1) Most companies still base talent decisions on intuition rather than data-driven evidence, but analytics are beginning to drive decisions about recruiting, retaining, and developing employees.
2) Early uses of workforce analytics have focused on reducing costs like turnover, but the goal of using analytics to directly impact revenue and profits is gaining importance.
3) For analytics to be effective, HR and business leaders must collaborate to link workforce data to financial data and business outcomes.
As the complexity of workforce challenges continues to rise, so has the demand for more quantitative approaches to solving tough people-related challenges in organizations. To better understand the state of affairs in workforce analytics, we spoke with over 40 game changers to discover the problems they are trying to solve, the approaches they are using and the pitfalls they’ve encountered.
For decades, industries and companies around the world have known talent can serve as one of the best competitive advantages. It is also clear identifying the right talent for your business is vital because not everyone is going to be a perfect fit.
The Datafication of HR: Graduating from Metrics to AnalyticsVisier
Datafication is a new term used to describe the process of turning an existing business into a “data business.” In HR it refers to our increasing ability to use Talent Analytics to understand more and more about our people, HR practices and processes, and external demographics.
Global competition for talent, outsourcing labor, compliance legislation, remote workers, aging populations – these are just a few of the daunting challenges faced by HR organizations today. Yet the most commonly monitored workforce metrics do very little to deliver true insight into these topics. Leaders need to graduate from metrics to analytics, surfacing the important connections and patterns in their data to make better workforce decisions.
Learn the difference between metrics and analytics, as well as key analytics and their values in these core areas:
Recruiting Effectiveness
Performance
Talent Retention
Employee Movement
Total Rewards
The challenges in today’s business environment require new approaches to remain competitive in an ever-shrinking world of global competition. By graduating from metrics to analytics, HR professionals and leaders can better understand the contributing factors that are impacting their organization, and take the right actions to implement programs that will provide a true competitive advantage.
View the full webinar recording here:
http://www.visier.com/lp/the-datafication-of-hr-graduating-from-metrics-to-analytics/
Download the companion white paper here:
http://www.visier.com/lp/wp-datafication-of-hr/
The Top HR Stories to Tell with Data: Templates that Wow Business LeadersVisier
The “datafication of HR” is one of 2014′s hottest topics, with 91% of organizations aspiring to move from reactive or operational reporting to proactive workforce analytics over the next 24 months. Indeed, “experience with workforce analytics” has become a sought-after line item on HR professionals’ resumes.
What is driving the “datafication” of HR? A growing number of corporate boards, CEOs, and CHROs understand that by applying data-driven solutions to improve decisions about talent, they can improve revenues and profits. Really, if you can measure real impactful aspects of the people in your organization and make intended changes, you can get the impact in terms of real business results. More than ever before, HR can play a critical role in driving business performance.
View the full webinar recording here:
http://www.visier.com/lp/top-10-hr-stories-with-data/
Technology has given birth to the latest disruption of Human Resources. Artificial intelligence. Virtual Reality. Data analytics. The list goes on.
Embrace The Tech Disruption explores:
- The use of Artificial Intelligence
- Data analytics and the hiring process
- The impact of the tech disruption on company budgets
- Technology solutions to day-to-day HR activities
As the complexity of workforce challenges continues to rise, so has the demand for more quantitative approaches to solving tough people-related challenges in organizations. To better understand the state of affairs in workforce analytics, we spoke with over 40 game changers to discover the problems they are trying to solve, the approaches they are using and the pitfalls they’ve encountered.
For decades, industries and companies around the world have known talent can serve as one of the best competitive advantages. It is also clear identifying the right talent for your business is vital because not everyone is going to be a perfect fit.
The Datafication of HR: Graduating from Metrics to AnalyticsVisier
Datafication is a new term used to describe the process of turning an existing business into a “data business.” In HR it refers to our increasing ability to use Talent Analytics to understand more and more about our people, HR practices and processes, and external demographics.
Global competition for talent, outsourcing labor, compliance legislation, remote workers, aging populations – these are just a few of the daunting challenges faced by HR organizations today. Yet the most commonly monitored workforce metrics do very little to deliver true insight into these topics. Leaders need to graduate from metrics to analytics, surfacing the important connections and patterns in their data to make better workforce decisions.
Learn the difference between metrics and analytics, as well as key analytics and their values in these core areas:
Recruiting Effectiveness
Performance
Talent Retention
Employee Movement
Total Rewards
The challenges in today’s business environment require new approaches to remain competitive in an ever-shrinking world of global competition. By graduating from metrics to analytics, HR professionals and leaders can better understand the contributing factors that are impacting their organization, and take the right actions to implement programs that will provide a true competitive advantage.
