What’s Trending: Human Skills
November 19, 2024
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People are unpredictable, or are they? People analytics argues that people can be measured up and become a rather predictable mass at their workplace, as their daily routines, victories, mistakes, and pitfalls tend to be more regular than we usually give them credit for. Roughly through sheer data collection and analysis, this system aims to look at companies as a whole and find the best way to move forward and continue that movement in a sustainable way.
Want to know more about this side of business analysis? Keep reading below.
In an article for Spiceworks, Prarthana Ghosh explains and explores the basics of people analytics and the steps to get it working in an organization.
So, the big question is, what is people analytics? People analytics is a process of gathering data from people processes, functions, challenges, and opportunities at work. The goal of it is to achieve sustainable success. This technique is not new; it has been evolving since the 1950s, from prescriptive analytics to predictive analytics.
“Essentially, gathering and assessing people analytics leads to better decision-making through the application of statistics and other data interpretation techniques.”
There is a clear process and objectives that people analytics must follow to create a successful strategy. Finding the answers to these questions can help businesses zero in tangible business success. This process consists of seven steps:
1. Set KPIs
2. Experiment with different tools
3. Have a plan
4. Ensure legal compliance
5. Use a simple system
6. Find an HR strategy
7. Use tech support
Now, if you want to use people analytics, it’s important that you understand exactly why they can be game changers in any company. In an article for Visier, Amy Furr argues that people analytics help leadership and HR managers make the best decisions regarding the people they work with.
The idea behind people analytics, or HR analytics as it’s sometimes called, is that by having the most data that can be gathered, leaders can make informed, data-driven decisions to improve turnover, maximize potential, and overall improve the business.
“People analytics shows your data in one view so you can answer and act on important questions, and answer questions you haven’t thought of to avoid unintentional biases that contribute to bad business decisions.”
The author explains that there are many dimensions in which people analytics can help a company, but she lists six main ones that most companies aim for. Those include improving talent acquisition, stopping turnover, meeting diversity, equality, inclusion, and belonging goals, measuring performance, planning career paths, and minimizing learning investments.
But how do you get started on people analytics? There are three questions that you need to follow.
1. Is your organization ready for people analytics? There is no use in getting the tools and people analytics certifications if the company won’t face and do something about the results.
2. Do you have the full data? A unique employee ID, start and end date, job title, department, location, and DEI identifier are essential in the people analytics data. You need to have all of this to continue, so you might need the help of leadership to compile and capture the complete data set.
3. What are your organization’s big questions? Find the big-picture goals your organization needs and break them down into smaller questions you can answer with your data.
Things can get lost in a company’s daily routines, and people analytics can help bring them forward, write Chantelle Nielsen and Natalie McCollough for Harvard Business Review. They theorize that for people analytics to work, there need to be three main transformations: process transformation, cultural transformation, and strategic transformation.
Process transformation is all about looking at the processes, or lack thereof, and how people follow them. The idea is that if there aren’t set processes or if there are processes that one organization (or person) is excelling at something, these can be identified through people analytics and then replicated in a timely manner.
“In bottoms-up cultural transformation initiatives, the how things are done is equally or more important than what is done. Feedback loops and other methods of data-driven storytelling are our favorite way that people analytics makes culture transformation happen.”
Behind cultural transformation is a story. Sometimes, companies have a clear idea of what they want and who they want to be, but it all gets muddled up in the execution. People analytics looks at the factors that might be blocking the chain.
Strategic transformation is all about the tools, resources, boundaries, networks, skill sets, and time. All of these factors are individually important, but constant evolution is even better for the company, and to remove or change parts that don’t work, these need to be identified.
People analytics can be a tool that helps companies grow sustainably, strengthen their strengths, and determine their weaknesses–but it is only a tool. A company that’s not prepared to ask the right questions and face its own findings will not use people analytics to its highest potential.
A company that recognizes people analytics can help itself in every step of the employee’s lifetime, as the main idea behind this tool is to recognize the places where people get stuck and try to solve them. Using this system correctly can lead to big transformations in the company, such as a culture transformation, and help the big ideas get properly communicated and executed.
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