In this episode, your host David Green is joined by Lexy Martin, a pioneering figure in the People Analytics field. With over five decades of experience at the intersection of technology and HR, Lexy has been a driving force in advocating for the integration of data and analytics into HR practices.

Together, David and Lexy explore the dynamic insights from Lexy’s research at Visier on the significance of democratising data and insights for people managers.

During the conversation, you can expect to explore:

• The remarkable journey of Lexy’s successful career;

• An exploration of the power of democratising data and insights for people managers, unveiling key findings from Lexy's recent research at Visier;

• The symbiotic relationship between data-driven practices and fostering diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) within organisations.

• The visionary perspective on the future of people analytics, and how organisations can stay ahead of the curve.

• Concrete strategies to cultivate a data-driven and digitally literate HR culture within organisations.

Support from this podcast comes from Visier. You can learn more by visiting: Visier

If you would like to discover Visier’s groundbreaking research ‘Unlocking Manager Effectiveness: The Next Driver of Value clicking this link.

[0:00:00] David Green: For our first episode after the summer break, I'm delighted to welcome a true luminary in the world of people analytics and HR technology.  With a career spanning an astonishing 55 years, our guest today, Lexy Martin, carries a weight of wisdom and expertise that has been earned through decades of dedication to advancing the field.  What brings us here today is the latest research Lexy has published for Visier, which explores a crucial topic of democratising data and insights for people managers, a subject that holds immense potential to revolutionise the way organisations approach people management. 

Throughout our conversation, we'll uncover the key findings from her research, shedding light on how organisations can effectively tailor data and insights to meet the diverse needs of different managerial roles.  And we'll also explore the essential steps that organisations can take to ensure a seamless and successful adoption of data-driven practices among people managers.  So, get ready to be inspired and enlightened as we embark upon this conversation with Lexy Martin, a true digital HR leader, and the pioneering research she brings to the table.

[0:01:29] David Green: Lexy, welcome to the show.  I'm so happy to sit down with you before you embark on your well-deserved redirection, I'm hoping I've got the phrase right there!  You've had a 55-year career and it's been filled with remarkable success and a real legacy to the field, and I can't wait to talk to you about your journey and achievements.  But first, can you give listeners a brief introduction to yourself and your career journey?

[0:01:56] Lexy Martin: Yeah, so I started in 1967.  I've been in the tech industry all of my career, and I started as a programmer, systems analyst, application development manager.  I was the first woman in many of those roles.  And in the late 1970s, I was doing some integration work between data on a computer and word processing capability on a Wang.  And we were attempting to integrate the data that we had on the computer with the ability to write nice-looking letters to patients with that data.  So, that was my first taste of integration work.  And it was really kind of leading edge work at the time. 

I did the original market research for the product that became Microsoft Word, I worked with Bill Gates on that, because at the time, word processing was being done on Wang and other kinds of computers, it wasn't being done by you and me.  That was an interesting project.  I did some early employee and manager self-service work in the mid-1990s.  And then I went to work for the Hunter Group and I started the survey that was first known as the Sierra-Cedar HR Systems Survey, that looked at HR technology adoption and the value that organisations get from that adoption. 

I retired the first time, but I was told I had to find my replacement.  I found Stacey Harris.  She continues that survey as the Sapien Insights Research.  And I was a failure at retiring the first time and I ended up working for Visier as the head of research for the last seven years, doing their research, telling their customer stories, doing research on the value of people analytics adoption, and the practices that enable organisations to succeed.

[0:04:06] David Green: I definitely want to talk to you later about some of the key learnings that you've had throughout your career that you think may help the HR tech and people analytics community learn from that moving forward into future years, but first, I really want to congratulate you on your recently published research at Visier on democratising data and insights for people managers.  I've just been reading the report again actually before our conversation.  The findings are quite intriguing, but before we dive into the insights, what sparked your interest in this area, because I know it's an area that you're particularly passionate about?

[0:04:43] Lexy Martin: Yeah, as I said, the Sierra-Cedar HR Systems Survey was all about adoption and value, and of all the technologies that I tracked for that first 15 years on that, the one technology -- so, what I would always do is I would attach the financial metrics of all the responding organisations that were publicly traded, and I'd do a correlation to see which of the technologies actually had the highest financial performance.  And the highest financial performance always, from 2000 on, came from workforce analytics.  And so, when I retired and decided I wanted to come back to work, I looked around and I'd met the folks at Visier and it was the leading people analytics vendor at the time, I think it still is.  And so, I wanted to work for them and to continue the value research.  And so it's just in my DNA, I think, to look at value achieved. 