View the full webinar recording here:
http://www.visier.com/lp/the-datafication-of-hr-graduating-from-metrics-to-analytics/
Download the companion white paper here:
http://www.visier.com/lp/wp-datafication-of-hr/
The Top HR Stories to Tell with Data: Templates that Wow Business LeadersVisier
The “datafication of HR” is one of 2014′s hottest topics, with 91% of organizations aspiring to move from reactive or operational reporting to proactive workforce analytics over the next 24 months. Indeed, “experience with workforce analytics” has become a sought-after line item on HR professionals’ resumes.
What is driving the “datafication” of HR? A growing number of corporate boards, CEOs, and CHROs understand that by applying data-driven solutions to improve decisions about talent, they can improve revenues and profits. Really, if you can measure real impactful aspects of the people in your organization and make intended changes, you can get the impact in terms of real business results. More than ever before, HR can play a critical role in driving business performance.
View the full webinar recording here:
http://www.visier.com/lp/top-10-hr-stories-with-data/
Technology has given birth to the latest disruption of Human Resources. Artificial intelligence. Virtual Reality. Data analytics. The list goes on.
Embrace The Tech Disruption explores:
- The use of Artificial Intelligence
- Data analytics and the hiring process
- The impact of the tech disruption on company budgets
- Technology solutions to day-to-day HR activities
People Analytics: Improving the Employee Experience and ProductivityDr Susan Entwisle
It is true today more than any point in history that talent is a company’s greatest asset. To thrive in our hyper competitive global economy, companies need the right talent to deliver exceptional customer experiences efficiently with minimal risk. Traditionally, Human Resource teams have made decisions on hiring, assigning and developing employees using experience, instinct, and basic statistical data. The same advanced analytics and machine learning techniques we use to improve the customer experience are now being used for our people. People analytics provides insights and enables better and faster data-driven decision making across all aspects of people at work.
Topics covered in this presentation include:
How analytics has changed the customer experience.
Current state of employee engagement and its impact.
Limitations of cognitive decision making process.
What is people analytics?
How companies are using people analytics today?
Challenges in adoption of people analytics.
Guidance to get started on people analytics journey.
A session at the CBS Competitiveness Day 2015 - Human Capital Analytics Group has conducted a study on the use of employee engagement surveys in Danish companies. We interviewed representatives from the large Danish companies and major survey providers, and conducted a quantitative research on the use of employee engagement surveys in Denmark. This resulted in a Trend Spotting Report “Employee Engagement Surveys in Denmark”.
Hiring in a Candidate Driven Market: People, HR & AnalyticsAggregage
HR analytics empower organizations to use employee data to make better working decisions and improve performance in areas such as attracting top talent, accurately forecasting future staffing needs, and improving employee satisfaction. Join us to learn how to empower your organization to align metrics with strategic business goals, using HR analytics.
David Bernstein of eQuest, the global leader in job-posting delivery and job board performance analytics, discusses how Big Data analysis provides organizations with greater recruitment marketing effectivenss than ever before. By not only delivering predictive information on job postings but by also taking a holistic look at your talent pipeline, Big Data analysis provides the insight organizations need to make better-informed decisions more quickly, reducing time-to-hire, costs and administrative burden.
Optimizing Your Workforce Productivity & Retention - Human Capital Insights -...ADP, LLC
In this Issue of Human Capital Management Vol. 5: Flexible Work Arrangements: Optimizing Your Workforce Productivity & Retention Five Eco-Friendly Strategies for Global Organizations Data Security Checkup: Protecting Employee Health Information
The Connected Digital Economy and Benchmarking for Competitive Advantage - Hu...ADP, LLC
In this Issue of Human Capital Management Vol. 4: The Connected Digital Economy
Benchmarking for Competitive Advantage New Year Presents New ACA Opportunity:
Strategies for Communicating with Your Employees
Real-time Workforce Planning: Keeping up with business change Bhupesh Chaurasia
Adapting to change is not a new concern, but responding to the increasing pace of change is a challenge many of today’s organizations struggle with. Adoption rates for new technologies continue to accelerate, and each new innovation raises our expectations for how things get done. To keep up with the pace of change of both technology and process, business leadership
must adopt more dynamic decision-making processes throughout every part of the organization – including its people processes.
In a global survey of 375 executives, The Economist Intelligence Unit explores how early adopters are using evidence to show connections between HR and business KPIs and opening doors to new processes and people strategies that impact the bottom line of the organisation.
Get your Insider’s Guide to Workforce Analytics. Learn the definitions of key terms, see examples of metrics and analytics, and discover how to measure your company’s workforce analytics maturity. Plus, learn about common approaches to workforce analytics and hear case studies of analytics in action.
How to create more impact with People AnalyticsDavid Green
Slides from my presentation at UNLEASH in London on 20 March 2019.
The session brief is below:
People analytics offers tremendous potential to companies to support business strategy, improve productivity and performance, and personalise and enhance the employee experience.
