Getting started with HR analytics – also called People Analytics – is a big step for many HR professionals and organizations, and an important one, too. With a good command of HR analytics and a data-driven mindset, you’re better prepared to navigate today’s business challenges and ready to unlock insights for strategic decision-making, optimizing workforce planning, and enhancing employee engagement and productivity.
Formal training, such as an HR analytics course, can help you build analytical skills that you need to play a more significant and strategic role within HR.
There are numerous Human Resources analytics courses available that range from basic statistical knowledge to HR data and metrics and more. To help narrow down the choices, we’ve listed 13 HR analytics courses to consider. Our list includes a selection of beginning and intermediate-level training opportunities. We hope you’ll find one that’s just right for you.
Contents
People Analytics Certificate Program by AIHR
People Analytics by University of Pennsylvania
HR Metrics & Dashboarding by AIHR
Essentials of HR Analytics by Cornell University
Data Analysis for Improving Organizational Performance by HRCI
People Analytics Specialty Credential by SHRM
People Analytics Accredited Programme by CIPD
HR Analytics by Management Concepts
R Programming Fundamentals by PluralSight
R Programming by Johns Hopkins University
HR Data Science in R by AIHR
Data Mining with Weka by University of Waikato
Basic Statistics by University of Amsterdam
Please note that this list is compiled based on publicly available information. We have not tried the courses ourselves, with the exception of AIHR’s courses.
1. People Analytics Certificate Program – AIHR
Designed as an “all-in-one” course for (future) HR analytics professionals, this is the most comprehensive course on HR analytics out there. Its focus and approach are for practitioners who will participate in or manage HR analytics projects.
This HR analytics certification will teach you how to start using data to make fact-based people decisions that drive business value. The 15-module course will equip you with a full HR data analytics skill set to bring back to your organization. For example, you’ll learn how to:
- Transform, organize, clean, and analyze large HR data sets
- Create powerful HR dashboards in Power BI
- Apply statistical concepts to HR data and conduct statistical analysis in Excel
The course offerings include video lessons, interactive case studies, hands-on projects, and much more – all of which you can find in the course’s syllabus.
Upon completion of the course, you’ll receive a certificate from AIHR, the largest and most specialized institution in the field of online HR analytics courses in the world. You can add the HR analytics certificate to your performance review, include it on your resume, and share it on Linkedin.
2. People Analytics – University of Pennsylvania
This online Human Resource analytics resource is available through The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The Wharton People Analytics course is taught by three top professors and introduces you to the major areas of people analytics, including performance evaluation, staffing, compensation, collaboration, and talent management. All subjects are illustrated by real-life examples of how various organizations tap into HR analytics techniques to help them flourish.
While this course does present an overview of people analytics theory and some of its basics, it does not teach complex data analysis. What you will get is a good understanding of how HR can leverage data to take on a more strategic role and make better business decisions.
You can complete the course’s four modules in about eight hours of study time. You’ll be awarded a certificate once you complete the course.
You can access the course here.
3. HR Metrics & Dashboarding – AIHR Academy
This is the most hands-on of the people analytics courses listed here. It’s aimed at HR professionals who want to get into working with data.
AIHR’s HR Metrics & Dashboarding course will help you master powerful reporting skills and get the metrics right. You will finish the course as an HR Reporting Specialist with a broad skill set that covers the whole reporting process, from implementing essential HR metrics to automated reporting within intuitive HR dashboards.
The course focuses on doing analytics using Excel, PowerBI, and Tableau. You will learn to:
- Leverage strategic workforce planning to make better decisions.
- Calculate the Return on Investment (ROI) of HR interventions and selection methods.
- Connect different data sets.
- Clean and structure data.
- Create interactive HR dashboards in Excel, PowerBI, and Tableau (see below)
- And much more.
All of this is offered in 28 hours of learning from 14 modules. You’ll also have the opportunity to apply your new knowledge with four hands-on projects. Want to know more? Check the course’s syllabus.
At the end of the course, you will have learned how to create an interactive dashboard that combines multiple separate datasets. A dashboard example is included below.
4. Essentials of HR Analytics – Cornell University
The Essentials of HR Analytics course is taught by a Professor of HR Studies at Cornell’s ILR School and prepares learners to begin their HR analytics journey.
Using Excel and the datasets provided, this HR analytics training teaches the concepts, language, and tools you need to understand and leverage data to solve business problems.
