Before listing down the names of the most used HR Analytics Tools, one needs to understand that Analytics is more about taking out insights from data, and for this purpose, any tool will suffice, but when we talk about making things easy for HR Professionals below are some of the tools that are widely used in HR Analytics Domain;

1. Google Sheets: Collaboration is one of the important aspects of HR, and Google Sheets has been there for several years in assisting collaborations in organizations. From scheduling interviews to onboarding employees, and even during exit formalities, Google Sheets help in most of the work related to HR.
   
   Having said that, this becomes one of the best tools to analyze and automate HR-related data using Google Sheet's inbuilt formulas and even with the use of Google Apps Script.
    
2. Looker Studio / Google Data Studio: Google's Looker Studio is one of the trending tools that combines Google Sheets with a dashboard-building capability using Google's own application.
   
   The interface of the Looker Studio is quite similar to Power BI or any other data visualization tool, but because it comes as a pack of applications from Google, so data transfer and automation using Google products becomes much more seamless.
   
   You can create maps filled with data points, or simply show different visualizations, and that too free of cost. It is not as limited as Power BI because Power BI Cloud requires a pro version, which is not the case with Looker Studio. This easy availability and shareability of Looker Studio has made it much more popular within HR Analytics circles.
    
3. Google Apps Script: This is one of the most productive tools that Google has to offer for HR Analytics, especially when you have to automate several mundane tasks.
   
   Let's say you want to schedule an interview of candidates and there are 500 candidates that you have to send personalized emails to and that too as per their applied posts. Most mail merge applications fail to this point, and here you can use Google Apps Script to create a script that sends out email notifications to all the candidates about their scheduled interview as per the position they would have applied.
   
   This is just one example, Google Apps Scripts can also be used in case you want to implement an end-to-end HRIS system for a small organization and it will easily be able to handle modules like; Recruitment, On-boarding, Employee Engagement, HR Letters, and Exit.
    
4. Alteryx: Alteryx is basically a tool that is used for ETL purposes. This means to Extract, Transform, and Load. Most of the Big 4 organizations are using Alteryx to create automated flows to streamline complex manual tasks.
   
   Where Google Apps Scripts can be used for cloud automation, Alteryx on the other hand can be used to work directly from your system and then also plays a connecting part in online directories.
   
   You can use Alteryx to complete complex Excel transformations or even create applications that could be used to onboard an employee. There are several use cases of Alteryx that we will discuss in further articles. One of the use cases that we used to use Alteryx for was extracting data from multiple Excel sheets and sending the same to Power BI dashboards, which became a one-click process after implementing Alteryx workflows.
    
5. Power BI: Power BI is evergreen when we talk about HR Analytics, mostly because it is easily downloadable on our desktop versions. Also, most of the institutes teach Power BI in their HR Analytics courses today.
   
   Not only its availability, the use case of Power BI is also amazing because it is used heavily to create reports and dashboards that provide great insights about the data. Some the examples of Power BI use cases are; Recruitment Trackers, Exit Trackers, Onboarding Checklists, and Location Wise or Demography Wise Employee Data segregation.
   
   You can create any type of graph or analyze data in any way possible. You can even create word clouds or do sentiment analysis using Power BI's inbuilt reports.
    
6. R or R Studio: R has been one of the most popular tools for HR Analysts and this is because it is an open-source software and is specifically made for statistical use cases.
   
   You can analyze large sets of data using R and can also create dashboards that can perform the work of the front end as well as the back end. Having said that, the overall learning curve of R or R Studio is a bit steep, because of which not everyone can use it on a day-to-day basis, but it is indeed a very useful software with the availability of a large library.
    
7. Python: R and Python seem to be competition in open space. The user base of R and Python are mostly in competition with each other in different forums. Although both tools have their pros and cons, one of the best uses that Python is used for is Web Scraping.
   
   Scraping websites using Python has become one of the trends in HR Analytics. Maybe you want to scrape employment data of an organization or maybe you just want to keep a tab on different websites for their compensation metrics to ensure that you are also at par with other companies in your industry, Python is the go-to tool for the same.
    
8. Advanced Excel, VBA, and Macros: I have combined these three things because most of the time VBA and Macros are already built into the excel sheets, and all three are used extensively in the HR Analytics domain.
   
   As most data is still saved in Excel or CSV files, therefore VBA and Macros help ensure that the data is properly fetched and used for further analysis, hence making it one of the best tools so far.
   
   Some of the use cases may involve creating software that can fetch and scrape comments from Word or PPTs in Excel, which could easily be achieved using visual basics embedded in Excel sheets.
    
9. Tableau: Tableau is very similar to Power BI in that it enables the aggregation and visualization of various data sources. It is arguably one of the finest BI tools out there when it comes to visualizations. 
   
   It has been recognized in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for seven consecutive years between 2012 and 2019.

These were some of the most popular tools being used by HR Analysts around the world. Please feel free to share more such tools to keep this thread relevant for current times.