In this session, I will present the key trends in people analytics, its role in helping to shape the future of work and provide examples of how organisations are using people analytics to create impact that drives business performance and a better workforce experience.
I will also outline the Nine Dimensions for Excellence in People Analytics model he created together with Jonathan Ferrar to help delegates understand how they can improve the impact, value and focus of their people analytics programs – whichever stage of the journey they are on.
Ibm smarter workforce Unlock the people equation using workforce analytics to...Pauline Mura
Enabling the workforce to drive the business
IBM Talent and Change services and Smarter Workforce
solutions combine market-leading talent management
and social collaboration tools with the power of workforce
science and advanced analytics. They enable
organizations to attract, engage and grow topperforming
talent, create an engaging social and
collaborative culture, and connect the right people to get
work done. We help organizations build an impassioned
and engaged workforce and deeper client relationships
leading to measurable business outcomes.
People analyticsdriving business performance with peop.docxLacieKlineeb
People analytics:
driving business
performance with
people data
in association with
REPORT
June 2018
Global research
Workday is a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications
for finance and human resources. Founded in 2005, Workday
delivers financial management, human capital management,
and analytics applications designed for the world’s largest
companies, educational institutions, and government
agencies. Organizations ranging from medium-sized
businesses to Fortune 50 enterprises have selected Workday.
The CIPD is the professional body for HR and people
development. The not-for-profit organisation champions
better work and working lives and has been setting the
benchmark for excellence in people and organisation
development for more than 100 years. It has more than
145,000 members across the world, provides thought
leadership through independent research on the world of
work, and offers professional training and accreditation for
those working in HR and learning and development.
People analytics: driving business performance with people data
1
1
Report
People analytics: driving business
performance with people data
Contents
Foreword from the CIPD 2
Foreword from Workday 3
Introduction 4
People analytics: enabling data-driven insights 5
Purpose of the study: key questions 9
Findings 10
Discussion 35
Recommendations 37
Conclusion 38
References 38
Appendix: Methodology notes 42
Endnotes 47
Acknowledgements
This report was written by Edward Houghton, Senior Research Adviser: Human Capital
and Governance, and Melanie Green, Research Associate, at the CIPD.
We’d like to thank Tasha Rathour, Ian Neale and the team at YouGov for their help in
designing and running the survey instrument, as well as a number of experts for their
insights and guidance, including Andy Charlwood, Max Blumberg, Eugene Burke and
Andrew Marritt.
We’d also like to thank Workday for their ongoing interest in this important agenda.
Without their support, this research would not have been possible.
People analytics: driving business performance with people data
2 Foreword from the CIPD
1 Foreword from the CIPD
Data and technology are at the very forefront of innovation in HR as they are in so many
parts of business today. As many organisations modernise and incorporate data and
technology into their workforce practices, we see many new opportunities emerging to
use people data to better understand who our workforce are, how they work, and what
work means to them. Insights from people data offer the opportunity to change the way
workforce decisions are made in organisations, from those driven by instinct or habit
alone to those which are evidence-based and focused on developing long-term, positive
outcomes. Even the most basic people data itself holds considerable potential value to
organisations when used correctly, as we are seeing through the recent insights from
gender pay gap reporti.
58 Quotes, Facts, Benchmarks, and Best Practices on People and AnalyticsHarrison Withers
For the last 18 months, the consulting team at Media 1 has read tens of thousands of pages of research, presentations, and white papers on analytics as it relates to people and performance. When we came across especially interesting content, we added it to a master list of resources. The following 58 Quotes, Facts, Benchmarks, and Best Practices on People and Analytics where curated from that list in the hopes that people will use them in support of creating great places to work.
People Analytics: Improving the Employee Experience and ProductivityDr Susan Entwisle
It is true today more than any point in history that talent is a company’s greatest asset. To thrive in our hyper competitive global economy, companies need the right talent to deliver exceptional customer experiences efficiently with minimal risk. Traditionally, Human Resource teams have made decisions on hiring, assigning and developing employees using experience, instinct, and basic statistical data. The same advanced analytics and machine learning techniques we use to improve the customer experience are now being used for our people. People analytics provides insights and enables better and faster data-driven decision making across all aspects of people at work.
Topics covered in this presentation include:
How analytics has changed the customer experience.
Current state of employee engagement and its impact.
Limitations of cognitive decision making process.
What is people analytics?
How companies are using people analytics today?
Challenges in adoption of people analytics.
Guidance to get started on people analytics journey.
A session at the CBS Competitiveness Day 2015 - Human Capital Analytics Group has conducted a study on the use of employee engagement surveys in Danish companies. We interviewed representatives from the large Danish companies and major survey providers, and conducted a quantitative research on the use of employee engagement surveys in Denmark. This resulted in a Trend Spotting Report “Employee Engagement Surveys in Denmark”.
