HR practices are rapidly evolving, and creating a new operating model for people analytics is essential to support these changes. In this episode, I sit down with Erin Gerbec, Director of People Analytics at Cardinal Health. Erin has successfully transformed her people analytics team into a high-functioning, consultative unit that aligns closely with business goals.

In this episode, you can look forward to learning more about:

• Erin’s insights on creating a new operating model for people analytics.

• Standardising reporting across the HR function to enable a consultative approach.

• The impact of this shift on interactions between the people analytics team, HR partners, and the broader business.

• Key initiatives for training and upskilling that supported the transition.

• Technological advancements that enhanced customer experience.

• Practical advice on understanding customer needs through personas and collaborating with other business units.

For HR leaders looking to innovate and drive strategic value through people analytics, this episode offers invaluable insights and actionable strategies.

Support for this podcast comes from Crunchr, a platform that integrates an HR data lake with state-of-the-art people analytics. Whether you're an advanced user or just starting out, Crunchr's generative AI co-pilot helps you unlock insights with ease. advanced user or just starting out, Crunchr's generative AI co-pilot helps you unlock insights with ease. 

You can learn more by visiting  www.crunchr.com

[0:00:00] David Green: Erin, welcome to the show.  I'm really looking forward to our conversation as I know you've been on a significant journey at Cardinal Health and People Analytics during your three years as the leader there.  But before we get into the detail, please can you give a brief introduction to yourself, your career journey to date and a little bit about Cardinal Health as well?

[0:01:56] Erin Gerbec: Perfect.  Thank you, David, I appreciate the invitation to be here.  I was so drawn to People Analytics at Cardinal Health because I want to share with you a little bit about Cardinal Health as a company.  So, Cardinal Health has a team of about 50,000 mission-driven team members who are striving each day to advance health care and improve lives.  And we see ourselves as essential to care and a distributor of pharmaceuticals and a global manufacturer and distributor of medical and lab products.  And with 50 years in business and in a dynamic and essential, but rapidly changing healthcare environment, we operate in 30 countries and as I said, with close to 50,000 employees, contractors, and on-call team members, I was so drawn to this People Analytics team because of the complexity of Cardinal Health and the opportunity to make a mark on the employee experience through the People Analytics function.

So, when I was considering where to move my career, I was just so drawn to the HR leadership's appetite for a data-driven culture and more data-driven insights that I felt like this would be a great place for me to continue to make my mark. 

[0:03:15] David Green: So, Erin, I know you've been kind of on a three-year journey at Cardinal Health since you joined.  My understanding is you took over the People Analytics function as the leader during the great resignation, which must have been quite a challenging time.  I'd love to hear more about this.  What are some of the challenges that you faced as you started your personal journey at Cardinal Health? 

[0:03:36] Erin Gerbec: Yeah, if we all think back to 2021 and 2022, those were wild times in People Analytics functions.  I remember looking at the data and saying, "How high up is turnover going to go?" and leaders asking, "How much higher will it go beyond what we've seen already?"  So fortunately, I was actually part of that great resignation and I also made a change during that time and landed at Cardinal Health.  The team that I took over always ran high on turnover.  So, 30% to 50% historically, annually, that was the norm.  And so, as I mentioned, I was so excited to join Cardinal Health and their People Analytics function in that moment, because they were hungry for data insights and were looking for, I guess, expanding the insights across the employee lifecycle.  So, there were really good bones there already that were ready for that next evolution of the function. 

So, with these, what I consider good bones, dashboard insights were already delivered via Tableau with a SQL database.  It's like really smart, technically skilled data analysts were building those dashboards.  There's a small data science team.  And so, it wasn't that the team was a total turnaround or was starting from scratch, it was just that there was so much fluctuation in the way the team members were interacting with the data and that they were sort of working on it individually.  And so, I bring this up related to the great resignation, because when you only have good bones and talented individuals, that falls apart really quickly when there's instability and high turnover.  So, we had about 90 or so Tableau dashboards that were in our portfolio, but they were built by maybe seven or eight different data analysts over the years with different SQL code, that was even pulling in our enterprise headcount.  So, it's written three different ways from all these different fingers that have touched it.  And it actually produced different headcounts sometimes, depending on how it would be pulling into the dashboards. 

