People Analytics Analyst

People Analytics is the practice of using workforce data to help organizations make smarter decisions about their people — essentially the HR version of a business-intelligence role. The analyst sits inside the HR function and builds dashboards, runs reports, and surfaces insights that answer questions like: why are people leaving, where is the recruiting pipeline breaking down, which managers have the highest turnover, how long does it take to fill a role, and how does compensation compare to the market?

The work is equal parts data and storytelling. It isn't just pulling numbers — it's translating them into something a VP of HR or a business leader can act on.

This role is a common target for people coming from operations, finance, or HRIS backgrounds who already work with workforce data. Someone who has tracked labor-cost variance, managed turnover, run period-end reporting, and optimized headcount through scheduling has been doing the analysis from the operator seat. The gap for that kind of candidate is doing it as an analyst rather than an operator — but the underlying data fluency is genuine and transfers.

Title overlap to know: the market uses People Analytics Analyst, People Analyst, HR Analytics Analyst, Workforce Analytics Analyst, and People Data Analyst close to interchangeably. Search all of them — filtering on one label misses most of the market.

• Build and maintain dashboards in Tableau or Power BI
• Run recurring and ad-hoc reports for HR and business leaders
• Pull, clean, and validate workforce data
• Surface insights and translate them for non-technical audiences
• Partner with HR Business Partners, Talent Acquisition, Finance, and senior HR leadership

The metrics you live in: headcount, attrition, time-to-fill, cost-per-hire, engagement scores, and compensation equity.

• Workday — specifically Prism Analytics, Report Writer, and Discovery Boards — is typically the primary data source
• Tableau or Power BI for visualization; this is the primary output tool
• Excel for day-to-day analysis
• SQL shows up in roughly half of postings; having it widens the field considerably
• Data storytelling — the ability to make a chart land with a non-technical audience — is one of the most valued and least common skills in the function

How Tableau fits: in People Analytics, Tableau (or Power BI) is the output tool — the dashboards HR leadership and business partners actually use to make decisions. Headcount trends, attrition by department, recruiting funnel by source, and compensation equity across job families all live there. Building clean, readable visualizations that a VP can present to the CEO is highly valued, and it's exactly where analysts from pure-data backgrounds often struggle: they can pull the data but not make it land. Communication experience — having had to explain performance to leadership — is a real edge in this role.

How Workday fits: here, Workday is the primary data source rather than the primary work environment. You pull from it, build on top of it, and use Prism or Discovery Boards for reporting — but the job is more about what you do with the data than how you administer the system. Prior hands-on Workday experience still translates directly, because understanding the underlying data model means writing better queries, asking better questions of HRIS colleagues, and avoiding the errors that come from not knowing how Workday stores its data.

The local-vs-remote gap is large for this role, which makes it the central strategic question (see below).

How to read this: an in-office St. Louis analyst role tops out around the high-$80s to $90s at senior level; the low-$80s is achievable but competitive locally. Opening up to remote makes an $85–100K range realistic, because the role concentrates at large enterprises and tech companies that hire nationally.

This distinction matters more here than for most roles. Locally, St. Louis HR-analyst pay caps in the high-$90s even at senior level, and dedicated "People Analytics" titles are thinner on the ground. Nationally and remotely, the role is both more abundant and better paid — the work is fully location-independent (it lives in the data warehouse and the dashboard, not a room). For a St. Louis-based candidate, the remote market is usually the stronger target.

St. Louis employers with people-analytics or HR-reporting functions (often titled as broader "HR analyst," "workforce analytics," or "HRIS reporting" positions): Centene, BJC HealthCare, Edward Jones, Boeing, Emerson, Mastercard, Anheuser-Busch, Enterprise Mobility, Stifel Financial, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Titles to search — direct matches:

• People Analytics Analyst
• People Analyst
• HR Analytics Analyst
• Workforce Analytics Analyst

Adjacent / same work, different label:

• People Data Analyst / HR Data Analyst
• HR Reporting Analyst
• Talent Analytics Analyst
• HRIS Analyst (reporting-heavy variants)
• Workforce Analyst

Growth titles (where this leads):

• Senior People Analytics Analyst
• People Analytics Manager
• Director, People Analytics

Keywords worth searching in the job description field — these often surface the role better than any title filter:

• “people analytics” / “workforce analytics”
• “HR dashboards”
• “attrition analysis”
• “Tableau” / “Power BI”
• “Workday Prism”
• “headcount reporting”
• “SQL”