At Visier, I've been able to continue to do that.  I've written a number of white papers on the economic and financial impact of people analytics.  And to me, democratisation is just it's the next phase.

[0:06:01] David Green: So the paper, which is available, and we will put a link in the show notes for people that they can go to the Visier site and download it, Lexy, could you share some of the key findings from the study and maybe whet the audience's appetite in doing so?

[0:06:18] Lexy Martin: So, yeah, the highest level finding is that providing data and insights to managers makes them more effective and more human.  So, they're delivering cost savings and revenue improvement, they're preparing for the future, and they're balancing this need to have their organisations be both profitable and productive while also enabling their people and their teams to thrive.  And I want to drill down on that last piece.  And by the way, the research this time, I often do surveys, but this research was just talking to people.  And I talked to both Visier customers and non-customers. 

So, for example, I talked to Dawn Klinghoffer, who as you know is the Head of People Analytics at Microsoft, and she talked about the importance of thriving and defined it as, "To be energised and empowered to do meaningful work".  But I kept hearing that term in other interviews.  It was really interesting that that was what data and insights enabled managers to do, was to enable their employees and even themselves to thrive.  And so in practice, I found it to mean using data to improve employee wellbeing, to improve recognition, to enable their managers to provide coaching and career direction, and essentially to just help their employees be the best they could be, because if you do that, you're enabling them to be productive and the organisation benefits, but the people benefit too.

[0:08:12] David Green: Yeah, really important, because it's what's the manager's role?  And I suppose you can look at it in two things.  It's one, around performance and productivity for themselves and their team, which as you said, that ticks the kind of the effectiveness box.  But then there's the whole piece around developing your team, the culture of the team, the experience of people at work, because that's what a lot of employees come to work for, why they work for certain companies and stay with certain companies, so if we can help managers be better at doing that by giving them data to give them information about their team's performance and strengths and areas where coaching may be required, but also themselves, then we're really kind of improving things from both sides of the coin, which is arguably the holy grail, isn't it?

[0:09:01] Lexy Martin: Yeah.  I mean, I think you have to look at what it is that, well, first of all, who is a people manager?  My eyes were opened.  When I started this research, I had a definition of people manager, and it was someone who's in charge of the team.  But what I kept hearing is people managers were also executives.  But focusing more on the team or the operational frontline manager, what is it that they do where they're supported by data and they're doing the work for their particular role.  They're also planning, they're organising, they're staffing, they're doing all those employee lifecycle activities of hiring, developing, retaining; and then they're doing things like managing performance, they're mitigating risk, they're eliminating barriers.  And there's ways that you can support all of those activities with data and insight.  I think understanding what it is that people managers are really doing and then applying data and insights is just really critical to the success of democratisation efforts.

[0:10:18] David Green: I guess one of the things, and you'll be able to tell me better than I'd be able to tell you, Lexy, of doing research, is occasionally you come across things that you didn't expect.  So, I'm interested in this particular study, were there any unexpected or particularly eye-opening discoveries that really stood out, maybe some insights that brought some new perspectives to life, for example?

[0:11:21] Lexy Martin: I guess one of the first things was that I thought there would be more commonality in how data and insights were used.  And what I realised after three or four interviews is that there is so much dimensionality to the people manager role.  So, I don't know if you've seen the Visier Smart Compensation Solution, but I think that's really brilliant because every manager is involved in compensation decisions.  There's a kind of an in-depth story in the white paper from Standard Bank Group in Africa about how they really attended to the personas that they're serving. 

So, there are senior managers who get one set of data, and then the frontline managers that get the same set of data, but more targeted, well, only targeted to their span of control; and then employees get another set of data.  And I think it's worthwhile to take a look at what they're giving them.  At the highest level, it's headcount, turnover, employee experience using net promoter scores, it's all about DEI.  It's a lot about learning, how much time are employees under their domain spending in learning, and how much time are they spending in learning for future skills development?  That's really critical for any organisation that is in transformation; how much time are they spending on performance coaching?  What about the risk of absenteeism? 