So, because every dashboard and every product we had, had the fingerprints of its creator with different templates and colours and code and levels of automation, it was really painful to lose those team members during that time and to onboard their replacements, because there wasn't a systemic standardised way of doing things.  And the remaining team members, who then had to train the new hires, also had to learn their peers' product in order to even explain to the replacement how they would keep that product going.  So, it was just a really interesting time to join a team with so much enthusiasm and passion for taking it to this next evolution of the team, while at the same time more than half the team left and found other opportunities through that time.  And that meant having to figure out what is the next best step we need to take so that we can deliver for our HR partners and for our business the way that People Analytics has that seat at the table to do so. 

[0:06:59] David Green: So, what were the steps that you took?  And you mentioned, obviously, a key part of that, I guess, was standardising reporting.  What steps did you take to stabilise the team, but also enable the standardised reporting across the HR function and drive that vision, I think, that you had as well of the team becoming a bit more consultative?

[0:07:20] Erin Gerbec: Well, I spent a lot of that first year just keeping the lights on for the most high-priority, high-visibility requests with the team members who remained.  We rebuilt the team one key position at a time, and we also created a strategy to standardise the reporting, as we've mentioned.  Really, the focus that we had, and where I'm excited to share our story, is not to take a victory lap for us at Cardinal Health or what we've built, but because I feel like so many of my peers that I talk to have shared that they felt similar experiences with my story too.

So, what helped us find a North Star, we're building a TA dashboard, as an example.  Knowing that employees who apply for two or more jobs and don't get them are more likely to leave the company, means that knowing how to get to your TA data and knowing how to get to your active employee data, all of that matters, and you need to be able to make connections across.  So, that's the first thing, was having a focus on creating connections across the employee life cycle.  And the second was to be great consultants on those insights.  And we didn't want to just let that occur naturally or organically, we wanted to be really intentional with it.  And so, what we landed on was, you can't be consultative until you have time to think about the data. 

I think my real first aha with the team was that we need to build the team for high turnover.  It has to be easy to leave and it has to be easy to onboard.  So, data analysts, data scientists, people who can wrangle data and lift an actionable insight from it, they're always going to be in demand.  My team should always be getting calls from recruiters to be poached from me.  So, it's not about building team members who will stay, it's about building a structure that makes it easy to join and leave, so that everyone has career opportunity and that the work doesn't stop just because individuals go on to that internal promotion, or look for another opportunity somewhere else that fits their needs.  So, we did the work to standardise everything, the Tableau dashboard templates, the SQL code, the way we story-tell with our data, even the chart types that are used to make the insight pop faster and more intuitively for the end user.  Everything that comes from our team has to feel like it came from the People Analytics team.  As soon as that dashboard refreshes, I wanted everyone to feel like, "Oh, this came from Erin's team.  So, it's credible, I can trust it, and I know who to go to if I have further questions". 

So, your comment earlier, getting the headcount right is really important.  And the last thing any People Analytics team wants to have is a really insightful dashboard that tells the right purpose-driven story, and then someone says, "But is that number right?  How would I check that?"  And we didn't build it to check the data, we built it to provide an aggregate story.  So, I think for us, that was the most important part, was actually carving out time to prioritise that, and it ended up being that about 40% to 50% of our time in that second year was set aside so that we could rebuild and think about the way that we standardise and free up our time, so that we can think about the data and be consultants.  So, we automated everything that could be automated; we decommissioned dashboards that nobody was really looking at anymore, so we wouldn't have to even have them in our portfolio to look at; and identified those coding inconsistencies so that we even found a few errors we weren't expecting to find when we did that review, and made everything a little better and a little faster.  And that has completely transformed how our team spends our time. 

So, it's not that every day is like, "Well, I have to fix this broken dashboard and this one needs to be refreshed", and, "They wanted that tweak to it, and that's going to be two weeks of my time".  It allowed us to think, "Now that I don't have to touch the dashboards, how can I think about the data that's in them and then proactively reach out to say, 'Hey, I noticed things went up this month'?  Maybe we should have a conversation about that instead of letting the end user find that insight on there".

