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The Best HR and People Analytics Articles of November 2019

David Green

I’ve spent the last few weeks on the road dragging my guitar case to gigs in Paris, Haifa, Hamburg, Dubai, Amsterdam and Mexico City.

It’s been quite a tour. It’s also been an invigorating and rewarding experience. The enthusiasm for people analytics, employee experience and digital HR continues to overflow.

As we reach the threshold of 2020 (what price all the multitude of 2020 strategies many of you will have worked on these past ten years or so?), the HR function threatens to finally become both digital and data driven. We can but hope.

Certainly, this month’s selection of articles seems to suggest that we are on the right track. Enjoy, and please share some data-driven HR love with your network.

ARTICLE OF THE MONTH

ALLAN H. CHURCH & SERGIO EZAMA - 6 Truths about using Personality Data for Talent Decisions

Despite the continued rise in use of personality tools in talent management, the authors describe how they still confront major misperceptions in how these tools work, what they do/don’t measure and when to use and not to use them. Based on their combined 50+ years assessing and developing leaders and internal research from their team of I/O psychologists at PepsiCo, Church and Ezama present six truths about the use of personality tests. These include: i) Personality predicts future potential far better than current executive performance in role (see FIG 1), ii) Hiring people using personality can be more inclusive than you think, iii) Just because someone tells you a test is valid, it doesn’t mean it is for your organisation. Read the full article to learn all six. It really is a must-read.

FIG 1: Predicting Future Potential by Level (Source: Allan H. Church, Sergio Ezama, Talent Q.com)

EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE

STEPHEN YOUNG & PATRICK KULESA - Identifying the factors that make a high-performance employee experience

Fascinating new research from Willis Towers Watson based on the 500+ organisations and nearly 10m employees they run engagement surveys for every year. In order to understand what elements of EX matter most, the study compares 30 high-performance companies (based on financial performance and survey scores). The results are illuminating. First, they show that the EX topics that differentiate high-performers are inspiration, drive, growth and trust. Second, as FIG 2 clearly shows, strong EX definitively predicts financial results. 

FIG 2: EX Predicts better Financials - Analysis of EX vs. financial performance across organisations (Source: Willis Towers Watson)

EMPLOYEE RETENTION

CANDICE CHENG & GREG LEWIS - 3 Factors Strongly Linked to Better Employee Retention, According to 32 Million LinkedIn Profiles

Some fascinating research by LinkedIn where analysis of 32m profiles on the platform found that there’s a 76% chance of an employee still being at a company after 12 months. Perhaps more interesting is the three key factors LinkedIn’s analysis found were most strongly linked to improved retention: mobility (lateral or upward), open and effective managers (see FIG 3), and empowering employees all lead to better retention.

FIG 3: Retention at companies rated for open and effective management (Source: LinkedIn)

ETHICS

STEVEN TIELL - Create an Ethics Committee to Keep Your AI Initiative in Check

One of the starkest findings of the recent Adoption of People Analytics research we did at Insight222 was that only 23% of respondents said their company had an Ethics Charter for People Analytics. Developing an Ethics Charter was the first co-creation project we undertook with members of The People Analytics Program. This article by Steven Tiell of Accenture provides a few clues why whether it’s AI or People Analytics, an ethics charter and committee are essential in creating transparency, sustainability and fairness and reducing risk and bias. It really is that simple.

An Ethics Committee can help to not only maintain an organisation’s values-based intentions, but can increase transparency into how they use AI

Interested in learning about People Analytics? Check out our online People Analytics training courses at myHRfuture

TOMAS CHAMORRO-PREMUZIC, FRIDA POLLI & BEN DATTNER - Building Ethical AI for Talent Management

There continues to be much debate on whether AI reduces or enhances bias in talent management. Of course, depending on your approach it could do either. If the training set is diverse, if demographically unbiased data is used, and if the algorithms are also debiased, AI can mitigate human prejudice and expand diversity and socioeconomic inclusion better than humans ever could. However, if the training set, the data, or both are biased, and algorithms are not sufficiently audited, AI will only exacerbate the problem of bias in hiring and homogeneity in organisations. In this excellent HBR article, the authors provide four steps for organisations seeking to use AI for talent management including educating candidates and obtaining their consent plus investing in systems that optimise for fairness and accuracy.

Realistically, we have a greater ability to ensure both accuracy and fairness in AI systems than we do to influence or enlighten recruiters and hiring managers

BUILDING CAPABILITY IN PEOPLE ANALYTICS

GANES KESARI - The 3 Missing Roles that every Data Science Team needs to hire

In a mad rush to hire data scientists, many companies overlook three key roles in an analytics team, and this often leads to failure of projects. The three roles cited here (translators, storytellers and the oft overlooked psychologists) are all in the ‘Six Skills for Success’ model (see FIG 4), which we use at Insight222, and which was originally tabled in the excellent The Power of People book by Nigel Guenole, Sheri Feinzig and Jonathan Ferrar.

Translators help define the business problem and shape an approach to solve it. Psychologists interpret human patterns uncovered by machine-learning algorithms. Storytellers weave insights into a narrative to propagate action. Without any one of them, your data science efforts could fail.

FIG 4: The Six Skills for Success for People Analytics (Source: The Power of People by Nigel Guenole, Jonathan Ferrar and Sheri Feinzig)

MIKE WEST – Ten Myths of People Analytics

In this excerpt from his recent book, Mike West tackles ten myths of people analytics with his usual candour. As well as covering common misconceptions (dare I utter the words ‘fake news?’), Mike also encourages readers on the need to think differently and provides guidance on how to get your priorities straight from the start. Mike’s words on ONA (Myth 9) being a great tool providing you use it for a relevant business question is particularly pertinent.

