How Analytics Will Change the Way You Manage People

One of my positive habits is that every month I have coffee with a professional I really admire (Thanks for the inspiration Cebreiros!). This time, taking advantage of my lecture at The Developer’s Conference S?o Paulo, I was able to meet one of the HR references in Latin America, Deli Matsuo. Deli is the former Head of HR at Google Latam and CEO of Appus. When I asked him what the skills required to be an outstanding HR professional would be, he taught me a great lesson: “The professionals who will lead the HR change will require a more data-driven and strategic mindset: People Analytics is the future”.

The professionals who will lead the HR change will require a more data-driven and strategic mindset: People Analytics is the future

It wasn't that long ago that two of the world experts on organizational development, Boudreau & Ramstad, explained to us in their book “Beyond HR,” how the way we understand People Management is advancing to an age where decisions must be made based on evidence, based on science - a new age called Talentship.

As my mentor and Chief People Officer professional Santiago Vazquez says, “We can't know what we don’t measure.” Prasad Setty, Vice President of Analytics, Benefits and Compensation at Google says "All people decisions at Google should be based on data and analytics.” Laszlo Bock, named “HR Professional Of The Decade”, goes one step further by saying “Don’t trust your gut: use data to predict and shape the future”.

We are definitely lucky to live in a technological era where the best professionals in the world are only one click away. In Wharton School's highly recommended People Analytics course, we learn from Cade Massey, Martine Hass and Matthew Bidwell how Analytics provides us with better information to make better business decisions.

People Analytics is a data-driven approach to managing people at work. It helps us improve decision-making in People Operations by giving us:

1. A better Hiring Process: One of the hiring process' missions is to find out how good the future performance of the candidate might be. In Analytics it is fundamental to gauge the correct predictors that better fit our organization. For example, at Google, GPA has no value as a performance predictor, while in other companies like Goldman Sachs, it is a reliable one.
2. More effective Performance Evaluation: When we analyze performance there are dozens of topics that can influence positive correlations. The key point is being able to separate skill from luck. Bearing that in mind, we need to be careful how we tend to neglect context when evaluating performance, how reliable individual evaluation typically requires seeing employees with multiple teams, and how performance matches expectations.
3. Improved collaboration within the organization: We are in a Human Age where collaboration and teamwork are required skills. This has a major impact on how we manage people: performance assessment, job design, payment, promotion and retention. To understand which the best collaboration network is for our particular organization, we will need to gather the data. This information will make it easier to build ties strategically, reduce employee overload and enhance team resiliency.

However, in order to achieve all these results we need to be cautious about how we collect and analyze the data. We must pay attention to some important insights:

• The bigger the sample, the better the result
• The more uncertainty in the environment, the less control an employee has over exact outcomes
• Algorithms are not perfect but we are worse

There are some good examples of useful HR data available in work environment surveys. At R Telecommunications, we worked with the Great Place to Work? (GPTW) Institute in Spain and we ranked as one of the 50 best places to work in Europe. Now, at ArcTouch, we have the chance to do the same in Brazil and the U.S. All the data GPTW reports to our organization helps us formulate our strategy and make decisions in critical areas such as: credibility, respect, fairness, camaraderie and pride. It is essential to know that transparency is a key element of fairness and an important way in which top performing organizations differentiate themselves. 

It is crucial to align People Operations with strategic business goals and Analytics is the best way to get us there

In conclusion, HR is slowly being transformed from a tactical role into a more strategic one. It is evolving to fulfil its potential as a source of strategic advantage. In order to make it happen it is crucial to align People Operations with strategic business goals and Analytics is the best way to get us there. Analytics is here to stay. The Talentship era has begun.

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• Recommended books:

Work Rules. Laszlo Bock

Beyond HR. Boudreau & Ramstad

• Recommended multimedia:

Laszlo Bock on Google's Approach to HR

HR meets science at Google with Prasad Setty

• Recommended links:

Wharton People Analytics Conference

People Analytics at Google