So, your structure in people analytics, obviously as you went on this journey, did this require a shift in how you looked at your operating model with People Analytics?  And what does your People Analytics function look like in terms of people skills, scope of work, those sorts of things? 

[0:13:07] Erin Gerbec: I'd say it was less of a shift and more of an evolution.  And it was sort of one role at a time as we evaluated, "Well, now that I'm the leader, what do I need in my managers to make this effective?"  And then once we placed the managers, what are their strengths, and what do we need in their additional team members who are filling open roles?  What do we need then to fill gaps so that we are this interdisciplinary team of people who came from different backgrounds and different work experiences, but still can all rally around the same passion for HR data and passion for the employee? 

The thing that really helped us the most in thinking about our operating model, once we got to the people side of it, we went to a mission statement.  And you're going to hear from me a couple of times throughout this conversation that I like to have themes and statements that everybody can ground themselves in, and certainly year one was stabilisation.  Year two was to focus on the foundation.  We need to rebuild in a way that takes these good bones, cleans up what needs to be cleaned up, and then take it to the next level.  And here now where we're in year three, I think it's more of a year of what's possible and all the changes we've made with implementing Crunchr and really unleashing this team as consultants and what they can do for the business.

But it all started with five simple words, where we said, "We exist to deliver insights that drive outcomes".  And as I said before, you can't be consultative if you don't have time to think about the data.  And so rallying around these five words for us gave us the permission to say no.  And the work that we may have done in the past that was more tactical or, "Hey, run this workday report for me and do a VLOOKUP with the other one and give it to me every Monday", allowed us to say, "That's not the value we add and that's not delivering an insight that drives an outcome.  And so let me show you how we can schedule this for you on your own.  Workday will send it to your inbox every Monday", and this is now off of our plate so that we could say no to work so we could say yes to the most impactful work that our team can provide, but also that lights us up, that we want to do every day.

I think the outcome of that, the testament to that that was the right thing to do, is that today my turnover is 0% annually.  We have not had a single person leave the team since we rebuilt it this way. 

[0:15:50] David Green: Wow, well that's a testament to you, I think, and the rest of the team as well, what you've built.

[0:15:56] Erin Gerbec: Yeah, it's a team where we work together, we work cross-functionally, we still have our swim lanes, we still have our Workday-focused folks, we still have our Crunchr- and Tableau-focused team members, we still have data science and the database management, yet we all work very collaboratively together.  And that wasn't possible before when we were just heads down, thinking about the dashboard that needed to be refreshed that day.  So, I think for us, this more of a customer-centric approach to understanding their needs, when we had more time to think like, "Let's look to the horizon and see, what would they ask for if they knew we could do it for them, if we hadn't told them no so many times because we didn't have time, or it wasn't the right thing in that moment; what would they have asked for?" 

So, we just started to deepen our partnerships with our HR business partners, with our CoE leaders, and took the time with them to develop a prototype and get feedback, and iterate some more and get more feedback, so that they felt part of the process and it could sharpen our work and our thinking as well.  And really also asking them, "What is on your wishlist?  What do you wish you knew?"  And often, it was possible, we just hadn't had the capacity to do it in the past or didn't have the tools and the right talent in place to deliver it in a way that would actually meet the speed of the business.

[0:17:20] David Green: That's really good.  I mean, again, when Jonathan and I were writing Excellence in People Analytics, we were actually struck by how many companies' People Analytics team did have mission statements, and some of them were as simple and as clear with a clarity that yours had as well.  And I think, again, what we found is it number one helped mobilise the team around a common goal, which it sounds like it's certainly done that with you, Erin, and the team; and then, it also helps your customers in the business, both within HR and the business, understand what the team's designed there to do.  So, it works out well for that.  And then it helps you prioritise, as you said, because you can't say yes to everything, it's impossible, and obviously you want to focus on the work that's going to have the biggest impact to the organisation.  And it sounds like it's helped you to do that as well. 

