Analytics on Analytics: Assessing Your HR Analytics Capability
Dave Ulrich
Speaker, Author, Professor, Thought Partner on Human Capability (talent, leadership, organization, HR)
Over the last decade, analytics has become a widespread buzzword in HR (and elsewhere) and an increasingly important concept for HR’s future (see a great and ongoing summary of this work by David Green: https://www.myhrfuture.com/academy). When talking about analytics, we see four stages of the evolution of analytics, each with its own vocabulary (see figure 1).
For HR departments to make individualized progress along this analytics evolution
Why analytics?
Analytics is a way to access and use information to make better decisions. In a digital, connected, and transparent world, people have nearly unlimited access to information. In a business setting, business and HR leaders want to turn this ubiquitous information into improved decision-making
What analytics?
Analytics without impact is like writing a story or essay without an audience. The story or essay may have good words and even sentences and plot line, but unless targeted to an audience, it lacks purpose and impact. Likewise, HR analytics needs to provide information that has impact by focusing on key stakeholders. In our research (see Victory Through Organization), we found that traditional HR analytics—focused on assessing HR work through HR scorecards or benchmarks—has only a moderate impact on both customer and investor outcomes and business results. As HR analytics moves beyond scorecards (on HR practices and insights from big data) to real business impact, the information is more focused on delivering value to stakeholders
HR analytics should focus less on measuring HR and more on creating business results or value from human capability initiatives
In a recent seminar, I asked HR participants to write down what they wanted to learn from the workshop. Their answers centered around HR practices (e.g., talent mobility, mental health, agility, culture change, leadership development, HR transformation, and so forth). Many wanted “analytics” about these human capability practice areas. To probe them for their desired impact, I asked them to write “so that . . . ” behind each desired learning and fill in the phrase after. The “so that” exercise required them to think of the impact of the HR activity on stakeholders who should receive value from the initiatives (figure 2). “So that” shifts the analytics focus from activity to impact. We have framed this logic as an Organization Guidance System, which links human capability initiatives to results, prioritizes initiatives by impact, and offers guidance on where to focus actions.
领英推荐
How analytics?
If analytics matters (why) and links to stakeholder value (what), the challenge is to make analytics impact happen (how). My colleagues and I have studied analytics on analytics and worked with organizations endeavoring to create analytics capability that guides value creation.
We have identified ten actions HR and business professionals can take to implement impactful analytics
Summary
Obviously, information-rich decisions are more effective than information-poor decisions; and navigating the fire hose of knowledge available requires analytics. Knowing how to use analytics to turn information into improved decision-making comes from answering the why, what, and how questions of analytics. Doing analytics on analytics helps focus information efforts on delivering more value. The proposed ten-item assessment helps HR professionals determine their overall analytics capability and identify improvements to make better analytics decisions that enhance business results.
..………
Dave Ulrich?is the Rensis Likert Professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, and a partner at The RBL Group, a consulting firm focused on helping organizations and leaders deliver value.
HR Enthusiast |Talent Acquisition & Employee Relations | People-First Approach |Transforming Employee Experience | Talent & Culture Builder
6 个月Ashwini Kamble
Senior HR Professional
2 年Great read!
Global People Analytics & HR Data Leader - People & Culture | Strategical People Analytics Design
2 年Thank you Dave Ulrich for sharing some interesting insights into HR analytics/People Analytics, my main topic of interest for years now. I would just add that the People Analytics journey can’t be successful without a People Analytics leader and analytics roadmap.
Global Human Resources Executive ? Collaborates with executives transforming organizations into high performing teams
2 年I love this framework! Too often report out on scorecards just because we can measure it without thinking through the impact it provides to the bottom line or contributes to the overall strategy. By starting with outcomes first, you can avoid this. I would suggest this model applies well beyond just HR!