People Analytics Is Growing — and Data Operations Are the Bottleneck
The people analytics market is expanding rapidly as organizations seek to make evidence-based decisions about hiring, retention, performance, and workforce planning. Precedence Research projects the global HR analytics market will grow from $4.9 billion in 2024 to $14.7 billion by 2030.
Behind every insight a people analytics company delivers is a data operations layer: collecting client data, cleaning it, formatting it, and preparing it for analysis. This layer is essential but time-consuming — and it's where many analytics companies find themselves investing senior talent in work that doesn't require senior judgment.
Virtual assistants are changing that equation.
Data Preparation Is the Highest-Volume VA Opportunity
People analytics firms work with data from multiple HR systems: ATS platforms, HRIS databases, performance management tools, engagement survey exports, and payroll systems. Integrating these sources into a coherent dataset for analysis requires structured data preparation work.
Virtual assistants with spreadsheet and data management skills can handle:
- Data collection and intake: Contacting client HR teams to request data exports, following up on delayed submissions, and maintaining a tracker of what has been received and what is still pending.
- Data formatting and cleaning: Standardizing column formats, removing duplicate records, filling in missing field values based on defined rules, and flagging anomalies for analyst review.
- File organization: Maintaining version-controlled data file libraries organized by client, data type, and time period, ensuring that analysts can locate source files quickly.
- Data dictionary maintenance: Keeping documentation of field definitions, data sources, and transformation logic current as client configurations evolve.
This work is essential to analytics quality. When it's handled by a dedicated VA rather than absorbed by analysts, turnaround times improve and error rates drop.
Client Reporting Requires Consistent Production Support
People analytics companies produce a significant volume of reports — trend analyses, benchmark comparisons, predictive model outputs, and executive dashboards. Producing these reports on schedule requires a production workflow that includes formatting, quality checking, and distribution.
Virtual assistants can own the production layer of reporting:
- Template population: Taking analysis outputs from analysts and populating them into standard client report templates.
- Chart and visualization formatting: Applying brand guidelines, ensuring consistent axis labeling, and preparing charts for inclusion in client presentations.
- Report distribution: Packaging final reports, attaching supporting data files, and distributing them to the correct client contacts on schedule.
- Revision tracking: Managing client feedback on reports, tracking requested changes, and coordinating revisions with the analytics team.
Dr. Priya Nair, Chief Analytics Officer at a people analytics consultancy, described the value at the 2025 SHRM Analytics and Workforce Planning Conference: "Our VAs handle every report package after the analysis is done. Our analysts used to spend a day per client per report on formatting. Now they spend twenty minutes reviewing the VA's output."
Research Operations Support
People analytics companies often conduct original research — benchmarking studies, industry surveys, literature reviews, and trend analyses that they publish to build thought leadership and generate leads. Managing this research pipeline requires coordination that is well-suited to VA support.
- Survey operations: Distributing surveys to target populations, monitoring response rates, following up with non-respondents, and preparing raw data files for analysis.
- Literature review support: Searching databases, collecting relevant studies, organizing citations, and maintaining annotated bibliographies.
- Content preparation: Formatting research reports for publication, preparing social media summaries, and managing distribution lists for report releases.
A 2024 McKinsey Global Institute analysis found that knowledge workers across industries spend an average of 19% of their workweek on gathering and processing information tasks that could be delegated without quality loss.
Building a VA-Integrated Analytics Operation
The most effective people analytics companies using virtual assistants treat them as a structural part of their delivery model. This means clear role definitions, documented SOPs for each recurring task type, and regular feedback loops between analysts and VAs.
When this infrastructure is in place, analytics teams can spend the vast majority of their time on the work that actually differentiates their service: building models, interpreting results, and advising clients on workforce strategy.
For people analytics companies looking to build scalable data operations, Stealth Agents provides virtual assistants experienced in data management, research support, and client reporting workflows.
Sources
- Precedence Research, HR Analytics Market Report, 2024
- McKinsey Global Institute, Knowledge Worker Productivity Analysis, 2024
- SHRM Analytics and Workforce Planning Conference Proceedings, 2025