Again, that kind of leads onto the next thing, which you've mentioned there, it enables you to kind of help evolve, I use the word evolution actually, it's helped evolve the relationship that you and the team have with your HR business partners, which is such an important relationship for a People Analytics team.  So, maybe you could talk a little bit more to that, Erin.  So, that shift from more of a technical focus to more of a consulting focus, maybe more of an outside-looking function, how's that changed the way that the People Analytics team operate and interact with HR partners, but also the broader business as well?

[0:19:05] Erin Gerbec: I think it was probably my first week at Cardinal Health, knowing that I was specifically hired because there was an interest in looking at more of the connections across the employee life cycle, I started saying to people, I really want to change the conversation about what it means around this data-driven HR.  We think we're headed in this direction, but nobody really knows what it means, but let's think of it this way.  We need to stop telling ourselves that there is data-driven decision-making.  It doesn't exist, because data doesn't make the decision on its own.  The people still have to be the ones who can interpret and understand that information, the data, the trends, the analysis that they're seeing, in combination with their expertise and their business knowledge, so that the people can take action on what they're seeing.  So, I'd rather spend our time talking about what questions you want to ask of the data, and how we can shape it to answer that for you and to make it obvious to you how that fits in with the narrative that you already have in your head, or how it challenges that, and where we need to ask further questions. 

So, in the past, a meeting with an HR partner might've looked like the HR partner saying, "These are the slides I show in our QBR with the business.  And this is really manual for me to pull all this together and this data, and it takes me a full week every quarter to do this.  Erin, can your team create a dashboard for me so I can just screenshot this and plop it in my PowerPoint deck?"  And so we started asking, "Well, what questions should we ask of the data, and how will you take action on that data that you do provide?  And if you don't plan to take action, then we really shouldn't be talking about it.  That's not the best real estate for you to be even bringing to the business".  So, we started creating and thinking about really what is a purpose-driven, insightful dashboard across every part of the employee lifecycle that can inform action and maybe inspire the next question that should be asked of the data, so you can click into it and think, "Well, now that I know this, what more do I need to understand to make that decision?"

So as a team, we've just really adopted this new mindset that we have a new vocabulary around consulting, where we call ourselves, it's the order-taker versus order-maker.  Some people in our learning team actually put together this presentation to think about being a better consultant, and we've really leaned into it.  So, there's probably an example I could give you almost every week of the year.  One of my team members is saying, "I know order-taker versus order-maker; they're asking for this, but I don't think that's really what they need".  And so, we take this consulting approach that our HR partners are always going to tell us what they want and what they see that they think would be helpful to them.  But it's our job and it's our responsibility, because of our expertise in analytics, to translate their wish list items into what they really need to have that data-driven conversation so that they, as people, can make the decision with data.

So, we spent a lot of time thinking and talking with each other about how to approach that with humility.  They know the business more than we do, we're just sitting on the other side of some dashboards to them, and we might be the gatekeeper to the information they need and we're slowing them down.  So, how do we build that relationship with humility, with partnership, with influencing without the authority, to shape the conversation so that what we deliver for them is truly what they're going to need?

[0:22:51] David Green: In terms of managing that transition, and you talked about moving from order-takers to order-makers, what was some of the training or upskilling initiatives that you implemented to support this change, maybe for your team, but maybe also for the wider HR professionals as well? 

[0:23:08] Erin Gerbec: We spent a year with the theme, "Focus on the foundation".  And that foundation is the standardisation, the connection across the employee lifecycle, and the consulting.  And so for us, we feel like table stakes, as a People Analytics function, was getting the standardisation right, teaching our partners how to interact with the new standardised look and feel, a better experience for our HR partners, and how we upskilled them to interact with us.

On the consulting side, we've been really intentional with that consulting skills don't just organically happen.  My experiences are a culmination of a PhD in IO psychology, years of experience working, falling flat on my face and learning quickly from it.  So, what we wanted to do was not wait for everyone to get there on their own, but to actually drive conversation where we held ourselves accountable to elevating our skill and committing our time to getting better at the consulting piece.  So, we actually scheduled monthly consulting skill sessions on our calendar, actually put together a series of topics monthly.  It had been that we just leaned on the learning function, which had some great content, to start to really give us a kickstart to the right language and the right foundation with it.  But shortly after that, we just started doing it ourselves and said, "Well, what do we think we need to get better at?" and giving each other tough feedback of, "I think we need to say no better.  your to-do list is too long.  These things aren't all important and we need to prioritise with the resources we have.  Let's do a session on how to prioritise the right work, and then let's do a follow-up session on how to say no when it's not the right work, or how to navigate difficult stakeholders who are asking for something that isn't the right thing to do right now". 

