HR Analytics 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is 'survival analysis' used for in HR analytics?
- Modeling how long employees remain before leaving (Correct answer)
- Measuring productivity after layoffs
- Tracking benefit utilization rates
- Calculating compensation growth curves
Correct answer: Modeling how long employees remain before leaving
Survival analysis estimates the probability that an employee stays employed beyond a certain tenure point, enabling turnover prediction.
Question 2: An organization wants to ensure its analytics dashboard is actionable. Which characteristic is MOST important?
- It displays as many metrics as possible
- Metrics are tied to specific business decisions or outcomes (Correct answer)
- It refreshes in real time every second
- It is built using the most advanced software available
Correct answer: Metrics are tied to specific business decisions or outcomes
Actionable dashboards link each metric to a decision that stakeholders can actually make, avoiding data overload.
Question 3: Which analysis technique would best help HR determine whether a new manager training program caused improved team retention?
- Descriptive analysis
- Pre/post comparison with a control group (Correct answer)
- Correlation analysis of engagement scores
- Headcount trend report
Correct answer: Pre/post comparison with a control group
A pre/post design with a control group isolates the training's effect by controlling for other variables that might affect retention.
Question 4: In an HR HRIS system, what is a 'data warehouse' most commonly used for?
- Processing real-time payroll transactions
- Storing and querying large volumes of historical HR data for reporting (Correct answer)
- Hosting employee self-service portals
- Managing benefits enrollment workflows
Correct answer: Storing and querying large volumes of historical HR data for reporting
A data warehouse consolidates historical data from multiple source systems into a structure optimized for analytical queries and reporting.
Question 5: Which workforce planning metric measures the ratio of people managers to individual contributors?
- Span of control (Correct answer)
- Headcount ratio
- Management density index
- Organizational leverage ratio
Correct answer: Span of control
Span of control is the number of direct reports a manager oversees, used to evaluate organizational structure efficiency.
Question 6: What does a statistically significant negative correlation between commute distance and engagement scores suggest?
- Employees who commute longer tend to have lower engagement (Correct answer)
- Commute distance causes disengagement directly
- Engagement surveys are unreliable for remote workers
- Distance is not a meaningful workforce variable
Correct answer: Employees who commute longer tend to have lower engagement
A significant negative correlation indicates that as commute distance increases, engagement scores tend to decrease—though causation is not confirmed.
Question 7: Which of the following best describes 'prescriptive analytics' in an HR context?
- Reporting what happened in the past
- Predicting what is likely to happen next
- Recommending specific actions to achieve a desired outcome (Correct answer)
- Explaining why a trend occurred
Correct answer: Recommending specific actions to achieve a desired outcome
Prescriptive analytics goes beyond prediction to suggest optimal decisions or interventions based on the data and desired goals.
HR Analytics 3
What is 'survival analysis' used for in HR analytics?