Episode 102: How to Connect People Analytics and Employee Experience (Interview with Laura Stevens)

On the show this week, I am talking to Laura Stevens, Vice President of Global Strategy, Analytics and Employee Experience at DSM.

Throughout this episode, Laura and I discuss:

• How Laura is using her prior experience as a people analytics consultant, to influence her strategy for the people analytics function at DSM

• The synergies and opportunities that can be leveraged between employee experience and people analytics by designing services with the human in mind

• How people analytics teams can help to support HR business partners and managers, to become more data-driven

• Laura’s tips on how to prioritise the areas that people analytics teams should work on, in order to ensure that they can scale successfully

Support for this podcast comes from 365Talents. You can learn more by visiting https://365talents.com.

You can listen to this week’s episode below, or by using your podcast app of choice, just click the corresponding image to get access via the podcast website here.

Interview Transcript

David Green: Today, I am delighted to welcome Laura Stevens, Vice President for Global People Strategy, Analytics and Employee Experience at DSM, to The Digital HR Leaders Podcast.

Great to have you on the show, Laura, we have known each other for a few years, back to your time at Deloitte as well. Can you give listeners a brief introduction to you and your role at DSM? 


Laura Stevens: Absolutely and hi, David, thanks a lot for inviting me to this podcast. I am Belgian, I am a mother of one daughter, Julia. I have a background and also a PhD, in the field of neuropsychology. And as already introduced, I work as a Vice-President for P&O Strategy, Analytics and Employee Experience at DSM. 
It is a role in which I report to the Global CHRO and I joined the company a little bit less than one year ago. 


David Green: We will come back to the role at DSM later on, because I think it is particularly interesting that people strategy, analytics and employee experience are joined together. But first I would love if you can share with listeners your career journey?

You previously, worked for iNostix with our mutual friend, Luk Smeyers, and then Deloitte as a consultant, maybe share some of your thoughts on how you have seen the people analytics field develop over the last five or six years? 


Laura Stevens: Yes indeed. So, before joining DSM, I worked at Deloitte Consulting for about seven years, where I had been leading and growing a people analytics service line. And as you mentioned, that also included the acquisition of a leading startup in people analytics during those days, also formerly known as iNostix. And so over the years, we have been growing and developing that team into a practice of 20 dedicated people analytics consultants, which I think made us probably the largest people analytics service line across Europe. It is interesting to reflect on how the field of people analytics has evolved or developed over that period. In my point of view, during those initial days, people analytics was still very much in what I like to call, a sort of nerdy experimentation phase. As most of what companies were doing was basically one off experiments, often carried out by a single data scientist or an analytics expert, which was also quite disconnected from the rest of the organisation. I also remember very much that the maturity thinking was mainly determined by the question, whether companies were doing descriptive analytics, so reporting some correlations on the one hand, but also advanced or predictive analytics on the other hand. I remember also having very passionate discussions and conversations about that with Luk Smeyers, who was one of the absolute authorities in that space back then. He was a very big advocate of advanced and predictive analytics during those days, whereas I was a little bit more skeptical for a number of reasons. I think, first of all, the focus on advanced analytics as the absolute greatest level of maturity really distracted, in my point of view, from connecting to the real business challenge or the real business opportunity. So why start a conversation with a focus on the HOW, so descriptive or predictive or prescriptive, if we hadn't even discussed thoroughly, what the challenge of an organisation was or what kind of opportunities that company was facing.

And then secondly, the focus on predictive analytics in HR, was often justified by referring to successful use cases in the field of marketing or customer analytics. And although I find that HR has a lot to learn from that field, there is also a significant difference between HR and marketing and sales, on the other hand. So in HR, we hardly work with any big data and so the volume and the velocity of our data, is vastly different from that in the field of marketing and customer analytics and therefore the value of productising analytics models in HR, is far less evident.