Hiring in a Candidate Driven Market: People, HR & AnalyticsAggregage
HR analytics empower organizations to use employee data to make better working decisions and improve performance in areas such as attracting top talent, accurately forecasting future staffing needs, and improving employee satisfaction. Join us to learn how to empower your organization to align metrics with strategic business goals, using HR analytics.
David Bernstein of eQuest, the global leader in job-posting delivery and job board performance analytics, discusses how Big Data analysis provides organizations with greater recruitment marketing effectivenss than ever before. By not only delivering predictive information on job postings but by also taking a holistic look at your talent pipeline, Big Data analysis provides the insight organizations need to make better-informed decisions more quickly, reducing time-to-hire, costs and administrative burden.
Optimizing Your Workforce Productivity & Retention - Human Capital Insights -...ADP, LLC
In this Issue of Human Capital Management Vol. 5: Flexible Work Arrangements: Optimizing Your Workforce Productivity & Retention Five Eco-Friendly Strategies for Global Organizations Data Security Checkup: Protecting Employee Health Information
The Connected Digital Economy and Benchmarking for Competitive Advantage - Hu...ADP, LLC
In this Issue of Human Capital Management Vol. 4: The Connected Digital Economy
Benchmarking for Competitive Advantage New Year Presents New ACA Opportunity:
Strategies for Communicating with Your Employees
Real-time Workforce Planning: Keeping up with business change Bhupesh Chaurasia
Adapting to change is not a new concern, but responding to the increasing pace of change is a challenge many of today’s organizations struggle with. Adoption rates for new technologies continue to accelerate, and each new innovation raises our expectations for how things get done. To keep up with the pace of change of both technology and process, business leadership
must adopt more dynamic decision-making processes throughout every part of the organization – including its people processes.
In a global survey of 375 executives, The Economist Intelligence Unit explores how early adopters are using evidence to show connections between HR and business KPIs and opening doors to new processes and people strategies that impact the bottom line of the organisation.
Get your Insider’s Guide to Workforce Analytics. Learn the definitions of key terms, see examples of metrics and analytics, and discover how to measure your company’s workforce analytics maturity. Plus, learn about common approaches to workforce analytics and hear case studies of analytics in action.
How to create more impact with People AnalyticsDavid Green
Slides from my presentation at UNLEASH in London on 20 March 2019.
The session brief is below:
People analytics offers tremendous potential to companies to support business strategy, improve productivity and performance, and personalise and enhance the employee experience.
In this session, I will present the key trends in people analytics, its role in helping to shape the future of work and provide examples of how organisations are using people analytics to create impact that drives business performance and a better workforce experience.
I will also outline the Nine Dimensions for Excellence in People Analytics model he created together with Jonathan Ferrar to help delegates understand how they can improve the impact, value and focus of their people analytics programs – whichever stage of the journey they are on.
Ibm smarter workforce Unlock the people equation using workforce analytics to...Pauline Mura
Enabling the workforce to drive the business
IBM Talent and Change services and Smarter Workforce
solutions combine market-leading talent management
and social collaboration tools with the power of workforce
science and advanced analytics. They enable
organizations to attract, engage and grow topperforming
talent, create an engaging social and
collaborative culture, and connect the right people to get
work done. We help organizations build an impassioned
and engaged workforce and deeper client relationships
leading to measurable business outcomes.
People analyticsdriving business performance with peop.docxLacieKlineeb
People analytics:
driving business
performance with
people data
in association with
REPORT
June 2018
Global research
Workday is a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications
for finance and human resources. Founded in 2005, Workday
delivers financial management, human capital management,
and analytics applications designed for the world’s largest
companies, educational institutions, and government
agencies. Organizations ranging from medium-sized
businesses to Fortune 50 enterprises have selected Workday.
The CIPD is the professional body for HR and people
development. The not-for-profit organisation champions
better work and working lives and has been setting the
benchmark for excellence in people and organisation
development for more than 100 years. It has more than
145,000 members across the world, provides thought
leadership through independent research on the world of
work, and offers professional training and accreditation for
those working in HR and learning and development.
People analytics: driving business performance with people data
1
1
Report
People analytics: driving business
performance with people data
Contents
Foreword from the CIPD 2
Foreword from Workday 3
Introduction 4
People analytics: enabling data-driven insights 5
Purpose of the study: key questions 9
Findings 10
Discussion 35
Recommendations 37
Conclusion 38
References 38
Appendix: Methodology notes 42
Endnotes 47
Acknowledgements
This report was written by Edward Houghton, Senior Research Adviser: Human Capital
and Governance, and Melanie Green, Research Associate, at the CIPD.
