How can HR use Data & Analytics to Drive Change?
According to a research study by Gartner, 60% of analytics projects fail and more often than not this is due to the lack of buy-in from key stakeholders or the absence of real business value being delivered. While it’s accepted that people analytics is important, how we have data-based conversations to drive business value is something that only 32% of HR professionals feel comfortable doing. In our online training course “How to Have Effective Data-Based Conversations” Al Adamsen co-founder of Insight222 helps you build the skills and confidence you need to better understand business problems while ensuring that the data and analytics in your projects lead to actionable outcomes. Whether you're a HR Business Partner or a HR Analyst it is important that you have an understanding of the data to change process to drive real business value from your People Analytics projects. In this short bitesized learning video, taken from the course, Al takes us through the data to change process and outlines how you can create work streams to support this framework within your organisation.
What is the data to change process?
An analytics strategy needs a data strategy! Many organisations miss opportunities to improve, when process and technology decisions are made without consideration of the data required, and what insights that data will inform. The data to change process aims to provide a framework which will guide you through the steps required to move from the generation of data to driving change within your organisation.
Al Adamsen describes the data to change process as:
“primarily focusing on creating meaningful distinctions from the time that data is created in the system all the way through to when change happens in the organisation.”
The process encompasses the various roles within the organisation from people analytics professionals through to HR business partners that are involved in driving change supported by data insights. Before we begin examining the end to end change process it is important to note that it is not feasible for one person alone to be able to complete all of the work that is generated by this process. While many might possess the necessary skills, finding the time is quite the challenge.
The first step in the data to change process is, as you might have guessed, data. You’ll have multiple sources of data being generated across numerous systems, this data when analysed will lead to insights being generated, which in turn will facilitate change if the right narrative and recommendations have been communicated to the necessary stakeholders. Based on this framework, it further emphasises the need for an analytics strategy that is underpinned by a data strategy in order to drive real change.
Often the data and reports that are generated from HR reporting systems are isolated, and the primary element in having data-driven conversations is forming a story that is grounded in data. Therefore the first step in the data to change process is gathering the necessary data to be analysed in order to begin forming the basis of a story. The data is aggregated in a stage Al terms as the “data stage”.
In this stage, the data is cleaned and made usable for analytical purposes and there are a variety of tools that can help you to facilitate that. Many analysts are moving beyond Excel to use more advanced tool such as Python to do this kind of work. Ben Zweig, CEO of Revelio Labs, provides a great overview of how you can use Python to clean, manipulate and prepare data to be used in your people analytics projects in his course “An Introduction To Python For People Analytics”. Using such techniques you can automate a lot of data manipulation and basic reporting. However, it’s important to remember that these kinds of reports and data leveraged at this stage is still very static, to create real insights, we actually have to have somebody focus on generating a story that's going to inspire confidence downstream, and that is a critical component of people analytics.
Once you’ve identified the data sources, aggregated and staged the data, completed your analysis, the next step in the process is to package the data; creating the necessary visuals and narrative to support your recommendations to drive action and change. Jonathan Ferrar, CEO of Insight222 outlines a three-step process, in his online training course “How to use Storytelling for People Analytics”, that can be leveraged once you’ve identified your insights and crafted your recommendations, to ensure the visual aids you create support the message that you’re trying to communicate and are powerful enough to create a compelling story.
Interested in learning about People Analytics? Check out our online People Analytics training courses at myHRfuture
The penultimate step in the data to change process is the communication and facilitation of your recommendations or insights to drive actionable change. It’s important to think about the narrative that supports the insights and recommendations and who is best placed to communicate the story in order to not only create an emotional attachment but to obtain buy-in from leadership. Their role is to facilitate a discussion around the narrative. Ultimately, when executed successfully, change begins taking place because someone at the end of this process makes a decision or a set of decisions to improve a certain dynamic, based on the data, analysis and narrative that you’ve built around your recommendations for action. The change being driven can be elevating innovation, improving diversity and inclusion or any number of things, however, to just present the data is not enough.
Understanding each individual element of the data to change process is going to be critical if you individually are going to affect positive change. In order to effectively implement the data to change process, it is going to take multiple individuals who not only understand each element of the process, but respect the roles required at each layer to successfully drive change and are willing to work together to bring it to life and make it effective.
Alongside the data to change process there are three supporting work streams.
A strategic work stream
The operational work stream
The technological or data work stream
The first stream – the strategic stream – relates to our end customer, whether that is a HR executive, a business leader or your Chief HR officer. These stakeholders have certain wants and needs at various points in time, and your responsibility in HR as business partners is to understand what those needs are so that you can plan accordingly in regard to when projects and deliverables are required and how this all aligns strategically.
The operational work stream primarily focuses on operationalising the process. This can be made up of HR business partners or members of the people analytics team. Their primary role is to devise ways in which the work will actually get done, assess whether the necessary reporting means exist and how they plan to generate the insights at that point in time. They’ll be required to partner with those in the technological work stream in order to source the necessary data required to build that confidence inspiring story. There needs to be communication among those who are responsible for not only generating the insight but sourcing the requisite data and also consuming it in order to make decisions.
In order to drive real change with your people analytics projects, communication is key. In order to do that, we must have data-driven conversations that provide recommendations that drive action. It’s important that we transform our data into insights that are communicated effectively to key stakeholders and decision makers, so that analytics projects can drive real business value.
The myHRfuture academy is a learning experience platform for HR professionals looking to invest in their careers. We have many HR training courses that are targeted at People Analytics professionals and HR Business Partners to help learn about HR analytics and how to use data in conversations with the business. Invest in your career and learn the HR skills of the future. The myHRfuture Academy provides you with an on-demand platform where you can get access to over 500+ pieces of short, bitesized learning content all expertly curated to help you build knowledge in the skills that you need to prepare for the future of HR. Get access to exclusive content on People Analytics, Digital HR & HR Technology, Design Thinking, Workforce Planning, Consulting & Influencing and Stakeholder Management. Whether you prefer to watch videos, listen to podcasts, read articles or complete an expert-led training course, myHRfuture has you covered.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Manpreet Randhawa is the Head of Digital Content for myHRfuture.com. In her previous role as the Change Management Lead for People Planning, Design & Analytics at Cisco Systems, she was responsible for defining and executing on the change management strategy to successfully implement and sustain the digital and cultural transformation across the enterprise. Manpreet is very passionate about change management and technology and how to use both to transform the employee experience and prepare companies for the Future of Work.