And so many of the advanced analytics use cases often led to what I think, maybe at best, some interesting but hard to use findings. So people would typically say “that is interesting” and then get back to their business as usual. 


David Green: It is really interesting you say that Laura, as actually one of the things that inspired Jonathan and I to write the book, were those type of maturity models that you refer to, where you have to do descriptive analytics and then move your way up to predictive and prescriptive. When we talked to the more mature, or the more advanced people analytics teams, they weren't thinking like that. They were thinking, what are the big business challenges that our organisation is facing and how can analytics support that? And it could be a good descriptive model, at the end of the day, that could provide the insight that can unlock the answer to the insight that would solve that challenge. 
So when we created the book, we actually talked about a number of areas that people are looking at, whether that is around governance and setting up all your data standards, getting the right people skills in the team, the right technology and the right data, and then the outcome. Ultimately it is about the outcomes, at the end of the day, as you said. So really interesting. You talked about some of the use cases that maybe people said “ooh, that's nice” and then “okay, what's next?” What are some of the best use cases for analytics that you saw in your time as a consultant? And, are you able to share some of those examples with listeners? 


Laura Stevens: Yeah, absolutely. For me, probably the most impactful use-case was one for a labour market organisation. So basically a company which allocates job seekers to the right job. And before the development of the analytics model, the temp consultants typically guided their search and advice for a certain job, just based on the job seekers CV and also a personal conversation with a job seeker. And so little did they know what the chances were that the job seeker would indeed get a job, neither did they actually know how to best advise or assist the job seeker in increasing chances to be deployed in a certain area.

And so with the analytics model that was developed, brought a real fundamental change to that largely, gut feeling based process. So in fact, for each job seeker, the model predicted the chances that the person would indeed find a job in a certain area, within a particular timeframe, and it did so using a variety of different data sources, including CV data, but also for instance, the historical search behaviour by that job seeker. Something on that model that I find super interesting was, the model also clarified what that person could do to increase his or her chances, such as following a training. 
So I think, not surprisingly, the use case wasn't based on internal HR or employee data, but on labour market data but I still refer to it because obviously it is still connected to the topic of human capital.

So that meant that the model was productised and it is now a really embedded part of the new way of working for that temp agency. 
But unfortunately I have seen many more use cases which never made it to that stage of really embedding or becoming integrated into the business as usual. And I think it is not surprising because many of those use cases have never been designed with that end game in mind. So that means that for too long, we have been designing analytical models without a thorough understanding of the end user, so who should eventually benefit from the insights or even a reflection on how the results can drive recurrent decision-making. I think we were basically too preoccupied with ourselves and with our fancy modelling techniques. 


David Green: Yeah, it is not always the most sophisticated models that lead to the best outcomes. 


Laura Stevens: Exactly. I think retention analytics for me is one of those typical examples. I have interacted with a number of clients who have developed, analytically, quite a robust retention model and then that produced individual risk scores, but the company then didn't know how to bring that model alive in the organisation. They work with individual risk scores and obviously we know that not only does the GDPR restrict the use of working with individual risk scores, it is also just not feasible or desirable to manage retention on a case by case basis.

So despite the analytical robustness of the model, the impact of it was limited, as it couldn't really be integrated or embedded into the ways of working.

I think that this is one of the examples that always sticks for me. 


David Green: Yeah and I think a very key point there, how do you make the insights actionable and for managers, perhaps in their day-to-day work? So if there are manager behaviours, for example, that drive higher engagement, high performance in their teams, how do you bring those to surface for managers? How do you show them that if they do certain things differently, that they are going to achieve more positive outcomes? And then, how do you measure that that is actually happening? So, in the last year in fact, you have made the move to people analytics practitioner and leader. What are some of the learnings that you brought with you into that role and how has that influenced your strategy for the function at DSM? 


