We had the opportunity to catch up with Andy Spence from Glass Bead Consulting at the Tucana People Analytics conference and ask him about the latest trends in HR technology. Check out the video of his interview below as well as the transcript from our discussion. For more videos on the future of HR, don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel.

myHRfuture: What are some of the challenges you’re seeing in People Analytics?

Andy Spence: In terms of challenges, well I actually think HR's got a lot on its plate at the moment. There's GDPR, there's the gender pay gap report, there's industries restructuring… so HR has got a lot on its plate. However, HR is also upgrading its foundations really by moving to the cloud. So these are long projects, they're complex and they involve managers working in a different way.

myHRfuture: What advice would you give organisations that are upgrading their HR tech?

Andy Spence: It's not a problem in that the foundational systems are in place, but I would look at it right at the beginning before you choose the software that you're going to go with, look at the business problems, look at the data that you'll need to solve those problems and that can inform the choice and the journey you make.

myHRfuture: What advice would you give practitioners around gaining employee trust?

Andy Spence: That is so important because we can record so many different data types at the moment. For example, you can hand out Fitbits... I just saw a presentation today at the Tucana People Analytics conference about using data from voice intonation, location, there's so many things we can capture, but the important thing is that we've got the trust of our employees else there won't be any way that they will accept that really, so it's really important to empower employees to make their own decisions to make them more effective in their jobs.

myHRfuture: What new techniques are you seeing companies using?

Andy Spence: One really exciting area is organisational network analysis (ONA), so actually looking at the way individuals or employees interact in the organisation and looking at their behaviours. So that could be email behaviour, it could be from surveys but from that you can actually start to identify who the influential people are in the organisation, you can start to model leadership behaviour and also look at inclusion for different groups of employees. So on the face of it, it looks like pretty network diagrams, but I think if you use it with a little bit of scientific hypothesis testing and with other data sources, I think it's really promising.

Organisational network analysis is starting to become more and more popular.

People Analytics Online Training

If you are looking to learn more about how to get started in people analytics then check out the myHRfuture academy online course on people analytics titled 'An Introduction to People Analytics' that is taught by David Green and Jonathan Ferrar. It's a great introductory course for anyone interested in learning more about people analytics.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ian Bailie is the Managing Director of myHRfuture.com and an advisor and consultant for start-ups focused on HR technology and People Analytics, including Adepto, Worklytics and CognitionX.  In his previous role as the Senior Director of People Planning, Analytics and Tools at Cisco Systems, he was responsible for delivering the tools and insights to enable and transform the planning, attraction and management of talent across the organisation globally.  Ian is passionate about HR technology and analytics and how to use both to transform the employee experience and prepare companies for the Future of Work.