Making Inclusion Work While Closing Critical Skill Gaps
Inclusion is more than a buzzword/”nice-to-have”; an inclusive workplace can enable organisations to execute their business priorities in a better and more efficient way.
One reason I enjoy hosting the Digital HR Leaders podcast is that I learn so much from interviewing our guests. For example, when I spoke with Dr Nancy Doyle, Chief Research Officer at Genius Within and Co-Director at the Centre for Neurodiversity at Work, in an episode that aired in 2021, I learned that 15-20% of the population are neurodiverse. This means that we are all working with or managing neurodivergent colleagues in our organisations, whether we realise it or not.
Neurodiversity can be used as a term to encompass cognitive invisible differences or disabilities such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADHD, autism, Tourettes, dyscalculia, and dysgraphia Neurodivergent employees bring many in-demand skill sets to the workplace, including innovation, creativity, unfiltered viewpoints, analytical thinking, systematising, and technical capabilities, and more.
These skill sets are often in demand from people analytics teams, as I learnt when I recently caught up with Ralf Buechsenschuss, until recently Global Head of Organisational Design, People Analytics and Digitalisation at Zurich Insurance, and now Employee Experience Executive at Microsoft. Ralf shared with me a case study of how during this time at Zurich Insurance, he tapped into a pool of people on the autistic spectrum to close a skills gap on the people analytics team in order to complete an important project. Ralf kindly agreed to share the story with readers of the myHRfuture blog.
Ralf, please can you introduce yourself and your background in people analytics.
I am Ralf Buechsenschuss, and working now for several years across different industries in the field of People Analytics, Strategic Workforce Planning and Digitalization. I recently joined Microsoft to bring together People Analytics and Technology to enable a consistent employee experience at scale and increase employee productivity. Before joining Microsoft, I worked for Zurich Insurance, Nestlé and the Telefónica / O2 Group in different global and local roles, always related to the topics I am passionate about, such as using data and insights to make better decisions about people & teams, HR strategy and digital transformation.
Ralf, you’ve got a powerful story to share on how you tapped into the skill pool of people on the autistic spectrum to close some skills gaps in the people analytics function at your previous company Zurich Insurance; please can you share more?
Some time ago, we started to develop further our employee listening approach, from annual surveying to continuous employee listening. One of the consequences of this was that we had more survey data coming from all over the globe with an increased expectation from leaders to analyse especially rich open-text questions. The challenge was to develop an algorithm to analyse a lot of unstructured text data with company-specific words, acronyms, industry-specific wording, etc. And while researching for a good partner to help us, we found Auticon, a consulting firm which employs purely people on the autistic spectrum. They provided us with a very talented person to support us in developing a python based Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithm.
Why are people on the autistic spectrum especially skilled in this area?
We learned that everybody on the autistic spectrum is different, hence the term ‘spectrum’, but the crucial skills were the determination to solve a problem and trying out many different options to really get to the best solution. Secondly, very high attention to detail, especially when it comes to training the model and reviewing the accuracy of the outcomes, and then retraining and reviewing the code. Thirdly, huge patience was required when we had to label different text data sets.
What was the process for bringing the person on board? What adjustments, if any, did you make to the recruitment and selection process as well as in onboarding?
In our case at Zurich, we were looking for somebody to support our project, and the selection was very easy and straightforward. We contacted Auticon and explained our needs, and shortly after, they presented us with the best candidate from their portfolio. We had a very structured onboarding of the candidate and his job coach. A job coach is a person who is assigned to each Auticon consultant to ensure that the consultant settles in well or can ask for advice at any time during the assignment. My team went through a specific onboarding session to learn more about the autistic spectrum and autism in the workplace. There weren’t any big adjustments needed, only that a noisy open space office was not the first choice as a workplace, but in my experience, that is the same case for many people analytics professionals when trying to write code or focusing on analysis.
What did this person do? How did they help you develop your NLP capabilities to analyse employee listening open text data?
The person focused on data preparation, text labelling, writing code in python, training and testing the model as well as documentation. The validation of the results and retraining the model, in particular, was a huge piece of work.
Ralf, this is a perfect example of combining inclusion, skills and people analytics to solve a business challenge. What tips would you give to readers with a similar problem to solve?
Think about the problem or challenge you have and be honest if you have all the skills you need within the team. If you have big ideas but not all the skills, find innovative ways to make them happen. Partnering with a company like Auticon, in this case, can be of huge benefit to close a very specific skill gap but also to create an inclusive workplace. It was a great learning experience and opportunity to grow as a team through this experience. In the end, it is about making inclusion work while closing critical skill gaps to create value. People from the autism spectrum can help in so many places within an organisation.
Last question, from a wider perspective, what is the role of people analytics in helping organisations to support their objectives around inclusion and diversity?
Good question; I think there are several ways people analytics can help here. For example, you can try to measure the impact of diverse teams. Is Diversity really increasing value creation, driving innovation, or improving performance? Another example would be to measure perceived inclusion and include the measurement of D&I in your employee listening approach or, thirdly, understand the differences between networks of men and women and how this could be linked to career progression leveraging organisational network analysis. The key thing to remember is that people analytics work should always be linked to your priorities and support key stakeholders within the business.
THANK YOU
Thanks to Ralf for sharing his time and expertise with readers of the myHRfuture blog. You can connect with Ralf on LinkedIn and also find out more about the case Ralf shares in this article here. You can also learn more about Ralf’s work from his time at Zurich by tuning into an episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, where Ralf explained: how to take a skills-based approach to workforce planning.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Ralf Buechsenschuss
Ralf Buechsenschuss is currently Employee Experience Executive at Microsoft based in Switzerland. Prior to this position, he was the Global Head of Organizational Design, People Analytics & Digitalization at Zurich Insurance; he also held other HR management positions during his time at Zurich Insurance. Before joining Zurich Insurance, Ralf worked as Global People Analytics Manager for Nestlé as well as in different positions related to HR Strategy, People Analytics and Planning for the Telefónica/O2 Group.
Ralf is a recognised speaker at conferences and sharing his experience as a lecturer at several universities and business schools.
He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration, and a MBA in general management from IE Business School and is working on his PhD at the University of Mannheim.
David Green
David is a globally respected author, speaker, and executive consultant on people analytics, data-driven HR and the future of work. With lead responsibility for Insight222’s brand and market development, David helps chief people officers and people analytics leaders create value with people analytics. David is the co-author of Excellence in People Analytics, host of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, and regularly speaks at industry events such as UNLEASH and People Analytics World. Prior to co-founding Insight222, David worked in the human resources field in multiple major global companies, including most recently with IBM.
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