It's actually gotten to, over the last eight months of these eight sessions then have actually been led by more junior team members.  The individual contributors on the team have come up with their own topic and researched it and presented it to the rest of us, which is great for their development, as well as in practice and presentation skills, but we all benefit because it's an important topic to get better in our consulting with our partners.  So, just a few of the examples of the topics we've done.  I've mentioned influencing without authority, prioritising, basics of project management, data storytelling, redirecting stakeholders and saying no, and problem solving.  Even somebody on our team has a background in industrial systems engineering and did a really great piece on that, that got us thinking about how what we deliver has a lot of analogous qualities to that as well, and it really sparked a lot of conversation.

Tell us the technology story, please.  You've obviously gone for a buy versus a build option, and you've obviously evolved from Tableau to Crunchr.  What are some of the considerations that you made and maybe, yeah, just tell us the journey along there really.

[0:27:21] Erin Gerbec: My favourite thing about this build to buy story that I have, so personally, my favourite part of it is how, when we first started those conversations, the first thing I said when I hung up the phone with Dirk for the first time, to my manager was, "Well, we're never going to buy this.  I'm sure I can do this.  We can do this ourselves, we already have a plan, we have a focus on our foundations, year-long journey, where we're going to standardise everything.  We're going to be great consultants.  It's going to take us about 18 months to rebuild all these Tableau dashboards to be more purpose-driven and easy to navigate and standardised, but we have a plan and we don't need to deviate from it". 

I very quickly realised that my ego was getting in the way of what the business really needed; which is, I could have built something over that journey of 18 months, and if we're being honest, it was probably going to take longer than that because it typically does.  And I realised we had the investment and the hunger from our HR senior leadership to be more data-driven.  The moment to be bold and rethink my way of leading that team through that focus on our foundation year was to really consider what a buy option could do for us, and how that could accelerate all of the things that we were working toward, instead of waiting 18 months for me to deliver for the business that could be there in just about the very next fiscal year. 

So for us, the thing I'm so glad we did through that process was we engaged stakeholders really early in that conversation, before we even put the RFP out, before we even put it in our budget for the following year.  We had some demos from Crunchr and a few others, and had HR VPs, the VP of Compensation, people that really need the HR data to be accurate and faster from my team, sat in the room with us as we went through just some informational demos and to see how they wanted to interact with a tool, and not just like, "Tell me how you want my Tableau dashboard to be different", but for them to see something completely new to them that they never even imagined HR data could be presented to them that way, because they had just never seen it from my team that way.  It was really eye-opening to see what they wanted and what would make their jobs easier and provide more insight for the business. 

So, when it came time to actually go through the RFP and through that decision, it was just no question that Crunchr checked all those boxes for us as an intuitive, very quick-to-value system, that would be more than worth the investment of that capability compared to waiting for my 18-month plan to come to fruition.

[0:30:28] David Green: So obviously, Crunchr has been an important part of the three-year journey you've been on.  You talked about it as year one, stabilisation; year two, rebuild the foundations, and correct me if I'm getting these words wrong, I'm interpreting what you said earlier; and three is really trying to take it to the next level, to scale it, to unleash the power that you kind of have within the team, but both from the technology as well.  What are some of the key benefits, or the impact that you're having as a team, maybe already, but that you foresee having throughout the rest of this third year?

[0:31:09] Erin Gerbec: First, you got the themes correct, so thank you for that! 

[0:31:12] David Green: Well, good!  Thank you.