Laura Stevens: I love that question, David. 
I think in light of the things that I just shared, first of all, I am not chasing advanced analytics use cases for the sake of doing something advanced. I remember when presenting my strategy, that my team was saying “where are the advanced analytics use cases?” So they were quite disappointed. I think that definitely stems from my background and the experience and the things that I have seen working as a consultant. 
Second. I also never start a project without a very clear understanding of the end user, what keeps these users awake at night, and how certain insights will bring change. So I think people analytics is no longer about doing something interesting, we really need to move the focus to relevance. I always tell my team, insight without action is overhead. We shouldn't be doing at all. And that is for me a design principle, it is not something that we only consider at the start. So I think actionability is a strong qualification and a design criteria for me and my team, not something that we only consider after the analytics work has been done. 


David Green: I think that is brilliant, insights without outcomes is overhead. And you need to be thinking about the end goal at the start, rather than just diving into work. Also getting that end-user, that sponsor, the person that actually has a problem that they want to solve and is prepared to do something about it. 
What is interesting Laura, obviously prior to joining DSM, one of the things that you were known for in the market is, you are an expert around employee listening and continuous listening. That is why I think it is particularly interesting that you have ownership for both people analytics and employee experience. Do you think there are synergies between the two that you can leverage or already are leveraging? 


Laura Stevens: Yeah, absolutely. So I feel super fortunate to have both analytics and employee experience in my portfolio because the two disciplines heavily rely on one another to be successful.

I think most intuitively we know that employee experience is personal, it is subjective and so this is about connecting and understanding to what matters most to our people. And so by definition, that starts from listening, from research, from analytics, not from assumptions. So therefore employee listening and analytics, for me, are really the lifeblood of employee experience efforts. So that is one. 
Probably less understood or intuitive is that employee experience is equally as important to analytics because in the end employee experience is essentially about designing solutions and services with the human in mind. And so my strong belief is, this human centred design is actually very critical to accelerate progress and adoption in the field of analytics. Because if we don't understand who the end user is, or if we don't start with the end user in mind, and with a thorough understanding of what keeps these people awake at night, we will never be able to truly embed analytics into our ways of working and to get sustainable value out of it.

So that is my second point. 
So employee experience is equally as essential to analytics, just as much as analytics and employee listening are critical for employee experience. 


David Green: And one of the challenges I think for organisations around doing people analytics, and I am glad it is a challenge, is in privacy around the data, working with works councils, particularly for those of us that are based in Europe, and actually focusing a lot of the analytics work on understanding and improving the employee experience. How does that support those conversations? 


Laura Stevens: Yes. For me, David, employee listening is actually the most powerful, but probably also the easiest way to quickly collect scalable information about sentiment, about behaviours, about what matters most to our people, which is also a reason why I prioritise a lot of employee listening initiatives into my work. I think for too long, analytics has been focused on the data we have. Whereas for me, a big part of the work is on data enrichment and that enrichment, in the space of employee experience, clearly comes from the voice of our own employees. So I think also from a GDPR, from a data privacy perspective, if we are very transparent as to how these results will be used to optimise the experiences of our people, it is actually quite easy. I need to be mindful because obviously it requires a decent setup and some thorough thinking and the right interactions with works councils and the legal departments. But nevertheless, for me employee listening and listening to the voice of employees, is a much easier way than working for instance, with passive data and system data, to get a sense of how people are acting or interacting with our systems. 


David Green: And I think you hinted at one of the other key elements of employee listening there which is, we go out, we ask our employees questions, we collect the data, but then ultimately it needs to lead to actions, which I guess comes back to your insights for outcomes, kind of mantra that you have for your team. 


Laura Stevens: Yes, absolutely. In the space of employee listening, there are a couple of things that my team is working on and one of them is clearly the, closing the loop and the action.