The more you work with data and talk to other people who work with data, the more you will realise, there are no perfect datasets


ANDRÉ KATO & DAVID WHITE - People data insights to business outcomes

A good read from André Kato as he shines a light on the approach of David White and his People Analytics team at LinkedIn. David rightly believes that insights without impact equals overheads, and this is one of the three guiding principles of the team (see FIG 5). Guidance is also provided on where the team should sit, how to ensure you are doing the right work and how to calculate ROI, as well as the work the team have done on culture at LinkedIn.

FIG 5: The three guiding principles of LinkedIn’s People Analytics team (Source: David White)

ORGANISATIONAL NETWORK ANALYSIS

AFKE SCHOUTEN - Organisational Network Analysis — A Beginner’s Guide

A good primer on four points to consider when getting started with ONA: have a clear goal or objective (i.e. a business problem to solve), use this objective to drive your metrics and data collection, get your legal and ethical position clear and communicate transparently with both stakeholders and subjects of the analysis. This is far more than a ‘beginners guide’ and should prove to be a good compendium to those actively running ONA projects.

Communication is key for the success of your ONA project

HR TECH

JOSH BERSIN - HR Technology: The Dirty Little Secret

Don’t worry, Josh Bersin hasn’t suddenly developed a predilection for Mills & Boon novella. The ‘dirty little secret’ in the title is Bersin’s revelation that HR Technology is harder to implement than ever – as starkly highlighted in FIG 6. Josh goes on to reveal two more secrets. Firstly, that job architecture will make or break your HCM system, and secondly, that we are spending more money on HR Technology than ever before.

FIG 6: Success with HR Tech projects is harder to achieve than we thought (Source: Josh Bersin)

STRATEGIC WORKFORCE PLANNING

ALICIA ROACH - How Strategic Workforce Planning adds Business Value

Alicia Roach has written a series of excellent articles on Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP) throughout 2019. Her latest article looks at how SWP drives business value through answering two key questions: “Does your organisation know what workforce is needed now?” and “What about in three to five years?”

SWP remains the only way to really align business strategy and imperatives to the workforce, to ensure that initiatives actually have the impact and outcomes needed

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION

JOHN SCHWARZ - The real reason we’re not seeing more progress on diversity at work

Despite the clear business value of diversity and inclusion along with countless HR programs and the rise of progressive hiring practices, progress on this critical topic remains painfully slow. In this piece, Visier’s CEO John Schwarz argues that moving the needle on diversity requires putting company culture under the microscope. And that means relying on data—not emotions, intentions, or intuition.

Until we’re willing to look at the data, and take action on what it reveals, attempts to address diversity will remain inefficient

PODCAST OF THE MONTH

JACOB MORGAN & DON TAPSCOTT – Blockchain & The Future of Work | LARS SCHMIDT & KATARINA BERG – Modern HR Playlist | DAWN KLINGHOFFER & DAVID GREEN – The Evolution of People Analytics at Microsoft

A trio of podcasts for your aural listening pleasure this month. First, Jacob Morgan talks to world renowned expert Don Tapscott about how blockchain is impacting the future of work. The Lars Schmidt talks to one of our previous guests on The Digital HR Leaders Podcast, Katarina Berg about some of the inner workings of her progressive team at Spotify. Finally, Dawn Klinghoffer shares some of the advanced work the People Analytics team is doing at Microsoft. 

VIDEO OF THE MONTH

JOHN SUMSER - New Management Approaches for HR in AI Enabled Enterprises | ROB CROSS - Relationship Analytics & Understanding How Things Get Done

Two videos to absorb this month. Firstly, John Sumser discusses new management approaches for HR in AI enabled enterprises covering market definitions, types of intelligent tools, and the things you have to do to manage an increasing number of digital employees. Then, you can watch the brilliant keynote Rob Cross delivered at the recent PAFOW conference in Philadelphia on how network analytics helps understand topics such as collaboration, innovation and burnout within organisations.

COURSE OF THE MONTH

JONATHAN FERRAR & IAN BAILIE - How to Build a Hypothesis for your People Analytics Projects

To ensure you’re adding business value with people analytics, it’s critical to do thorough problem definition up front and frame the business questions and developing the hypotheses you want to test with people analytics i.e. start with the business problem and not the data. Watch the taster video below, read the article and then find out more about the course here.

SEE ME SPEAK AT PAFOW SAN FRANCISCO IN 2020

Join me and Al Adamsen for what promises to be the biggest PAFOW show yet in San Francisco from 29-31 January. More speakers will be announced soon but the likes of Dawn Klinghoffer, RJ Milnor, Heather Whiteman, Stacia Garr and Dafna Aaronson already confirmed. There are also PAFOW shows confirmed for Sydney (on 3-4 March) and London (29-30 April). Check out news on all the 2020 shows here where you can get a 15% discount on tickets with my code DG15. I’ll see you there. 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David is a globally respected writer, speaker, conference chair, and executive consultant on people analytics, data-driven HR and the future of work. As an Executive Director at Insight222, he helps global organisations create more cultural and economic value through the wise and ethical use of people data and analytics. Prior to joining Insight222 and taking up a board advisor role at TrustSphere, David was the Global Director of People Analytics Solutions at IBM Watson Talent. As such, David has extensive experience in helping organisations embark upon and accelerate their people analytics journeys. 

SEE ME SPEAK AT THESE EVENTS IN 2020

Now that my speaking gigs are over for 2019, it’s time to look forward to 2020. I’ll be chairing and/or speaking about people analytics, data-driven HR and the Nine Dimensions for Excellence in People Analytics model at the following events until the end of May 2020.