[0:31:16] Erin Gerbec: I think that what's been amazing in this year three of implementing Crunchr, and what's been amazing from my team, is that we haven't just implemented Crunchr.  I'll come back to this in a second.  At the same time, we really looked at from a persona lens, who of our HR partners, where do they want to interact with us?  So, it was actually during the "Focus on the foundation" year, when we were going through the RFP and trying to decide what our next steps would be, we actually took a few months and did an exercise to look at all the different people who are currently asking something from us.  And it was very broad, even like finance needs, Workday reports about our headcount, and technically our team owns that, even if that's not delivering insight to drive outcomes, they still need that to be accurate.  The compensation team, talent acquisition, our engagement and talent management teams, everybody needs HR data in a different way.  They lean on us differently. 

Sometimes they didn't lean on us enough, because we didn't have something very good for them.  It's easier for the compensation team to have their own reports that they download out of Workday and pivot and analyse and build PowerPoint decks for senior leadership presentations; that's easier for them than trying to wait on us to build a Tableau dashboard with data that's already a month expired because we only do a monthly refresh.  So, we really thought about if we could optimise how we partner and where people interact with us, where would they want to go?  So we thought, the compensation team as the example, they need the data out of Workday instead of what's in our SQL database because it's up-to-the-minute correct.  So, we need to build better reporting and dashboards within Workday for them to interact with when that's the right answer to their question. 

But they also need analytical horsepower.  Instead of building out these decks that slice and pivot things that takes them a month, and I'm not exaggerating, it can take them a month to analyse all these complex things for 50,000 employees, we need to also build something for them in Crunchr that allows them to kind of rinse and repeat some of the same analytical views that they have, by just re-filtering on an organisation instead of creating new PowerPoint slides from scratch, and what they need to talk through.  And so, we did all of that strategy work while we were still focusing on our foundation, rebuilding Tableau dashboards, kind of realised we were headed in the Crunchr direction and stopped rebuilding Tableau dashboards, and even said, "Hey, this is coming soon, so let's focus on the right work and make sure we carve out time to really know where you want to meet us. 

I give that example to say, we have a lot of different stakeholders as a People Analytics team, and I'm sure in your audience, all of them do too.  It's not just HR business partners or the core metrics, but lots of people need lots of things from us.  And Crunchr has been an incredible tool for us to scale what had been very tedious and localised, that is already available on a weekly refresh for our customers, that they can interact with it and then come to us if they have questions or have different needs for new custom stories and dashboards to see it differently.  So, our relationship with the technology and with our partners has just been amplified and it's been changed in so many different ways, because we're actually servicing HR COE partners that we really hadn't had a relationship with before. 

Just to continue, I'll pull the thread and wrap up the story about compensation, where they had been working pretty individually, not relying on my team for much support, they actually, about a month ago, were able to pull together views out of Crunchr that we had consulted with them on.  We created a custom story for them in Crunchr that allowed those same views that they put in PowerPoint and table views, we just created with the data right there, and they were able to pull that data on a Monday after the weekend refresh, drop it into their PowerPoint, add a couple of explanatory bullets to the side, and send it as a pre-read on Tuesday to the CEO and CFO, CHRO, and talk about it on Wednesday morning.  So, for us, it's about recognising where people want to interact with us and running toward that solution with them, so that everybody in HR can be more effective with data.

[0:36:24] David Green: Erin, I think you mentioned finance earlier, but I'm sure there's other business units that you're interacting with.  Has collaborating with some of the other business units within Cardinal Health really helped with the transformation, and maybe with the impact that you're having as a team as well?

[0:36:49] David Green: Actually, I'll share that we don't have a lot of collaboration with other business units, and this is one where I know that partnership with finance and other functions would really continue to amplify our impact.  The Cardinal Health's HR operating model has always been to leverage HR analytics through the HR business partners.  So, we don't have a direct line to managers and frontline supervisors in our current model, but we're actually excited with the scaling we've seen with adopting Crunchr, with our data science models that are able to predict flight risk and other impactful events.  We're actually, in our next year of Crunchr, which is going to be what will be year four -- are you ready for my next theme?  I told you I'd have another one!

[0:37:35] David Green: Yeah!

[0:37:37] Erin Gerbec: Really, this is going to be the year of curiosity, of getting into the data and appreciating what it tells me and what's next.  And part of that is going to be giving licenses to frontline supervisors and some key business partners so we can get their feedback directly on HR metrics, and how they see it interacting with their business.  Our hope is it just frees up capacity for the HR business partner as well, that they don't have to be the one who's channelling the HR data to their business leaders, but we can provide the turnover rates, overtime rates, location specifics, by shifts, by diversity; all of those aggregate metrics can go directly to a frontline supervisor for what they care to look at and analyse, or to click into on their dashboard.  So, it'll be great to see the partnership that comes from that as just a new way of working.