I think for me again, as mentioned, that today, especially in large global organisations, there are only a few things that can be as powerful and impactful as a thoroughly designed and a robust listening strategy. 
And when I talk about thoroughly designed, that first and foremost for me, really means that all listening efforts should have a very clear connection to our strategic priorities. I think for too long, a lot of companies have been buying commercially exploited and very standard questionnaires, which didn't have any concrete connection to their company strategy, whether that is an overall strategy or an employee experience strategy. 
So we were basically the survey vendors telling us what to measure, rather than the right questionnaires in light of our strategic priorities and that is definitely one of those areas where my team and I, are trying to bring change.

The second one for me, is definitely also the actionability. I strongly leverage my background in neuropsychology there, where a lot of the action is not about heavy lifting actions or lengthy rollout programs driven by HR, but also about activating the individual and using some of the nudging principles that have been introduced by the field of neuropsychology and behavioural science. 
So those are a couple of the elements that we prioritise to better close the loop.

David Green: And you see that empowering individuals is where you actually see the action happening and then I guess you can use your listening to check A] if it is happening and B] what the impact is. 


Laura Stevens: Exactly. And I think looking at the individual as an active agent in boosting engagement, wellbeing, and so forth, is a super essential element. It is not just HR. It is not just leadership. Everyone, to a certain extent, can own employee engagement, employee experience, and therefore targeting that individual is one of the essential elements and I think one of the steps that we need to take as a next step in the employee listening strategy. 


David Green: When we come back in just a moment, Laura shares how she and her team are working to embed data-driven decision-making across the HR organisation at DSM and ensure that everyone has easy access to the right data.

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Welcome back to this episode of The Digital HR Leaders Podcast, with Laura Stevens. Now let's get back to the conversation.

So we are going to come back to your point about human centred design. When you think about considering the end user from a human centred design perspective, do you also consider the HR business partners, as well as managers, as your users? And if so, how are you helping both of these groups to consume the data and support employee experience? Because I guess they have an important role to play. 


Laura Stevens: Yeah, absolutely. So, one of my and my team's ambitions, is to embed and scale the data-driven decision-making across the P&O function or across the HR function. So we want everyone in our function, basically to be able to make data-driven decisions, because we seem to believe that this is the essence of a credible HR function. But we also realise that in order to get there, we need to ensure that our people, including the business partners, get easy access to the right data. That means on one platform, so available through one platform with an intuitive front end, which also encourages them to explore data and insights very fast, even without having an analytics background. And such a platform needs to generate insights that are clearly relevant to our business partners and their respective business leaders. So it immediately needs to set them up for success in the sense that they can provide more informed objective decisions or advice, with their business leaders.

Therefore, we are now heavily engaging with our business partners to understand their strategy and also their strategy enablers, so that we can ensure that our platforms provide the insights that they need to do the best job possible. 
So in fact, our ambition is to make insights easy and relevant for our key internal clients and clearly the HR business partner are a crucial user in that sense. 


David Green: And how can your team and other people analytics teams, help support HR business partners with that transition to being more data-driven?

They have got so many other areas to focus on as well. I know a number of your peers, in other organisations, are also focusing on this and some of the research that we did last year, 60% of people analytics leaders told us that they feel responsible for helping to enable their HR business partner. So I would love to hear your thoughts around some of the stuff that maybe you are doing at DSM, to help HR business partners, but also generally how organisations can support HR business partners in this journey? 


Laura Stevens: My answer to that question is probably very short and simple, David. I think, in my point of view, we aren't doing the right things if our initiatives are being perceived as yet another thing to learn or acquire. So analytics teams need to connect to business priorities and then accelerate the delivery of those priorities through data driven insights. 
So if anything that we do is perceived as “yet something else to learn” or “yet something on top to acquire” then I think we need to look at ourselves and wonder whether we are supporting the right priorities. 


David Green: So again, you talked to one of the ways you are doing that is understanding, from your business P&O business partners, what they need to help enable them with their conversations and discussions on what they are doing with their business functions or business units. 
So it is that two way thing, I think sometimes we think it is just about people analytics things pushing things out, but actually we need to understand and make sure that what we are pushing out is relevant and actually helps them in their work. 


