The best HR & People Analytics articles of April 2020

As I reflected to my co-host and friend Al Adamsen as we kicked off PAFOW Europe Online in the last week of April, a lot had happened since we had co-hosted the PAFOW San Francisco event just 89 days previously.

From in-person to virtual. From being on the same stage to being in time zones eight hours apart. From normality to a global pandemic.

What PAFOW Europe Online proved irrevocably is that the field of people analytics has stepped up in this crisis. The dedication of the profession to use people data to underpin organisational efforts to prioritise employee wellbeing in these troubled times is gratifying.

A write-up of Thomas Rasmussen’s and Sally Smith’s presentation at PAFOW on how people analytics is supporting National Australia Bank’s workforce in the crisis is one of the articles highlighted below. Something Thomas said during the speech really resonated and helped crystallise the bittersweet aspect that has seen people analytics being elevated by the crisis:

People Analytics is truly more impactful than ever – it’s gone from being a strategic differentiator the best CHRO’s demand, to an absolute essential to manage the crisis

Whilst some of the selections below have a distinct Covid-19 theme, I also wanted to provide some respite, so most of the choices are not directly related to the crisis.

Enjoy. Please share some data-driven love, take a break from Zoom fatigue and above all stay healthy and stay safe.

THE ROLE OF HR AND PEOPLE ANALYTICS TEAMS IN THE CRISIS

DAVID GREEN - COVID-19: The role of HR & People Analytics in the crisis

This is the time for HR leaders and People Analytics teams to come to the fore. Employee experience and wellbeing has to be the central thrust of organisational response to the Covid-19 crisis. Inspired both by the PAFOW Online conference and my discussions with people analytics teams, here are some observations on the crisis from a HR lens with links also to 70+ resources all with an underlying theme of ‘people data for good’. Contributors include: Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Heather McGowan, Anna Tavis, Josh Bersin, Alicia Roach, Ravin Jesuthasan, Philip Arkcoll and many more.

LEADERSHIP & CULTURE

FRANCES X. FREI & ANNE MORRISS – Begin with Trust

Leaders need to create trust for employees to realise their full potential, but how do you create the culture for trust to thrive? Bookended by a powerful story outlining the turnaround at Uber, the authors present their three core drivers of trust (see FIG 1): empathy (employees believe you care), logic (employees have faith in your judgement and competence) and authenticity (employees trust they are interacting with the real you), and offer methods on how leaders can develop each attribute to attain a truly empowering style of leadership.

Your job as a leader is to create the conditions for your people to fully realize their own capacity and power

FIG 1: The Trust Triangle (Source: Frances X. Frei, Anne Morriss, HBR)

HR TECH

PRIYANKA MEHROTRA & STACIA GARR - People Analytics Tech: Market, Vendors & COVID-19

One of the highlights from PAFOW Europe Online was Priyanka and Stacia’s update of their landmark study into the People Analytics technology landscape, which they coupled with an analysis of the impact of COVID-19 and how vendors in this space are helping their customers to respond. Enjoy the slides below and check out the full research on the market, the vendors and the interactive tool.

PEOPLE ANALYTICS, DATA SCIENCE, TEXT ANALYTICS

ANDREW MARRITT – How to write good open text survey questions for a computer to interpret

As Andrew Marrit explains in this excellent article, good measurement should always be done with one eye on how you intend to analyse the resulting data. Text data, as generated by open questions in surveys, is no exception to this rule. Andrew’s article outlines how computers code text, some of the typical issues that occur and how to write questions that encourage people to write text in a way that computers will find it easy to understand and consequently improve the accuracy of your coding.

Writing a good survey question is in many ways like asking a good interview question - you shouldn’t lead the person whose answer you want

ADAM McKINNON & IVANA KOTORCHEVIKI - An ML model that facilitates employee transfer in a company

An absorbing People Analytics case study outlining how Adam McKinnon from Merck KGaA’s People Analytics team used text analytics to facilitate job rotation using a two-step approach. First, by identifying the employees at risk of leaving. Then, secondly doing text analysis on job descriptions to find alternative roles for at-risk employees to transition to. The article provides a detailed description of the steps taken throughout the project, and the video below covers Adam’s speech at last year’s Nordic People Analytics Summit. As Adam, notes if finance is the home of numbers, then HR is the home of text.