Whereas the team leader, they're going to be more focused on some operational things like, are certificates going to expire soon?  Because they need to make sure that that doesn't happen, because there's huge fines associated with people who are not in compliance with their training.  And then the employee is getting things around pay and leave.  And all this data enables certain actions to be taken.  So I think it's a great example and it kind of helps, I think, organisations think through what's appropriate to give to each level.  And I like the Standard Bank Group approach which is, we're going to give the same, but it'll be constricted to the span for the people manager.

[0:14:04] David Green: Yeah, I mean actually we had Ampie and Werner on the podcast a year or so ago walking through the Standard Bank stories.

[0:14:10] Lexy Martin: He's brilliant.  I think Ampie and his team are the furthest along in a real effective democratisation effort, yeah.

[0:14:22] David Green: That's really good.  So I mean, if listeners want to find out more, then do check out that episode.  And actually, what that little example points to I think, Lexy, is actually a question I was going to ask you and something that I could see and from reading through the report myself, the findings really indicate that organisations need to consider personas when they're designing data solutions for managers, and obviously you shared the example of Standard Bank there, but could you share some best practices or any other examples of how organisations can effectively tailor their data and insights to meet the diverse needs of different managerial roles?

[0:15:01] Lexy Martin: I want to save talking about best practices related to change management for a little bit later, but there were some other examples.  There was one organisation that really recognised the importance of mobility, because they had some talent quarters and they needed to stop those managers that were hoarding talent and support them in enabling mobility.  There's also specific needs in some industries to ensure that you keep your new hires past 90 days, because then they'll stay a long time, so focusing on that particular need. 

There was a story that I heard from manufacturing, and retail, and in healthcare on this labour mix analysis, I think it's also called talent mix analysis, where they're looking at the use of contingents and full-time equivalents.  And they don't want to necessarily grow their headcount too quickly, but they need to staff up for a service or a product delivery, and then scale back when the need lessens.  And so, they were doing this analysis where they could compare the cost of a contractor with associated agency fees, with the use of full-time equivalents who they have to hire, onboard, train, and they could see what the most effective mix of that use of contingents and full-time equivalents was; plus knowing, "Oh, we're at risk of keeping that contingent worker too long and we've got to hire that person".  So I mean, there's a lot of stories in the white paper.

[0:16:57] David Green: Yeah, that was one of the things that really stood out actually, the amount of examples, and there's a list of some pretty prestigious practitioners that contributed to the report and then obviously that you interviewed, Lexy, to support the findings, so definitely do recommend that people check it out.  And there was one additional thing that really fascinated me on there, was the value table of savings and revenue that you put together for an organisation of around 10,000 employees.  Now I'm not going to reveal all the data because I do think people should probably check it out themselves when they look at the report, but we're not talking a small number though, are we?

[0:17:36] Lexy Martin: No, we're not talking a small number.  You probably have always asked organisations, well, "What's the dollar value that you've gotten from doing something?" and it's hard for organisations to state that, they don't want to go on record.  So, particularly in healthcare, particularly in financial services, nobody's in the business of supporting a vendor to be successful, but they would tell about their value stories.  So, I just spent some time kind of creating this model of, "Okay, if you did all these things where I heard about value, what's the potential?"  And it's like almost $400 million in cost savings, and close to $200 million in revenue expansion from doing these democratisation efforts in and for an organisation with 10,000 employees.  So, I mean, it's potentially huge.

[0:18:38] David Green: And what I really like about the way you've structured the table, Lexy, is that someone in a people analytics team or maybe in a finance team could take that and they could look at it for their own organisation, because obviously they might want to check that it might be a similar figure, and you've not just come up with a couple of headline numbers on there, you've actually structured it down and explained how you've calculated it and everything else, so anyone else can pick this up and potentially put something together for their own company.

[0:19:09] Lexy Martin: That was the intent for doing it.  I did hear from some that they weren't understanding the value of giving data and insights to frontline managers.  So, I just really wanted to be able to kind of tell the stories and then figure out what that value could be, because not many of our customers or others would talk about the financial value.  I did get one story that was about one organisation that had figured out how much time was wasted in meetings arguing about the source and validity of data, and having to go to the people analytics team or the HRIT person to run some numbers.  They said, "Well, it's 10 managers times 20 minutes for every kind of meeting where data and insights can be brought to bear", you know, attacking an engagement survey, doing a performance review, doing a talent review.  So, it's 20 minutes of a person's time and then it was 8 hours of a people analytics team member time, and all of that went away when you democratised, and that alone was like $600,000 in time savings.