Laura Stevens: Exactly. I am not at all a fan of working on an “on demand” basis, so I am an advocate of pushing things, but we need to push the right things. 


David Green: And what support or what messaging is coming from the CHRO and the HR leadership team, to the rest of HR and to rest of the P&O, around the importance of being data-driven? 


Laura Stevens: So being data-driven is a core pillar or element in our P&O transformation and not only as a part of our P&O transformation, it is also a company-wide priority. So we are doing a lot of work developing to an insights driven organisation and so the nice thing is that now we are creating synergies between what is being driven at the central level by the central analytics team, in becoming an IDEO and taking people along, and then also what we are doing from a P&O transformation perspective in that sense.

So it is important obviously to make sure that whatever is being done reinforces each other, rather than being perceived as something coming out of a people analytics, something coming out of the global analytics team, or the central analytics team, so we are creating synergies and making sure that data savviness, analytics savviness, becomes an opportunity that is streamlined between the functions and also the things that are being prioritised from a central point of view. 


David Green: It is a team effort, isn't it, at the end of the day. It is the people analytics team working with the business partners and the business, in a kind of triangle, to basically all work together to ultimately deliver the outcomes that you are trying to achieve.

Obviously, as a former consultant, one of the things we are seeing in the more advanced people analytics teams is there are consultants within these people analytics teams, interfacing directly with the business alongside the business partners to really diagnose what the challenges are, to help prioritise the work. 
Is that something that you are doing at DSM? If so, how have you seen that help to drive this conversation forward?

Laura Stevens: I think it is crucial. I am convinced that it is crucial to connect very closely to business priorities. But what I try to avoid is ending up with a laundry list of desires and expectations because a lot also depends on how the business is looking at HR and sometimes the requests of people are very immediate. So meaning, I need a report today on this, or I need immediate support on that. And so what I try to help the organisation understand is, if we work on such an immediate and on demand support basis, we will never be able to set ourselves up for success and we will never be able, or have the space even, to focus on continuous improvement and gradually growing at the maturity of our data landscape.

So that is an important message for me. I take it as my responsibility to make sure that whatever we do has a very close connection to our strategic priorities and that is where I am obviously engaging with the P&O leadership team, the senior business leaders, and the executive committee. But I don't want my team to knock on the door and then ask what people are expecting from us, because I don't believe that sets us up for success.

David Green: Again, the research we did last year, I think it was 22% of people in your position, report directly into the head of P&O or the CHRO and are part of the HR leadership team.

It is a pretty obvious question but, how does that help you in your role, to make sure that what you are doing is connected to the top business priorities? 


Laura Stevens: It is a tremendous help to be honest, David. So in that sense I am very fortunate. So my leader, the Global CHRO, opens doors so I have a lot of conversations with members of the executive committee. I am part of the global P&O leadership team, which really helps in understanding the priorities of the different COE’s, 
of the global business partners, of HR, so I am sitting very close to where the decisions are being made. The support of the CHRO greatly helps me and accelerate some of the ambitions when it comes to strategy, realisation, and connecting very closely to the priorities of our business and organisation overall. 


David Green: And it is funny because I remember Luk Smeyers, at a conference quite a few years ago, actually challenging some of the people analytics leaders in the room and saying “if you don't report to the CHRO, I recommend you go and work somewhere else” 


Laura Stevens: And I must admit David, for me, this was one of the essential reasons why I accepted the transition to DSM. So reporting to the CHRO, for me is an essential condition to make sure that you are wherever the decisions are being made and that you can fuel those decisions. I want to avoid being at the receiving end of the value chain and would rather make sure that me and my team can be involved in the strategic conversations. 
One of the things that excites me today, in terms of employee listening, is that we are not just focusing on developing survey items for things that have already been decided or defined. We are engaging with senior leaders and the executive committee to translate our overall company transformation strategy into a concrete set of behaviours that our company needs, and only then do we start thinking about the best way to measure these.