If Finance is the home of numbers, HR is the home of text

KENNETH LIM, MATTHEW YERBURY & NICHOLAS BILLER - Data in the iron mask: How to protect important and sensitive information

Starting with an analogy to the film The Man in The Iron Mask, Kenneth Lim combines forces with Matthew Yerbury and Nicholas Biller from HSBC’s People Data Science team to explain the concept of data masking, where original data is replaced with scrambled copy to ensure privacy and ethics. The article also provides frequently used data masking techniques and a simple flow chart (FIG 2) to help practitioners consider when and what masking techniques may be needed. Thanks to Eden Britt for highlighting this really insightful read.

FIG 2: Flowchart to help decide when to mask data and which techniques to apply (Source: Kenneth Lim)

RELATIONSHIP ANALYTICS (ONA)

MANISH GOEL & DAVID GREEN - The Role of Network Analytics (ONA) in Ensuring Team Collaboration and Well Being

Whenever I speak to a Head of People Analytics, Organisational Network Analysis (ONA) invariably comes up. The crisis has spiked further interest in this technique as companies seek to understand the ramifications of the biggest remote working experiment in history. Many companies we work with at Insight222 are using ONA to answer questions such as the ones Manish Goel highlights here. The article also examines other typical use cases for Relationship Analytics (see FIG 3), how to get started and also tips around privacy and ethics.

FIG 3: Relationship Analytics Use Cases (Source: TrustSphere)

SALLY SMITH, THOMAS RASMUSSEN & RY CROZIER - NAB mines Outlook metadata to understand team workloads, prevent burnout

One of the highlights from PAFOW Europe Online was Sally Smith’s and Thomas Rasmussen’s presentation of how people analytics is supporting National Australia Bank and its workforce during the crisis. This write-up by Ry Crozier outlines how NAB is analysing Outlook metadata and combining this with survey data to understand workload pressures due to the shift to remote working. The findings include that most employees experienced little or no change over a two-month period, but that 30% had a lot more meetings, email traffic and collaboration (see FIG 4).   

 FIG 4: Analysis on change in collaboration by role type at NAB (Source: Sally Smith, Thomas Rasmussen).

ANDREA ALEXANDER, AARON DE SMET, SARAH KLEINMAN & MARINO MUGAYAR-BALDOCCHI - To weather a crisis, build a network of teams 

Practical guide from McKinsey on four steps companies can take to build a dynamic and collaborative team structure to help tackle the significant challenges presented by a crisis such as the pandemic (see FIG 5). Perhaps one bittersweet aspect of the crisis is that it may spur leaders to reflect on what kind of organisation, culture, and operating model they want to put in place, so they can avoid returning to previous patterns of behaviour and instead embrace a more effective employee-centric way of working as we enter the post-Covid world.

FIG 5: Four steps to creating a network of teams (Source: McKinsey)

EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE & CONTINUOUS LISTENING

SARAH JOHNSON - Measuring Engagement is Not the Same as Listening

Continuous Listening, as Sarah Johnson notes in this article, has become of a buzzword in HR circles. Making an analogy with customers, Sarah provides insights on what continuous listening means from an employee perspective and outlines the mistakes organisations need to avoid when implementing these programs. To hear more from Sarah tune in to her podcast conversation with me on how surveys can create strategic value.

Employees don't become fatigued from answering questions; they become fatigued when they spend all their time responding, but leaders don't seem to care enough to act

LAURA STEVENS - Continuous Listening in times of crisis

As the crisis has developed and employees have started en masse to work remotely, many companies we work with at Insight222 have already initiated efforts to understand how this is affecting their people. Laura's excellent article outlines how the nature and tone of your Continuous Listening efforts should shift from a focus on engagement to one that seeks to better understand wellbeing - particularly in relation to social connectedness and mental health.