At the end of the course, you will have the skills to:
- Pose questions and choose relevant data sources.
- Exercise essential HR data analyses.
- Interpret HR data.
- Discover insights and recommend actions.
- Use data visualization to present findings.
The format is instructor-led online over two weeks and requires 3-5 hours of effort per week.
5. Data Analysis for Improving Organizational Performance – HRCI
Drawing on data to improve employee and organizational performance is the whole point of people analytics. The Data Analysis for Improving Organizational Performance will show you how to bring HR data to life and make it work for you. This is an intermediate-level course that explains how to measure data.
It covers some necessary frameworks and tools for summarizing and delivering data, describes certain measurements, and clarifies the role of assessments in developing strategies.
This training will help you understand:
- The use and validity of performance measures in different settings.
- The distinctions among a variety of performance measurements.
- The advantages and disadvantages of KPIs, Balanced Scorecard, and Net Promoter Score.
- The correlation between performance assessment and organizational strategies.
Once purchased, you’ll have on-demand access to this course for 180 days.
6. People Analytics Specialty Credential – SHRM
If you’re an HR professional who would like to acquire a recognized credential in people analytics, you can consider the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) program. Obtaining this credential will give you the know-how to make the most of your organization’s HR data, including articulating your findings and recommending solutions for addressing business issues.
According to Nick Schacht, SHRM’s Chief Commercial Officer, this program “is designed to give HR practitioners a firm foundation in the principles and applications of metrics and technology that support HR practices and organizational objectives.”
You’ll be required to purchase an instruction package that includes an online 50-question knowledge assessment you must pass to earn the credential.
The People Analytics Specialty Credential package includes the following learning:
- Foundations of Data Literacy (eLearning module)
- Taking Data-Driven Action (in-person or virtual seminar)
- The Metrics Behind People Analytics (eLearning course)
- Understanding Your People Data (eLearning course)
7. People Analytics Accredited Programme – CIPD
This people analytics curriculum offered by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) is for HR professionals with a foundational grasp of analytics who want to further develop their skills in this area.
The People Analytics Accredited Programme will give you practical skills and knowledge you can apply within the scope of your work to add value to the organization.
The course’s potential outcomes include:
- Gaining a deeper understanding of people analytics to make a meaningful impact on your organization.
- Having the ability to oversee a productive people analytics project and successfully present it to stakeholders.
- Using people analytics for planning and improved decision-making and HR practices.
- Incorporating people analytics into organizational and HR strategies.
- Differentiating between metrics, measures, and KPIs.
- Making effective use of statistical models.
This online self-directed program takes 50-70 hours and must be completed within 12 months of registration. It requires the use of either Excel or Google Sheets. Other tools, such as R, SQL, Python, and machine learning are discussed but not necessary to access for participating in the course.
8. HR Analytics – Management Concepts
This HR Analytics training instructs you on how to apply the Analytics Process Model (APM) and use Excel to organize, analyze, and present your organization’s people data. It is geared toward HR professionals who want to leverage data to make informed decisions. Learners should have experience working in HR and a functional understanding of Excel.
The following topics are covered in this course:
- HR Analytics and the Analytics Process Model (APM)
- Excel quantitative techniques
- HR regulations and reporting requirements
- Effective presentation of HR data
Once you completed this training, you should be able to:
- Identify the phases of the APM and their purposes.
- Follow HR analytics best practices for data-driven decision-making.
- Identify relevant HR metrics and benchmarks for organizational goals.
- Use Excel to analyze people data to identify trends and other insights to take action on.
- Conduct a brief presentation on data analysis results.
This two-day course is offered both in-person and virtually. It includes facilitated discussions, case studies, group and individual activities, and self-assessments.
9. R Programming Fundamentals
This is the first of three on our Human Resources analytics courses list that covers R.
You can do HR analytics in Excel; however, it has some major limitations. R is an open-source tool for statistics, visualization, and data modeling. The programming language for R is specially designed to work with data and to do statistical computing. It provides statistical techniques and visualization capabilities for large data sets, as commonly used in HR analytics.
R goes further than the traditional tools used for HR data benchmarking and analysis, such as Microsoft Excel, Access, and SPSS. It combines all of them into a programming language that can quickly import, edit, and visualize data. This does mean that R requires you to do some coding, making the learning curve steeper.