So that is what really excites me about my role and where I expect the field of people analytics also to really step up, we are not an execution engine. We combine analytics expertise with a very thorough understanding of people and organisation, and it is exactly that combination of both the functional expertise and the analytics expertise that justifies our very existence. Otherwise, why wouldn’t you just limit yourself to a central analytics team? 


David Green: And I think what is interesting, hopefully we can share it, is you are one of the first people analytics leaders I have met, working for a big organisation such as DSM, who as part of your selection process, you actually met with the CEO as well didn’t you?

Laura Stevens: Yes, I did. Yes. So the Chief Digital Officer, the CEO, so that also shows the importance that DSM is attaching to evolving in this space. And yeah, absolutely, it was a very decent and robust recruitment process in which I got to meet many of the senior stakeholders. 


David Green: That's good. That's good. As you said, it really shows and reinforces the importance that DSM places on people analytics and people data, which is great.

What tips would you have for someone coming into a new people analytics leader role, in the way that you have, what would you recommend to someone just getting started? Particularly if they have only got a small team. 


Laura Stevens: A lot obviously depends on your ambitions, as well as the foundations that your company has been building in the space of data analytics, I think that is a fair thing to say.

But if your goal is to deliver strategic impact, and that is my goal and the goal of my team, I would absolutely recommend to stay in the driving seat. So that is the push versus the pull. So focus on a select set of big ticket, strategic priorities. So by all means, avoid ending up with a laundry list of different wishes and if you do end up with a laundry list, then use scalability as a prioritisation or maybe even as a qualification criteria. 
So prioritise those projects which have the potential to be scaled across the organisation, to make sure that you maximise your visibility and the impact.

That is absolutely a priority for me and my team. We have scalability as one of the top qualification criteria. So we avoid ending up in projects which are very specific to a certain business area, or are very specific to a certain region, because that will never help us to scale the impact and eventually become a data-driven function. That is the end game, it is not just to deliver analytical projects. 


David Green: And that is a challenge, isn't it? Because you can get absolutely flooded with requests and having some of the technology and pace that you have talked about, a platform that can maybe meet some of those day-to-day requests, those ad hoc requests, as long as the technology you are using is easy for people to use, then they can find that information themselves and as you said, that the team can then focus on the stuff that is going to add the most impact to the business, the stuff that you can potentially scale across the organisation as well. Rather than, as you said, just having a laundry list of different requests. 


Laura Stevens: I fully agree, David, especially also with the capability building. You can explain to people what you are doing and what you are not doing, but sometimes it also first requires strengthening other parts of the organisation, to take up activities you don't necessarily see as being part of your portfolio, and making people self-sufficient in certain areas, such as basic reporting. 
So that is why my team is now enabling the organisation, first and foremost the P&O function, in getting easy access to data so that they become much more self-sufficient in pulling reports, so that we have time to really focus on the more advanced, value generation. Because if there is no foundational capability, people will eventually end up at your door anyhow. 


David Green: Yeah, you have to be thinking about the two things together, don't you, in parallel.

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Now, let's go back to the conversation with Laura, where she discusses how to prioritise your people analytics projects and the role of technology in supporting employee experience.

So that leads quite nicely to the next question. One challenge that a lot of people analytics leaders have, is around saying no to requests and prioritising what areas they should work on. 
I think you already said some good stuff on this, but maybe you could bring it together.

What advice do you have for people on how to say no, and helping to make sure that they stay focused? 


Laura Stevens: I guess David, that it is mainly a matter of investing time in your positioning and also educating the organisation about your strategy and offering to help people to understand what are you after, what does that mean in terms of priorities and ways of working? 
So in my experience, it also helps to help people understand that saying yes to everything will never set up the function, or organisation for success, as I already shared.