[0:38:32] David Green: If you could give one piece of core advice, and you can give more than one, because I think the three-year journey may warrant more than one piece of advice, but at least one piece of core advice to our listeners who are on a similar journey towards transforming their People Analytics operating model, what would it be?

[0:38:49] Erin Gerbec: This is the part where I get to remind everybody that I'm not the Microsoft or the Google of People Analytics.  I'm just like all of you in your audience, how so many of us have a passion for this space, but haven't been able to get the traction or scale the way that we know is possible in some other organisations.  And as inspiring as those other stories are, we're left with the resources we have and the sponsorship we have.  And for me, the advice that I would give, if somebody found themselves in the situation I did in my year one, is to think, what does the business need most from me that I can provide unique value?  And for us, that was taking that year to say, "We need to focus on our foundation and really get great at consulting".  It sounds like, David, from your research, that's a common thread among so many teams, but that may not be your first step, depending on where you are as a function and what your challenges are.  And I would just encourage people to look around and see, "Where is my unique value that we can add in a data-driven HR culture?" and just start walking in that direction. 

For us, it didn't come simply or without its roadblocks.  So, I know I kind of speak to this in terms that it feels like it maybe didn't have as many roadblocks because we're just hitting some highlights, but creating a plan and sticking with it and showing others what that end state is, what you're working toward, has really been what for us has made all the difference, that we've got the investment to continue to walk this path.

[0:40:48] David Green: That needs nicely to the question of the series.  So, everyone in this series has been answering this question, and actually you're episode 5 in the series, so you're the last guest to get to answer it, and you've touched on this a little bit.  How can HR leaders use analytics to uncover and address inclusivity gaps within their organisations?

[0:41:11] Erin Gerbec: For me, the opportunity for using data to drive the conversation, and using the data around inclusivity, diversity, equity, whatever lens through which you're looking at that, for me it's so important to go back to, what are the facts; what do we know to be true about what people have, and what our employees have told us about their experiences?  And it's creating a purpose-driven analysis that's looking for gaps, so that we can determine if not just are all boats rising, but are we closing the gaps between the experiences of some groups versus others? 

We have this incredible privilege, as I've said at the top of the call, this incredible privilege to have our fingers on the insights of the people of the company.  What an honour it is that people are willing to even voice how they're experiencing their work environment through engagement surveys or other listening, or simply just through the tacit information that's collected as they move through their career and throughout their employee life cycle.  How long does it take to get a promotion for one group versus another?  And if they're saying that they don't feel like their voice is heard, and we've taken some action on it, then it's our responsibility to check again and see if that's improving.  So, I just feel like People Analytics is the foundation to holding ourselves accountable to creating inclusive workplaces, where we can show that through the data, through the statistics and the insights, that we are closing the gaps so that everybody at work can have the same experience. 

[0:43:10] David Green: Erin, thank you so much for being a guest on the Digital HR Leaders podcast.  It's been great to learn more about the journey that you're on at Cardinal Health, the very impressive journey that you're on at Cardinal Health as well.  Before we part ways, how can listeners follow you, I presume it's on LinkedIn, and also find out more about the work that you and the team are doing at Cardinal Health?

[0:43:32] Erin Gerbec: Well, I'll first start by saying what an honour it was to join you on your podcast, David.  Longtime listener and fan, so I appreciate the opportunity to just share the story of my team.  Yes, LinkedIn is the best place to find me and I'd be happy to connect with anyone who'd like to continue the conversation. 

[0:43:53] David Green: Well, Erin, thanks for the kind words about the podcast as well.  It's a privilege for us to have you as a guest as well.  We've had a number of People Analytics leaders from different organisations, I think, throughout the five years that the podcast has been running, and it's good and you've definitely added to that.  But thank you for joining and sharing your story today

[0:44:14] Erin Gerbec: Thank you so much.