Setting up your People Analytics Teams for Success
For people analytics teams to be successful, they have to remain focused on the needs of the business. In other words, when prioritising people analytics projects, the team should concentrate on work that will drive significant business value, instead of carrying out work that has no relationship to the broader business strategy.
Here’s a couple of examples of people analytics projects that tie directly to business value:
At National Australia Bank (NAB), the people analytics team investigated the factors that drive higher customer satisfaction across their branches. They analysed multiple sources of data collected over ten years at the branch and individual level. They also looked at customer satisfaction scores, sales results and repeat revenue. Their results showed that branches with the highest employee engagement have double the customer satisfaction scores. The team converted these findings into financial impact – speaking the language of the business – to show that employee motivation accounts for around a billion of NAB’s $5-6 billion annual profit. (For more on how NAB has scaled people analytics, listen to our podcast with Thomas Rasmussen, head of People Analytics)
Government crisis management in response to the Covid-19 pandemic has been criticised as too slow, too complacent, too late, too chaotic and not transparent enough in the full glare of the media. People analytics can help organisations avoid the same criticism, by helping companies to focus on a people-first response to Covid-19 and other crises. At Rabobank, for example, the people analytics team quickly set up a formal communication loop between the organisation and employees. Within 24 hours, the gathered feedback was converted into insights and advice for crisis teams to design new interventions.
In this article, we’re going to look at how you can set your people analytics team up for success by:
Reorganising people analytics work along a business-centric value chain
Operationalising the value chain through three ‘engines’
Establishing the right teams, with the right skills to power each engine
Reorganising people analytics work along a business-centric value chain
The people analytics team can set itself up to deliver business value, as NAB and Rabobank have done, by adapting its operating model to operate along a value chain. The people analytics value chain is led by client drivers as inputs and ends with analytics products delivering business outcomes at scale:
This model takes an ‘outside-in’ approach. The Client Drivers include the business strategy, stakeholder challenges (i.e. challenges that you discern from having conversations with executive stakeholders) and the People & HR strategy.
Instead of pondering questions like, ‘what’s my attrition rate?’ (understanding employee attrition has long been a staple exercise of people analytics teams) the function can change to examine more business-leading questions such as ‘what people factors will improve my business performance?’ and ‘which roles in my organisation deliver the most value?’
Operationalising the value chain through three ‘engines’
The value chain can be operationalised through the Insight222 Operating Model for People Analytics, which delivers value at scale through three engines:
A Demand Engine – of consultants to work directly with business executives to provide a funnel of the most important business (not just HR) challenges and opportunities
A Solution Engine – of expert analysts, data scientists, behavioural scientists and stewards to deliver insights and recommendations
A Product Engine – of designers, product engineers and change managers to build and implement valuable analytics products at scale
Each engine is critical to the success of the operating model. Consider the following:
Without the Demand Engine, you’re reactive and not delivering value where the business needs it the most
Without the Solution Engine, you don’t have the skills or governance to conduct analyses, nor the credibility to tackle the most complex challenges
Without the Product Engine, you’re not able to scale the impact of people analytics solutions and will most likely end up conducting experiments on lower-value priorities
Establishing the right teams, with the right skills to power each engine
The operating model above is made up of five teams, each requiring their own specific roles and skillsets:
Let’s look at the skillsets for each team in turn.
Consulting
The core role of this group of people is to understand, prioritise and generate the demand for people analytics work, acting as internal consultants to stakeholders.
Skills for this team include:
Strong communication skills, including active listening skills
Translating business challenges into people analytics projects
Advanced Analytics
This is a team of scientists and analysts that use the most advanced techniques to test hypotheses using a range of data sources. The team could include data scientists and behavioural scientists, as well as analysts with deep expertise in research methodology.
Skills for this team include:
Expertise in detailed people analytics techniques, such as
Data science
Reporting and Enablement
This team consists of data analysts with full familiarity with people data in the company, who can build reports and dashboards and generally answer any data request.
Skills for this team include:
Governance
This is usually a small team of experts that handle project prioritisation, ensure proper data stewardship and uphold the highest ethical standards of using people data.
Skills for this team include:
Expertise in privacy laws
Risk assessment
Implementation
The core role of this team in People Analytics is to scale analytical solutions into products and to implement those solutions across the organisation.
Skills for this team include:
User interface design and programming
Project management
Product management
Change management
Whilst many teams won’t have all of the capabilities described at their disposal, the models in this report can be adopted by teams both large and small. The value chain, operating model and skillsets for people analytics can help teams to consider how they can deliver the most business value for their organisation. This is the ultimate priority.
For more on the Insight222 People Analytics download the full report.
Clients of the Insight222 People Analytics Program® can access additional survey findings in the Program Resource Hub here.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Caroline is the Research Director at Insight222. She is a thought-leader, researcher and writer on people analytics and the future of HR. Prior to joining Insight222, she worked at the Center for the Future of Work where she was an advisor and in-demand speaker on topics related to the future of work. She has also held roles in digital services and transformation consulting at Cognizant. Contact Caroline at caroline.styr@insight222.com