profession.

Enhanced CV to stand out in the job market and get noticed by international recruiters.

A framework for the development of your career.

International recognition.

Assurance for clients of high standards and ethical practice.

Use of the post-nominal CHRA or Certified Human Resources Analyst ™

Increased understanding, helping you to work more effectively.

Introduce yourself with this exclusive membership card during networking, business events, conference, anywhere. Membership has its privileges.

The HR analyst plays a crucial role in collecting, structuring, analyzing, and reporting on HR processes and data.

A Certified Human Resources Analyst is an experienced human resources professional who has earned the accredited gold-standard Certified Human Resources Analyst ™ credential from The Global Academy of Finance and Management®. This credential is offered to the individual with several years of experience as a strategic human resource management professional.

HR Analyst has a broad role and depending on the organization, HR Analyst will be asked to focus on different tasks. Quite a few organizations are looking for an HR analyst with predominantly soft skills. This makes the analyst’s function profile very similar to an HR business partner. Yet other organizations are really looking for a data analyst role. Be aware of this if you apply for such a job! This also means that you very rarely see an analyst who is doing data analysis for 100% of their job. They are usually involved in other operational tasks as well. A funny thing we’ve noticed is that the more ‘data’ is mentioned in the job title, the more data-oriented the job usually is. Although there is no official job role, an HR analyst is usually less data-oriented than an HR data analyst, who is again less data-oriented than an HR data scientist. The latter is usually occupied with analyzing data full-time.

Business Acumen

Business acumen is becoming increasingly important for HR roles. The same holds true for the HR analyst. Before you analyze data, you need to know what project you will work on and how the data analysis will impact the business. Business acumen is an essential skill for any analyst who is involved in either simple data analysis or in an end-to-end analytics project.

Communication and Consultation

The second skill is communication and consultation. Whether you’re spending most of your time analyzing data or only very little, you need to talk to the business, manage stakeholders and their expectations, and communicate results of an analytics project to the relevant audiences.

Relationship Management

As an analyst, it is key to manage relationships and stakeholders. Expectation management is a requirement for analytics success. In addition, you need to keep the business involved in your analytics project and keep them up to date in progress and potential setbacks.

HR Expertise

Whether you’re more on the business partner side of the analyst role, or crunching numbers every single day, HR expertise is an essential skill. This expertise touches almost everything you do in your job. HR expertise can be divided into three key areas:

Knowledge of the science behind what we do in HR

Knowledge of HR best practices

Understanding of the key HR processes

Data Analysis

The HR data analyst is involved in the basics of data-driven HR in the organization. For most organizations, this entails (ad hoc) reporting and dashboarding. In order to accurately report on HR data, the analyst is involved in the aggregation of data, maintaining HR data quality, and the analysis of data. Depending on the data maturity of the organization, these reports can be ad hoc. Ad hoc reporting means that the information has to be manually retrieved from the systems for reporting and analysis. This kind of data often needs to be cleansed as well – which may take a lot of time.

More mature organizations have automated this process. This makes reporting less time consuming and the analyst can focus on analyses that add more value than basic reporting, like predictive analyses. Competencies required for this include strong attention to detail and a strong drive to use data to answer business questions.

HR Systems and Implementation

HR data comes from HR systems, often referred to as the Human Resources Information System (HRIS). These transactional systems contain most of the data that the HR analyst works with. Implementing, maintaining, and updating these systems is part of the analyst’s responsibility.

Global and Cultural Awareness

HR data is almost never local. As an analyst, you work with global data. Global and cultural awareness is essential to understanding where data is coming from and how cultural differences impact HR and data capturing practices.

The standard requirement for an HR analyst position is domain experience in HR. HRM studies or a background in industrial and organizational psychology are usually considered highly relevant. Alternatively, a background in economics, statistics, or analytics is also considered. People with these kinds of backgrounds bring a unique set of quantitative skills that most people with an HRM background are missing. This background often requires complementary training in HRM practices.

Work experience in HR is always a pro and so is HRIS system experience. Additionally, relevant experience with the tools and systems used by the organization also counts heavily in your favor. Tools include Tableau, PowerBI, Qlik, SAP, SuccessFactors, et cetera. A must-have skill is proficiency in MS Excel. This is still used in most organizations and an understanding of how to combine worksheets and analyze large amounts of data using Pivot Tables are usually considered elementary.

Difference between an HR data analyst and HR business partner. We already hinted a few times about the similarities between the HR analyst and the HR business partner’s job. Where the analyst’s job focuses primarily on the collection, analysis, and reporting of data, the business partner (BP) is more involved in communication with line managers and helping to solve their HR-related problems. In practice, the BP relies for 90% on soft skills, while the analyst relies just as much on harder (data) skills as on soft skills, if not more. This means that the HR BP is an internal consultant who helps the manager achieve business objectives. Sometimes this work is very operational, sometimes it’s more tactical – but it is very applied to the business. In case the BP and manager run into problems that can be solved using data, the HR analyst comes in.

The analyst helps to define the problem and leverages data to solve it using the skills described previously. Because the HR Analyst is increasingly trained in analytics and has to be able to interpret data to actively advise managers, the roles become diffused and that’s why you sometimes will find a company asking for an HR analyst while they are actually looking or a business partner.

HR Analyst Compensation Package

Salaries for the HR analyst role can vary wildly depending on the size of the company, the location, and the experience of the analyst. In the United States, you can expect to earn between $51,000 to $68,000 for a mid-level HR Data Analyst in the midwestern United States, while someone doing the same job in New York City could expect to earn between $67,000 to $88,000 per year. According to Payscale.com, 50% of employees in the HR analyst role have 1-4 years of experience. 24% has 5-9 years of experience. This is also an indication of the increase in importance and prevalence of the analyst’s job – as the job was almost non-existent 15 years ago.

HR Analyst Career Path

It is hard to map a well-defined career path in today’s world. Usually, you start as a junior analyst and can grow your way to a senior analyst position. The data-driven mindset of an analyst is increasingly popular and looked for in management positions. Career paths to becoming HR manager and HR director are available, as well as horizontal paths towards (senior) Human Resources Generalist, or the more specialized Human Resources Information System Analyst and HRIS manager.

HR Analyst Job Description (example)

Job Summary:

The Human Resource (HR) Analyst will collect, compile, and analyze HR data, metrics, and statistics, and apply this data to make recommendations related to recruitment, retention, and legal compliance.

Supervisory Responsibilities:

None.

Duties/Responsibilities:

Collects and compiles HR metrics and data from a variety of sources including the human resource information system (HRIS) and payroll outputs, management and employee surveys, exit interviews, employment records, government labor statistics, competitors’ practices, and other sources.

Analyzes data and statistics for trends and patterns with attention to recruitment, hiring practices, motivation, turnover, and compliance with employment laws and regulations.

Prepares reports of data results, presenting and explaining findings to senior leadership.

Identifies and recommends reasonable short- and long-term goals, milestones, and benchmarks for key performance metrics.

Based on metrics and analysis, makes recommendations for policies and activities to improve the organizational culture including suggestions to attract and hire qualified candidates, to motivate and retain employees, to address staffing issues, and to maintain legal compliance.

Facilitates implementation of new training, development, recruiting, and other related initiatives.

May conduct or assist with conducting classification audits to ensure that jobs are properly classified as exempt or nonexempt.

Ensures compliance with data privacy regulations and best practices.

May assist HR leadership with staffing, recruiting, and departmental budgets.

May guide and/or assist with performance, benefit, and compensation review and evaluation processes.

Performs other duties