So if you are busy working on 15 different on demand projects, with a very small team, you will never be able to focus on building the right scalable foundations that the function needs, to become a data-driven HR function. 
As already mentioned prior to this question, I think sometimes it really requires also strengthening other parts of the organisation. That was for me, I think, one of the most important learnings. It is not just about saying, what do I want to do, because if there is no one else who can do some of the basic things, then again, people will eventually end up at your door. 
So now we are very much focusing on that self-sufficiency, basic reporting, and building the capabilities elsewhere in the organisation to make sure that we can really bring the operating model and the ideal setup alive. 


David Green: And I guess that is also where having a strong advocate and supporter in the chief people and organisation officer, the CHRO, and the HR leadership team is so important as well. 


Laura Stevens: It is probably the most impactful factor in all of this, yes. 


David Green: Well, time has flown, Laura. We are now on to the last question, which is the one we are asking everyone on this particular series and I am pretty interested to hear your thoughts on this.

What is the role of technology in supporting employee experience? 


Laura Stevens: In my point of view, technology is one of the many different drivers of employee experience, just like culture is or the physical environment can be. However, it is also fair to recognise that as technology is now becoming a more central and a more vital part of how we work and how we deliver value, the impact on employee experience is probably exponential. 
So I think people today need tools that are fun, that are easy, that are relevant in accomplishing their work. But what they even need more today, and that is also evidenced by research, is a technology landscape that is connected and integrated. Probably the biggest detractor of positive experiences today, are the plethora of different disconnected systems and technologies, which requires users to spend way too much time on finding what they are looking for and completing tasks they need to complete. So not only does that have a very negative impact on the employee experience it also just eventually negatively affects productivity and company performance.

Also, my team is supporting the development of an integrated digital roadmap, to make sure that we do not approach every piece of technology on a standalone basis, but we also consider the future and how these different systems will talk to each other and how we can create simplicity for our people, so that they can do a better job in a faster amount of time. 


David Green: And actually you talked on two other areas, culture obviously and physical environment. One of the things I am starting to see, particularly in some of the organisations in the US now, is that the people analytics team, as well as collecting workforce data, it is also collecting workplace data, particularly as hopefully we start to go back into our physical offices. 
Is that something you see as an opportunity for DSM? Again, if we think about hybrid work, understanding how are we going to use the office when we are in the office and then potentially setting the office up to really enable that, such as innovation and collaboration. Is that something that you are looking at, or will be looking at, when the time is right? 


Laura Stevens: Yeah, absolutely. I think the last nuance is the right one, David. DSM is investing a lot in what we call “hybrid workplace.” We obviously, like many other companies, have started some pulse checks, with the outbreak of COVID, which is also around how can we facilitate or help our people to work best in a hybrid environment. So that is one piece of work that we have initiated and which is ongoing.

But secondly we will obviously also be exploring how we can use other data sources to facilitate the transition of people getting back to work and I genuinely believe that people analytics can have a key role there. But this is something that is more of the future pipeline, let's say.

David Green: Perhaps something for a future podcast, in a few years time, when we are really in the hybrid world. Laura, it is always great to talk and hear your thoughts. You are a real big thinker in our field, thank you for being a guest on The Digital HR Leaders Podcast. 
Can you let listeners know how they can stay in touch with you, follow you on social media, and find out more about your work?


Laura Stevens: Yes, I am very accessible through my LinkedIn profile. So just look for Laura Stevens DSM and you will easily find me. I am more than happy to connect the dots and extend my network. 
I think that is one of the other things, we need to connect the dots, there are so many best practices around and David, you and your team are doing great work there, which is also why I feel super honoured that I can participate to this podcast, David. So everyone feel free to reach out, more than happy to connect the dots and learn from you. 


David Green: Laura, thanks very much and very kind of you to say that at end as well. Great to have you on the show.