David Green from Insight222 starts his talk on Reimagining the Future of Work with People Analytics at TechHRSG by saying that People Analytics is the fastest growing area of HR. There are three key questions that he aims to answer during his 30 minutes session.
1st Question - What is the business value of people analytics?
Based on Accenture research, People Analytics has more potential and more adoption in business today. About 91% of business leaders recognize that new technologies and sources of workplace data can be used to unlock values that are currently ‘trapped’ in the enterprise. Also, based on Economic Forum on the topic for HR 4.0 which conducted by last year, these 6 trends are still critical moving into 2020:
Developing New Leadership Capabilities for the 4IR (Industrial Revolution)
Managing the Integration of Technology in the Workplace
Enhancing the Employee Experience
Building an Agile and Personalized Learning Culture
Establishing Metrics for Valuing Human Capital
Embedding Diversity and Inclusion
David then elaborates on a few case studies to support the use of People Analytics in more advance organizations. One case study on National Australia Bank that highlights the value of a high engagement workforce which resulted in higher customer satisfaction and subsequently an increase in profit by 1 Billion USD. Something that might not be totally new since it also supports our intuition about how important of 'happy customers' have on business bottom-line. But more importantly, the finding supports the crucial role of great leadership within a branch (and any function). Branch leaders help to improve employee satisfaction and safety within the branch. Consequently, leadership matters which some figures back it up.
2nd Question: Why has people analytics been elevated in the crisis?
While the financial crisis might get CFO and CEO into the spot, the coronavirus crisis thrusts corporate HR chiefs into the spotlight. The recent article from the Economist mentioned that the pandemic makes ‘people analytics’ more relevant. The work of CHRO is escalated to the CEO and becomes a top agenda within an organization. Also, People Analytics as a function is fast growing within HR function and an organization in general.
People Analytics has been evaluated by the crisis with three actions:
Respond - Ensure employee safety and business continuity
Recover - Survive and thrive in the ‘new normal’
Reimagine - Transform for the workplace of the future
3rd Question: How can HR professionals get better at People Analytics?
David starts by saying the key element of People Analytics is not about Data but rather the understanding of the business and a sense of formulating the hypothesis. David suggests Eight-Step Methodology for purposeful People Analytics:
Most of HR doesn’t need Data Scientist. Instead, HRs need to understand their business, key challenges, people factors, frame business questions. The following frameworks will help HRs to get into a better frame of mind:
Framing Business Questions
Understand your business, not HR - the business
Identify your project sponsor
Use consulting techniques
Summarize the business question back to the project sponsor
Be very detailed and thorough
Building Hypotheses
Write3 a hypothesis as a statement, not a question
Discuss the belief/hypothesis with the project sponsor
Ensure clarity
Don’t be too ambitious
Keep it simple and testable
Lastly, one key takeaway.
People Analytics is not about HR. People Analytics is about the business and its workforce.
It is a fair prediction that, as we move along the new normal, People Analytics will give HR and organizations an insights to better run our business and keep our people engage in what really matter. Not only to the HR but to business.
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