We’d like to thank Tasha Rathour, Ian Neale and the team at YouGov for their help in
designing and running the survey instrument, as well as a number of experts for their
insights and guidance, including Andy Charlwood, Max Blumberg, Eugene Burke and
Andrew Marritt.
We’d also like to thank Workday for their ongoing interest in this important agenda.
Without their support, this research would not have been possible.
People analytics: driving business performance with people data
2 Foreword from the CIPD
1 Foreword from the CIPD
Data and technology are at the very forefront of innovation in HR as they are in so many
parts of business today. As many organisations modernise and incorporate data and
technology into their workforce practices, we see many new opportunities emerging to
use people data to better understand who our workforce are, how they work, and what
work means to them. Insights from people data offer the opportunity to change the way
workforce decisions are made in organisations, from those driven by instinct or habit
alone to those which are evidence-based and focused on developing long-term, positive
outcomes. Even the most basic people data itself holds considerable potential value to
organisations when used correctly, as we are seeing through the recent insights from
gender pay gap reporti.
58 Quotes, Facts, Benchmarks, and Best Practices on People and AnalyticsHarrison Withers
For the last 18 months, the consulting team at Media 1 has read tens of thousands of pages of research, presentations, and white papers on analytics as it relates to people and performance. When we came across especially interesting content, we added it to a master list of resources. The following 58 Quotes, Facts, Benchmarks, and Best Practices on People and Analytics where curated from that list in the hopes that people will use them in support of creating great places to work.
Unlocking people data possibilities can shape your
strategy and help you make more informed decisions in your organization. Gut feel is good but data-driven is better.
Driving A Data-Centric Culture: The Leadership ChallengePlatfora
Embracing data as a corporate asset—and a source of competitive advantage—is not just a “good idea” that companies should consider. Such adoption will help determine the winners and losers across multiple markets and industries in the future.
In the last couple of years, corporate focus has shifted: first, from investing in the right technology and tools; then to acquiring the right talent and skills; and now to building the right organizational culture that can realize the business value of powerful big-data analytic tools.
Most organizations today are still focused on putting in place the right technology and talent, but others have evolved further and are working toward fostering a data-centric corporate culture.
The COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged many recruitment companies to adapt their talent acquisition processes to new realities. A survey was conducted to know what the talent acquisition function looks like now and what it will look like in the future. Go through this PDF and get an overview of the significant findings of the survey! For talent management solutions and services, visit - https://www.emptrust.com/
Linkedin global recruiting trends report 2017Pierre Bernard
Why read this ?
In order to plan for the future, you need to understand where
you stand compared to your peers. The goal of this report
is exactly that -- to help talent leaders like you benchmark
against teams across the globe when it comes to the most
important recruiting metrics and trends.
About this survey
This report is based on the survey responses of nearly 4,000
corporate talent acquisition leaders across 35 countries. All
respondents are at the manager level or higher.
Midsized businesses play an important role in the recovering U.S. economy. The Association for Corporate Growth (ACG), for example, reports that while midsized businesses represent just 1% of all businesses, they provide 26.5% (48 million) of all U.S. jobs. Review this whitepaper and learn about the three key themes which emerged in the study results - employee engagement, talent management, and compliance.
Similar to HBR - HR Joins The Analytics Revolution (20)
#NowHiring - The Role of Social Media in Agency RecruitingMichael Cirrito
LinkedIn & The Partnership for Public Service assess the rules of the road for Federal recruiters and talent acquisition professionals who want to be more engaged on Social Media. They spoke with The Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the Office of Government Ethics (OGE), and six different agencies to identify effective and approved practices for being more engaged.
4. 2 | A HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW ANALYTIC SERVICES REPORT
Findings Summarized
To understand this journey, Harvard Business Review Analytic Services conducted an online Pulse survey
of 230 executives, about a third of them from HR. See “Methodology,” page 7 We discussed the findings with six
consultants and practitioners. Based on this two-pronged research we conclude that:
■■ Many enterprises expect to increase reliance on workforce analytics in the next two years. However,
they must overcome long-standing hurdles, including data problems, staffing skills, and discomfort
with data-driven decisions about the workforce.
■■ Most early uses of workforce analytics have aimed at saving or avoiding costs; the goal to drive rev-
enue and profit needs greater emphasis.
■■ HR professionals and business executives must collaborate to combine workforce and financial data
that can support decisions that impact revenue and profit.
Figure 1
Workforce Concerns
Recruiting high-performing talent for succession and leadership positions
Developing existing talent for future leadership or scarce skill roles
Retention of high-performing talent
Managing costs associated with the workforce
Managing labor and skills to ensure business continuity and operations
Instilling and sustaining a sense of passion and purpose in employees
Recruiting creative, innovative, and problem-solving staff
Competiting for talent with competitors
Ensuring that diversity exists across the workforce
48%
46%
43%
35%
31%
28%
25%
20%
15%
From the list below, select the top three most important concerns your company has about its
workforce today.