[0:20:30] David Green: Now, obviously it's interesting because we've been doing a lot of work at Insight222 with organisations to help them improve data literacy and HR professionals and we identified, I think, four key areas for organisations that are doing this well.  One is role-modelling by the CHRO and the HR leadership team; two is that the people analytics leader takes responsibility for upskilling, obviously they've got support from others, particularly in learning to kind of put programs together.  So, based on your experience, what are some of the essential steps that companies can take to ensure a smooth and successful adoption of data-driven practices among managers?

[0:22:04] Lexy Martin: Yeah, so I'm so glad that you said what you said, because I think the work that you and Jonathan have done -- change management is required on any initiative and so I'm glad you've gone through those steps.  And I wanted to focus just on those that I found in my mind that were kind of unique to democratisation, so I'm glad we have kind of a mutual checklist.  What I kept hearing was, "Start simple", no big bang approach.  Don't just put something out and expect it to be used; put out something that meets a real business need, and then do a constant drip campaign of curated content, that's a term we use within Visier, that keeps the availability of data and insights constantly evolving. 

In 2021, I saw this beginning emergence of organisations democratising to people managers.  Well, that's continuing, but what I saw this time is a dramatic and statistically significant increase in democratisation of finance managers.  And I think that's really critical because when organisations get that understanding that there's a difference between the financial hierarchy and the supervisory hierarchy, and that the data within each of those is important to each of those camps, once they get that alignment then democratisation really takes off.  So, cracking that nut and having that alignment conversation is really critical around FTE, span of control, all the metrics are in the report. 

[0:23:55] David Green: What emerging trends or developments do you envision will shape the future of people analytics and HR technology, based on your experience and based on maybe recent research that you've done, and I'm not going to put a timespan on it, but maybe let's say the next couple of years? 

[0:24:12] Lexy Martin: You know that integration challenge continues to be the one that is so critical, particularly to integrate business data with people data, because until you can start to really look at productivity and performance and how people contribute to the business, Paul Rubenstein always says, "People data is business data".  So, that integration piece is just critical, and I can't speak to that as well as my colleagues at Visier do, so let me just leave it at that.  But I think that's a need that has to be surmounted. 

But I think the other interesting thing is the women in people analytics that are breaking new ground.  If you look at most of the audiences these days, there's equal numbers of women in people analytics as men, and we've got some brilliant women out there that are doing groundbreaking work: Lydia Wu at Panasonic, Melissa Kantor at the Lego Group, Dawn at Microsoft, I think Hallie Bregman who used to be at Wayfair and PTC and now has her own independent consulting doing DEI work, Stacia Garr, Priyanka, all the work they do in people analytics, Melissa Arronte at Medallia and then there's some fabulous women at Dezire that don't get the attention that they need. 

When I decided to leave, Dave, my boss at the time, said, "Well, find a replacement.  Andrea Dallaire, pay attention to what she's doing, she is just brilliant".  But there's other people like Carla Williams, you're going to start seeing a lot more from her, I think, and Jennifer Smith, Pamela Tafur.  So, I think it's a field that is becoming dominated with women, I think, and there's a different approach that I think we take.

[0:26:23] David Green: I agree.  I think you're right to highlight there's some amazing women in our space, and more joining all the time, which is great.  And that actually talks to another area, which I know you're really passionate about, Lexy, is using people analytics for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.  I don't know in the research that you've just conducted around people managers, if you saw an element related to DEIB?

[0:26:50] Lexy Martin: Turnover and DEIB are still the top two analytics topics in use and giving value.  And those are almost equal in importance.  And Janet Marler and I have done this causal analysis for a number of years.  There's a causal relationship between focusing on DEIB and improved financial performance.  It's the one causal link that she found with the last set of data that we've got, so I find that intriguing.  And even looking at the impact of improving diversity, providing data and insights to people managers, the place that it creates value is in innovation, and it impacts innovation revenue. 

Innovation revenue is typically about 10% of the revenue of an organisation, and the research I found showed that it increases that innovation revenue by something like 19%.  So, I haven't dug deeply into my latest round of customer data, but other than to note that turnover and DEI are still the top two analytics topics.

[0:28:20] David Green: That's interesting, actually, because the annual research we do at Insight222, 2021 and 2022, one of the questions we ask is, "What are the three areas where people analytics is adding the most value in your organisation?"  And DEIB came out top both years. 