 Now is the time to listen and put employee wellbeing at the center of your efforts

THE FUTURE OF WORK

DAVE ULRICH – Four innovations that will transform Talent Management forever

How organisations hire, motivate, and retain top talent was already evolving at light speed. The changes Dave Ulrich envisions in this article for the next talent agenda have, if anything had their pace quickened further by the Covid-19 crisis. The four innovations Dave highlights are: i) Talent Guidance (“combining digital HR and HR analytics into a forward-looking, outside-in perspective on talent”), ii) Employee Experience (“EX Employee experience has become the new mantra for how employees respond to work”), iii) Work-task planning - see FIG 6 (“Work-task planning brings technology into the talent world”), and iv) Culture before Talent (“Talent matters, but organization matters more to key results”)

FIG 6: Work-task Planning (Source: Dave Ulrich)

DATA DRIVEN CULTURE

TOM DAVENPORT & NITIN MATAL - How CEOs Can Lead a Data-Driven Culture | NIGEL GUENOLE & SHERI FEINZIG - Data-Driven Cultures Start at the Top

To understand why data culture needs to start at the very top of the organisation, and how to make that happen read these two excellent articles together. First, Tom Davenport and Nitin Matal outline three types of change programs that can manoeuvre a passive or reluctant CEO in the right direction. Then Nigel Guenole and Sheri Feinzig espouse the twin need to equip executives with strong analytics capabilities whilst developing routines that enable analytical thinking to flow through the organisation.

Data culture depends in large part on the orientation of senior leaders, and especially the CEO

ROB GRAY – Meet HR’s real IT crowd

An interesting article that looks at the infusion of analytical and technical skills in HR thanks to the growth of people analytics with analysis from Ed Houghton from the CIPD and Igor Meneze. The article also profiles the varying backgrounds of a series of people analytics leaders including Patrick Coolen, Keith McNulty, Steve Scott, Felix Schmirler, Angela Ignam, Stephen Miller and Jose Alatrista.

People analytics is part of the strategic planning and can support an organisation’s business strategies with better and faster workforce decisions based on data

PODCAST OF THE MONTH

GARETH JONES & MATT ALDER – Data, Diversity & Inclusive Hiring | ADAM GRANT – Reinventing the Job Interview | PETER HINSSEN & DAVID GREEN - What is the Role of HR in Driving and Enabling Innovation?

Three podcasts for your aural pleasure. First, it’s always good to hear Gareth Jones’ perspective and his discussion with Matt Alder on using data science to improve inclusiveness in recruiting does not disappoint. Next, Adam Grant examines how to fix the job interview in another episode from the superb third series of WorkLife – read Adam's accompanying New York Times article Job Interviews Are Broken. There’s a Way to Fix Them too. Finally, in what was one of my personal favourite episodes of the Digital HR Leaders Podcast yet, Peter Hinssen talks to me about ‘phoenix’ organisations – those able to rethink themselves in cycles time and again – and HR’s role in innovation.

HR has a great opportunity in the next 10 years to do a very similar thing that marketing has done - to understand, leverage and then be able to scale and be seen as a leader on how to reinvent organisations

RESEARCH REPORT OF THE MONTH

ROB CROSS, MICHAEL ARENA, DEB ZEHNER & GREG PRYOR - Maintaining Connections in an Age Of Social Distancing

Continuing the theme of Network Analytics that has featured in many of this month’s selections comes this helpful guide by the Connected Commons team on how to maintain those all important relationships during the era of social distancing. Four areas are covered: maintaining energy in a virtual team, managing wellbeing in uncertain times, managing bridge connections in a virtual environment and how to accelerate remote onboarding for new team members.

Perhaps more than ever, the way we are connected is essential to determining our productivity, creativity and individual well-being

TRAINING COURSE OF THE MONTH | VIDEO OF THE MONTH

ANDREW MARRITT – Applying Text Analytics to HR Data

A second entry this month for Andrew Marritt, whose course on how to apply text analytics to your HR data was released via the myHRfuture Academy in the last few weeks. Andrew has been my go-to expert on this topic for some time now. As a taster of the course, check out the excerpt below where Andrew provides an overview of sentiment analysis and emotion detection and how both techniques can be used for employee survey analysis.

FROM MY DESK

HR Examiner Executive Conversations (David Green / John Sumser)

In a bit of a role-reversal from my usual role as host of the Digital HR Leaders Podcast, I sat in the hot seat in a recent episode of the HR Examiner Executive Conversations as John Sumser fired the questions as we talked people analytics, HR Tech and the impact of Covid-19 on our space.

The Rise of the East: The Current State and Future of People Analytics in Asia

In the latest of my series of articles with Arun Sundar, we look at the state of people analytics in Asia in 2020, the early impact of Covid-19 and what lies ahead in the coming decade.