5. HR JOINS THE ANALYTICS REVOLUTION
“We’ve seen a sea change in the last 12 to 18 months,” says Scott Pollak, a principal at PwC Saratoga, an HR
services unit. “We see CEOs and others wanting better data and not just a head count report, but how is
talent driving business results? This changes what gets measured.”
Recruiting and Retaining
Respondents to the Pulse survey said their most important workforce concerns were recruiting, retaining,
and developing high-performance talent and leadership. figure 1 Yet more than half use data only on an ad
hoc basis or use no data in workforce decision making. figure 2
“If we don’t have the right people in the right jobs, we can’t drive business performance,” says Nicole
Theophilus, executive vice president and CHRO for ConAgra Foods, Inc., based in Omaha, with 36,000
employees worldwide. “One of the toughest things in recruiting is to convince candidates to come work
for ConAgra Foods in Omaha,” she says. “It is a challenging industry, and good candidates have other
options in larger cities.”
ConAgra began using workforce analytics four years ago in a number of areas such as wellness, adoption,
and leadership development. It recently began to apply analytics in other areas such as recruiting and
retention. “We’ve been looking at what makes employees stick,” she says.
Much of the early development of workforce analytics has focused on recruiting and turnover, for obvious
reasons. Recruiting is costly, and turnover is rising as the economy recovers. According to PwC Saratoga,
voluntary turnover in U.S. organizations rose from 8 percent in 2012 to 9 percent in 2013. Voluntary turn-
over among high performers rose from 5 percent in 2012 to 6 percent in 2013, the highest in a decade.
Figure 2
Role of Workforce Data in Decision Making
We rarely use data to inform workforce decisions.
We use data reactively—typically via ad hoc reporting—to inform only critical workforce decisions.
We use data proactively—typically via operational reporting.
We analyze our workforce proactively—typically via dashboards and visuals that are up to date and available
on demand.
We analyze and make proactive predictions about our workforce—typically via dashboards and visuals that
contain predictive analytics.
11%
40%
26%
15%
9%
Select from the list below the one description that best describes the extent to which workforce-related
data plays a role in the decision-making style of your organization.
6. 4 | A HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW ANALYTIC SERVICES REPORT
Moving up the Maturity Curve
Many survey respondents expect to move up the workforce analytics maturity curve over the next two
years. figure 3 Paul Rubenstein, leader for talent solutions and strategy at Aon Hewitt, provider of HR con-
sulting, solutions, and outsourcing services, shares their optimism. He cites the proliferation of cloud-
based tools and a greater willingness to invest as the economy recovers. “The technology is vastly dif-
ferent from just a year ago,” he says. “We used to think this cycle would take three to four years. With
cloud-based technology, it should take two to three months to get the tech ready and get the first analytics
up and running and then six to nine months to get good at it.”
The survey identified two primary obstacles to adoption: data-related problems and HR’s skill level.
figure 4 Our interview subjects, including John Berisford, executive vice president for HR at McGraw Hill
Financial in New York, shared this view.
HR data was a mess three years ago when Berisford joined the company. Fortunately, he was working with
a blank slate, because the company, a provider of market intelligence services with 17,000 employees
worldwide, had recently spun off its education, publishing, and media businesses.
When Berisford checked a sample of data from the legacy HR system of record, “28 percent was wrong,”
he says. The company spends $2 billion a year on labor, which is two-thirds of total costs, but “if the CEO
asked me how do we spend that money,” Berisford says, “I couldn’t tell him.” After installing a cloud-
based system of recording and putting in a lot of work on data governance, rules, and taxonomy, he has
achieved an accuracy rate north of 95 percent.
Talent acquisition and total rewards are crucial in his company. For those functions Berisford adopted a
cloud-based workforce analytics and planning solution linked to the system of record. The goal is simple:
“If we don’t figure out precisely how to deploy that $2 billion to drive value, we lose ground,” he says.
HR’s well-documented lack of analytical acumen comes a close second to data problems as the chief
obstacle cited by poll respondents. “While no company would possibly run their business with inconsis-
tent financial data, most companies are riddled with inconsistent HR data,” says Josh Bersin. “Companies
are waking up to this issue and are starting to invest heavily in talent analytics. One HR executive recently
told me they would not hire any HR people who did not have some statistics understanding. Understand-
ing how to use data is becoming part of the HR profession.”
Berisford hired five people with quantitative backgrounds outside HR. Theophilus started with two
internal HR staff with a passion for analytics and hired two industrial psychologists with doctorates. The
combination of new technologies and increased analytic acumen has created significant impact at both
companies.