R is thus also harder to master compared to Excel. However, R does offer endless computational possibilities and enables you to do more advanced analytics compared to Excel.
We recommend the Programming with R course by Pluralsight to get started with R. This course teaches you the basic syntax for R coding and available data types and structures. It provides hands-on practice to get a feel for R and its functions.
10. R Programming – Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University offers a more advanced course in R called R Programming. This intermediate-level program requires some basic experience with R and will take you roughly 57 hours to complete.
The course starts off by teaching you the nuts and bolts of R, before diving into the more technical aspects. It’s taught in four modules that include practical skills such as programming in R, reading data into R, and writing R functions.
At the end of the course, you’ll be able to understand programming concepts and run more advanced statistical techniques in R for productive data analysis.
11. HR Data Science in R – AIHR Academy
Predictive modeling is one of the most transformative tools available within People Analytics and a highly coveted skill set to have. The HR Data Science in R course is your path to gaining these skills. The course starts with the basics, so no prior R or programming experience is required.
You will learn how to use R to create predictive HR analytics models for solving HR challenges. The course covers data management in R, data exploration and visualization in R, and three dynamic case studies focused on different aspects of analyzing data. Its six self-paced modules take about 16 hours to complete.
12. Data Mining with Weka – University of Waikato
Weka is a data mining software. It has a visual and clickable interface which means you ‘drag and drop’ using your mouse instead of having to program as you would in R.
This open-source software was developed at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. It offers both a wide array of data mining algorithms and ways to visualize data. Examples of machine learning algorithms include decision trees, Bayes, simple rules, clustering, and meta-classifiers.
The Data Mining with Weka course explains these algorithms and their statistical backgrounds. This will help you understand the workings of data mining in general and how it can be applied to different sets of (people) data.
The format of this free course is a series of practical videos that feature Professor Ian Witten explaining how Weka works. Within half an hour into this course, you will run your first data mining algorithms and create your first decision tree.
This online Human Resources analytics course requires no prior programming knowledge. It is especially suitable for people who will not be analyzing data in their daily jobs but who wish to get a grasp of the fundamental techniques. Because of its user-friendly interface, Weka enables you to do various analyses in a short time.
13. Basic Statistics – University of Amsterdam
In R, you learn how to use statistics to run algorithms. However, doing statistics without really understanding it poses a risk. It is difficult to fully grasp the possibilities and pitfalls of HR analytics without a solid understanding of statistics. Therefore, whenever we talk about HR analytics training, a statistics course needs to be included. In the end, data science is all about statistics.
The Basic Statistics course from the University of Amsterdam covers how to calculate and evaluate statistics. It explores methods of descriptive statistics, the basics of probability, and how to evaluate patterns in data. It also includes training on using statistical software to calculate and generate these statistics. All these concepts apply to data science and form a necessary foundation for anyone looking to start with any form of analytics.
The course requires about 26 self-paced hours to complete. Basic Statistics is part of a five-module specialization called Methods and Statistics in Social Sciences, which dives even deeper into quantitative research methods. The other courses in this specialization are relevant to people analytics as well.
A final word
Committing to a learning mindset can future-proof your HR career path as you gain new and expanded skills. HR analytics is an in-demand area of expertise that’s well worth the training investment. We hope this list of relevant courses will be a helpful resource as you delve into HR analytics.
As informed and equipped HR professionals continue to drive the growth and value of HR’s role in the world of work, AIHR is here to support the effort. Our online HR courses and 13 HR certifications will help you diversify your range of abilities and take an active role in moving HR forward.
FAQ
Because HR analytics as a topic entails a substantial amount of content for different expertise levels, the best HR analytics course is determined on an individual basis.
Choosing the right one for you starts with narrowing them down according to your proficiency level, budget, preferred format, and time available. From there, you can choose the one that covers the most relevant subject matter for your needs.
Some people who don’t have experience working with data or statistics may find HR analytics challenging to learn. Those who are familiar with data analytics may absorb it quite easily. This is why it’s important to choose a course on HR analytics that is designed to meet you at your particular knowledge level.
To become an HR analytics professional, you should have a core understanding of both HR and data analytics concepts through practical work experience and training, for example, online HR analytics courses and certifications. You should gain exposure to HR functions such as recruitment, performance management, and learning and development. You should also have a grasp on the main aspects of data analytics, such as data collection, data analysis, and data visualization.