ASK ME ANY QUESTION

To celebrate two milestones with the Digital HR Leaders Podcast – 100,000 listens and our first birthday, Ian Bailie, the show’s producer, has persuaded me (under some duress, I might add) to record a special episode of the Podcast where I’ll be in the hot seat answering questions from listeners. If you’d like to Ask Me Anything, please use the comments section below or send me a direct message on LinkedIn. I'm not quite sure, what I've let myself in for, so please be gentle!

CATCH UP ON THE DIGITAL HR LEADERS PODCAST

If you haven't listened to all of the episodes of the Digital HR Leaders Podcast, you can catch up now by clicking on the links below.

• BONUS EPISODE: Amit Mohindra & Dawn Klinghoffer - What is the future of People Analytics?
• EP 35: Peter Hinssen - What is the role of HR in driving and enabling innovation?
• EP 34: Bruce Daisley - What do business leaders want from HR?
• EP 33: Dirk Jonker - Why People Analytics needs to behave like a start-up
• EP 32: Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic - The role of storytelling in People Analytics and Data Visualisation
• EP 31: Piyush Mathur - How Johnson & Johnson uses People Analytics to drive business outcomes
• BONUS EPISODE - Heather Whiteman, RJ Milnor & Ian Bailie (Live at PAFOW) - How to develop the HR skills of the future
• EP 30: Katy Gray - How Arup uses reward data to drive behavioural change
• EP 29: Uri Ort - What is the future of talent assessment?
• EP 28: Zara Nanu - The role of People Analytics in Gender Pay Analysis
• EP 27: Julia Shaw - How can technology reduce bias in the workplace
• EP 26: Stela Lupushor - How HR can be a Catalyst for Change
• BONUS EPISODE: Volker Jacobs - How to scale Employee Experience
• EP 25: Julie Digby - How HR Drives Transformation and Org Design at Mars
• EP 24: RJ Milnor - How McKesson uses ONA to identify what drives high performance in sales
• EP 23: Rupert Morrison - Rethinking Workforce Planning & Organisation Design
• EP 22: Dawn Klinghoffer - The Evolution of People Analytics at Microsoft
• EP 21: John Boudreau - Reinventing Jobs: The Future of Work and it's impact on HR
• EP 20: Tanuj Kapilashrami - How Standard Chartered designed an exceptional Employee Experience
• EP 19: Anna Tavis: What is Agile HR and how are companies adopting it?
• EP 18: Sarah Johnson: How to use employee surveys to create strategic value
• EP 17: Leena Nair - How HR drives business value at Unilever
• EP 16: Keith McNulty - HR 3.0: more data driven, more agile and more business focused
• EP 15: Jason Corsello - The Shift From HR Tech to Work Tech
• EP 14: Jill Larsen - How does the CHRO successfully partner with the CEO
• EP 13: Frida Polli - How AI and Behavioural Science can reduce bias in recruiting
• EP 12: Ian O'Keefe - The Workforce Analytics journey at JP Morgan Chase
• EP 11: Dave Ulrich - The role of HR in the Digital Age
• EP 10: Jordan Pettman - How Nestlé uses People Analytics to measure Gender Pay Gap and Equity
• EP 9: Catalina Schveninger - The Evolution of Corporate Learning at Vodafone
• EP 8: Richard Collins - How is Automation, AI and Analytics changing recruiting?
• EP 7: Katarina Berg - Spotify's CHRO on Leading HR in a digital world
• EP 6: Nick Holley - How HR can become more business relevant 
• EP 5: Eden Britt - How to build a People Analytics team in a global organisation | The People Analytics journey at HSBC 
• EP 4: Yvette Cameron - How Blockchain will disrupt the Future of Work and HR Technology 
• EP 3: Didier Elzinga - How to Create a Culture First Company 
• EP 2: Edward Houghton - The Head of Research at the CIPD on Driving Business Performance with People Data 
• EP 1: Sharon Doherty - How to transform HR to be more digital and building a culture of diversity

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David is a globally respected writer, speaker, conference chair, and executive consultant on people analytics, data-driven HR and the future of work. As an Executive Director at Insight222, he helps global organisations create more cultural and economic value through the wise and ethical use of people data and analytics. Prior to joining Insight222 and taking up a board advisor role at TrustSphere, David was the Global Director of People Analytics Solutions at IBM Watson Talent. As such, David has extensive experience in helping organisations embark upon and accelerate their people analytics journeys. David also hosts the Digital HR Leaders Podcast on myHRfuture.