Breakfast bites: Simple steps to make tech effective

Good morning

Data-driven culture allows us to make decisions based on analytics rather than gut decisions but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a heavy human element to bring this insight to life.

Step one:

What’s your objective?

As a business grows, the climate changes and tech trends develop, it’s possible to end up with a patchwork of systems that don’t make sense, To bring things together ask:

• Who are we?
• Where are we going?
• What do we have?
• What do we need?

If there’s a gap between your aims, objectives and ambitions and what you’re doing or the course you’re on, then it’s time to take a serious review and strip things back to basics.

Step two:

What do you need data for?

There are different types of people analytics

• Descriptive analytics to articulate a trend like time lost to absenteeism in the previous quarter.
• Descriptive analytics using multidimensional data allows you to combine and compare data to explore a particular idea. Like mapping the relationship between engagement scores and leadership capabilities for example, to see what works well and what doesn’t.
• Predictive analytics takes on the question of what you’ll need to perform well in the future. It plots your workforce data against wider talent market trends.
• Prescriptive analytics brings descriptive and predictive analytics together to automatically recommend actions. So an online learning platform might recommend courses for someone based on their goals, previous learning and what they love to do.

Quality data, reliably obtained with rigorous integrity is a valuable asset but you won’t make the most of it unless you have a strong analytics strategy aligned with your business goals.

Step three:

Make sure you have the human skills in place to bring this strategy to life.

Gartner predicts that HR professionals will need to be:

• Credible activists – who influence through relationships of trust.
• Strategic positioners – understanding business context.
• Paradox navigators – managing the pressures between departments and demands.

What does this look like?

• Making a conscious decision to never lose sight of the importance of human agency and relationships.
• Having data-driven conversations.
• Keeping the long-term in mind.
• Shifting from looking at talent management to the whole organisation.
• Asking ‘what do people want?’ and investigating how tech can make it happen.
• Making sure tech, internal comms and HR are on the same page.
• Getting good enough, not necessarily getting it right the first time and allowing evolution to happen.
• Remembering that we are partners in real-life careers, so data can lead to having a more individualised approach that leads to greater engagement, loyalty and productivity.

The biggest shift today in terms of tech, data, comms and HR is that we need to move from looking at HR as a talent management tool to seeing it as a key player in driving business performance. In gathering insight, analysing what we find, we form this into strategy and then have the right people with the right human skills to make it happen.

Have a great day.