Impacting the Bottom Line
Asked to rate the importance of workforce analytics to help the organization meet revenue and profit
goals, 51 percent of the poll respondents gave it an 8 or higher on a 10-point scale; 58 percent rated its
importance in two years as 8 or higher. That finding is a significant deviation from the normal bell-curve
distribution typical of most poll responses and indicates the intensity of interest in workforce analytics
as a business tool.
“So far we have been able to pinpoint costs savings and cost avoidance,” Theophilus says. “We are ulti-
mately working to quantify how our succession and development efforts tie to revenues and profits.
That’s when all the light bulbs will go on for folks.”
7. HR JOINS THE ANALYTICS REVOLUTION
Figure 3
Workforce Data, Metrics, and Analytics Usage
Individual reports created “as needed” in a highly manual spreadsheet-based process
Regular reports on single topics (e.g., recruiting)
Analytics using data integrated from multiple systems (e.g., performance and compensation)
Business unit-specific dashboards and visuals
On-demand, business user self-service
Predictive analytics based on HR data and data from other sources within or outside the organization
Predictive analytics based on HR data alone
Don’t know
60%
36%
18%
42%
15%
48%
11%
20%
7%
10%
44%
41%
34%
52%
42%
57%
Which of the following workforce data, metrics, and analytics are in use in your organization today
and will be in two years?
● TODAY ● IN TWO YEARS
8. 6 | A HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW ANALYTIC SERVICES REPORT
By “folks,” Theophilus means the HR and business executives who need to develop a common under-
standing of how selected employee metrics cause, correlate with, or predict selected business outcomes,
especially revenue and profit. It is HR’s responsibility to lead this joint effort, but this assumes HR is
capable of leading and that the business side wants to be led.
To lead, HR needs both quantitative acumen and a keen understanding of what makes the business suc-
cessful as well as the ability to connect business results to data about employee performance. HR needs
to learn which employee metrics have the greatest impact on business results and be able to tell stories
about what the numbers mean for the business. A key component of the business case for workforce ana-
lytics is that the solutions have the potential to be self-funding from the savings they generate.
“State-of-the-art HR organizations are analyzing their data to reveal insights that business partners never
asked for,” but they’re few and far between, says John Boudreau, professor and research director of the
University of Southern California’s Center for Effective Organizations. He studies human capital’s impact
on competitive advantage and has conducted regular surveys since 1995. “This is like Star Wars stuff in
many organizations. HR typically focuses on traditional functional reporting, unless a business leader
outside HR asks for analysis that connects human capital to financial results.”
Boudreau notes that HR typically gets good marks from business colleagues for conventional analytics
about legal compliance, service delivery, and the traditional HR value proposition. Workforce analytics
promise much more, but delivering on that promise requires reconsidering HR’s relationship with busi-
ness executives. Business and HR can learn to work together, Berisford argues. “HR is enabling our CFO
Figure 4
Biggest Obstacles to Achieving Better Use Of Data, Metrics, and Analysis
Inaccurate, inconsistent, or hard-to-access data requiring too much manual manipulation
Lack of analytic acumen or skills among HR professionals
Lack of adequate investment in necessary HR /talent analytical systems
Lack of perceived value of a data-driven culture; company does not have a data-driven culture
Lack of support or expectations by C-suite executives
HR does not know how to talk about HR data to relate it to business outcomes
54%
47%
44%
37%
29%
27%
What are the three biggest obstacles to achieving better use of data, metrics, and predictive analysis by
HR and talent management professionals in your organization?
9. HR JOINS THE ANALYTICS REVOLUTION
and finance team to redo the chart of accounts and general ledger with clean data and a clear taxonomy,”
he says. “Without clean data on people, it is difficult to have a clean P&L.”
Pollak argues that the entire business, not just HR, needs help moving toward data-driven workforce deci-
sions. Too often, he says, when HR asks the business side what it wants, the business side says, ‘You’re
HR, you tell us what we need.’ So really, no one knows what they want.”
“What makes HR and business people uncomfortable is that sometimes the data trumps intuition,”
Theophilus says. HR professionals eventually “get it and move forward. But business people tend to not
have time to think about how this is helpful. They say, “Just find me someone good.’ Once they see the
results, they understand the value.”
“We have seen this tipping point before in other more mature business functions like finance and market-
ing,” Boudreau observes. “At the critical moment in history, three ingredients coalesced to force analytics
for finance and marketing to mature: the data became available, the resource the data described became
pivotal in value, and decision frameworks (such as portfolio theory) evolved to a useful state. Human
capital has the data, and the resource is obviously valuable, but we have not yet developed and commu-
nicated the required decision frameworks to use data to optimize decisions about talent.”