[0:28:38] Lexy Martin: It's been wonderful for me to have this kind of laboratory of customer experiences and data to look at over my seven years, and what I notice is that new customers, again, turnover and DEIB are the two things that they're going to focus on initially.  It kind of changes as they become more mature, where they may focus on things like pay equity or compensation or talent acquisition.  And I think talent acquisition has such a clear connection with DEIB that if you really unbundled what it is that organisations are doing, DEIB kind of has a piece within all those other analytics areas.

[0:29:24] David Green: We could probably talk about this all day, but we'd better move on to the next question.  And actually, so with your redirection, Lexy, and looking forward to that, do you see yourself, "I'm retiring again", or seriously, do you see yourself staying involved in the field in any capacity moving forward?  I'm hoping you'll have a nice holiday once you finish up at Visier then.

[0:29:46] Lexy Martin: I am going to take some time off and people always say, "Oh, you deserve to retire", as if when you retire, you're going to do nothing.  That's not who I am, so I will redirect my energy somewhere.  And when I retired the first time, I took a programme at our local ag university and became a master gardener.  And California -- so master gardeners are all about using research to support sustainable gardening, and our issues are bad soil and drought.  So, I write for our local newspaper and I got really intrigued recently in doing some research on the fact that plants in the office support collaboration and kindness, and I'm really intrigued to maybe do some research with that. 

[0:30:53] David Green: I need to get some plants in my office by the looks of it then! 

[0:30:56] Lexy Martin: Well, of course you collaborate, but do you collaborate in your office?

[0:31:02] David Green: Well, only like this, I guess, but yeah, I mean I suppose the most frequent visitor to my office is my four-legged friend, so I don't do much collaboration with him when I'm working to be fair.

[0:31:14] Lexy Martin: So I might just do some fun research, you know.

[0:31:18] David Green: I'm sure you won't be able to resist dipping your feet into our space at that certain point, so I look forward for that.  Lexy, this is the final question of the episode and this is one that we're asking everyone in this series that Visier is sponsoring, and it's a perfect question for you.  We've covered it in some depth already, so please feel free to summarise maybe some key learnings and key actions that people can take on this.  How can HR leaders build a data-driven and digitally literate culture in HR? 

[0:31:50] Lexy Martin: Yeah, well of course I'm going to speak from my value perspective, and I think you've talked about this as well, that organisations really need to do a post-implementation review of their success, and really kind of figure out what financial and strategic impact what they're doing is having.  And it was interesting, none of the organisations that I talked to, and it was a couple of dozen, had done a true post-implementation review; and yet, I know from my long career that when organisations start to do that, they get more money and they get more staff.  So, I think that's one of the really critical things that needs to be done to support more organisations being data-driven. 

I wrote an article for IREM, called Lexy's Learnings from Fifty Years in the Tech Industry, and I think that technology introduction can catalyse important changes in the workplace.  So, think about what you want to have happen.  What I want to have happen from data and insights is that we use it to be more human, to be more effective.  But what is your reason for promoting data literacy?  Because the way you frame what you talk about, I think, can actually catalyse that change to actually happen.

[0:33:36] David Green: Yeah, very good.  Lexy, thank you so much for being a guest on the Digital HR Leaders podcast.  It's only taken you about three years to get you on the show, so I'm really grateful that you've come in before you start your redirection.  Can you let listeners know how they can keep in touch with you, follow you on social media, if you're still going to do social media or some social media, and more importantly, find out more about your work?

[0:34:02] Lexy Martin: So, yeah, I'm Lexy Martin on LinkedIn and Twitter and I've got that article Lexy's Learnings.  I am going to take some time off but I will be at UNLEASH in Paris in a session on this value of democratisation.  I don't think I'm going to completely disappear, but I will for a while. 

[0:34:26] David Green: I think you've earned some time to disappear and travel and I look forward to seeing you in Paris at UNLEASH, that's great that you're going to be there.  And, Lexy, thank you so much for spending the time to share your research and expertise and knowledge with listeners of the podcast, and also thank you so much from me for everything you've done for this field, particularly over the last 17 years when I've been in it, both at Sierra-Cedar, and then at Visier.

[0:34:54] Lexy Martin: Thank you, I really appreciate the work that you do.  You've taught me a lot.