Clearly, as the survey and interviews suggest, CEOs, CHROs, and their teams are beginning to get it: work-
force analytics can produce better talent decisions, and better talent decisions can improve business
results. Now they’re ready to journey toward data-driven workforce decisions. The need has never been
greater, and the solutions have never been better. Now it is time to invest, train, and revamp the culture
to move HR and the entire organization in that direction.
Methodology and Participant Profile
Harvard Business Review Analytic Services conducted an online Pulse survey about trends in workforce
analytics in February 2014, using lists from the Harvard Business Review. In all, 230 self-selected
respondents participated. The statistical margin of error is 6.5 percent.
One-third of respondents were HR professionals. The others were mainly business executives or managers.
Altogether, 80 percent of respondents identified themselves as managers/supervisors or higher, with 36 percent
director level or higher.
In addition, 38 percent came from companies with 10,000 or more employees and 50 percent came from enterprises
with 5,000 or more employees. The geographic breakdown was roughly equal among the Americas, Asia, and Europe/
Middle East/Africa.
Harvard Business Review Analytic Services discussed the survey results with six experts for their reactions and to
compare with what these experts know from their own experience and research, including their own surveys in some
cases. The sources were:
• John Berisford, Executive Vice President HR, McGraw Hill Financial, Inc.
• Josh Bersin, Founder, Bersin by Deloitte
• John Boudreau, Professor and Research Director, Center for Effective Organizations, University of Southern California
• Scott Pollak, Principal, PwC Saratoga
• Paul Rubenstein, Leader for Talent Solutions and Strategy, Aon Hewitt
• Nicole Theophilus, Executive Vice President and CHRO, ConAgra Foods, Inc.
10. 8 | A HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW ANALYTIC SERVICES REPORT
Sponsor’s Perspective
The “datafication of HR” is a leading business trend today and has the potential to change the game forever.
With the workforce comprising an average of 70 percent of the typical company’s expenses, HR has the
opportunity not just to “get a seat at the table” but also to play a critical role in driving business outcomes and
improving the bottom line.
Studies have found that companies that make fact-based workforce decisions and plans perform better than
those that do not. Companies that are leaders in workforce analytics and planning improve talent outcomes by
12 percent, improve gross profit margins by 6 percent (CEB, Analytics Survey, 2013), are two times more likely
to improve their recruiting efforts and leadership pipelines, three times more likely to realize cost savings and
efficiency gains, and generate 20 percent higher stock returns (Bersin by Deloitte, 2013).
Yet the vast majority of organizations today are limited to reactive, operational reporting. Fewer than 10
percent can count themselves among the elite at the top of the workforce analytics and planning maturity
curve. The reason is that the path to maturity has been costly, time-consuming, and technically complex.
First, most organizations have disparate workforce data across multiple, disconnected systems. To deal
with this, IT departments historically undertake lengthy data warehousing projects, which require significant
up-front investments in infrastructure, skilled data scientists, and developers.
Second, traditional approaches start with the tools, not the business questions—which are constantly
changing. By the time the data warehouse is built, the business intelligence tools are deployed, and the reports
are constructed, the business has changed. The result is that data is found to be incomplete, out-of-date, or
inaccurate, and the business users’ questions cannot be answered.
Finally, the dream of big data is unattainable for most. Except for a few giant firms with nearly unlimited
resources and a strong background in technology adoption, most companies lack the skills or funds to
leverage big data.
The good news is that the technology world has begun to recognize this problem.
We believe Visier is at the forefront of a new class of solutions called Applied Big Data. We remove the burden
of predicting the user questions, finding the data sources, and integrating the stack of tools and data. Instead,
we provide the business user—out of the box—with insights for decisions and scenarios to build actionable
workforce plans.
Unlike with traditional approaches, we unify and clean your data for you in four to eight weeks and provide
in-depth, pre-built workforce analytics and planning capabilities as a service in the cloud.
Ultimately the mainstream adoption of workforce analytics and planning will be fueled not by billions of dollars
in custom development but by cloud solution providers that deliver Applied Big Data solutions to companies
faster and more cost-effectively than ever before.
— JOHN SCHWARZ, CEO, VISIER
Sponsored by
11. ABOUT VISIER Visier is proud to be enabling a rapidly growing number of the world’s best brands in the datafication of HR—
companies such as McGraw Hill Financial, Exelon, ConAgra Foods, Hyatt, Micron, Nissan, Time Inc., and NetApp.
Delivering intuitive analytics and planning solutions in the cloud, Visier enables HR, business leaders, and people managers
to better understand their workforces, make decisions based on fact, predict future events, and more accurately plan for the
future. The results include improved workforce productivity and performance, more effective recruitment and retention, and
significant bottom-line savings.
With millions of customer employee records in the cloud, Visier is experiencing significant growth.
12. FOR MORE INFORMATION ON
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW ANALYTIC SERVICES:
hbr.org/hbr-analytic-services