How do you transform HRBPs into “consumers of analytics”?
Recently we, the Human Capital Analytics (HCA) Group at Copenhagen Business School, held our first HCA Hackathon on the topic of how to engage Human Resource Business Partners (HRPBs) into human capital analytics projects. The event was a great success and our participants were able to come up with very interesting solutions. Read more about the case and the proposed solutions below.
What challenge were we dealing with?
The case challenge dealt with a mid-size company that has a HRBP structure and a HR analytics team consisting of one senior analyst, two analysts and one student assistant. They cover various different topics from employer branding over leadership development to diversity and inclusion but, as a result, sometimes cannot tell the difference between the HR analytics topics.
Through the analysis of the “HCA Profile” tool, we were able to identify that throughout the time we have accompanied them, they have improved greatly on their data quality and analytical competencies. However, at the same time, they lost focus in their strategic ability to act.
One of the problems they are currently facing is their long history of operational reporting. They are receiving a multitude of low value-added requests and now ask themselves whether they should be choosier in their services and move away from a service center to a consultative partnership. Moreover, there is a general low capability of frontline HR to digest true analytics. Finally, they want to figure out how to make HR analytics a driver of value creation in HR. Since advanced analytics still requires the “proof of value” to be recognized, they want to link analytics to the whole HR value chain analytics.
The participants of the HCA Hackathon were asked to analyze the case challenge and come up with solutions to the various issues addressed.
Among the various solutions created by the participants of the HCA Hackathon the following were stressed:
1. Strategic Value Creation
In order to make HR analytics a driver of value creation in HR, it is important to align HR KPIs with the overall business strategy of an organization to set a direction and ensure projects contribute to value creation. In this way, HRBPs are more likely to recognize the importance of HR analytics. It is highly recommended to quantify the changes and impacts HR analytics have on an organization to document its importance and to be able to justify the need for it. Incorporating HR analytics into annual business reviews and organizational audit reports further ensures the alignment with the overall strategy.
2. The HR Analytics Function
The HR analytics function has to be attentive to both its work content as well as its structure. First, the function has to deal with its operational reporting. It has to pay more attention to strategic rather than non-strategic reporting and thus prioritize projects and requests. Moving forward and doing more advanced analytics requires cutting down operational reporting. A way of doing this could, for example, be by outsourcing some of these more operational requests or by moving to self-service reporting through HRBPs and directors. Additionally, the function needs to align and standardize the format of flow of its HR insights, to facilitate the information transfer to HRBPs.
Second, to be able to move away from just being a service center, the HR analytics function has to be reorganized within the organization and start reporting directly to the CHRO. Moreover, to tackle the issue of low capabilities within the function, a continuous internal evaluation can help to identify the own capacities and its limits. One interesting way of extending a function’s capabilities is to engage more actively with industrial PhDs, student assistants and interns who can bring up-to-date academic knowledge into the HR analytics team by rotating them through the team.
3. Reaching Out
Although the answer to the question of how to transform HRBPs into ‘consumers of analytics’ lies to a great extent within the HR analytics function, its external environment should not be left unnoticed. First of all, it is of upmost importance to create more internal communication to other HR functions in order to make analytics more visible and a driver of value creation in HR. Moreover, if the goal is to engage HRBPs more extensively in HR analytics and make HR analytics a more important issue for the entire organization, good relationships and even partnerships with HRBPs and the overall business management are crucial. At the same time, the capability to digest true analytics at times extends to HRBPs. In this case, the capabilities of HRBPs must be assessed and educated if needed. They can only become ‘consumers of analytics’ if they are able to understand the topic in its thoroughness.
A final comment
Two final critical comments should be made with respect to the solutions listed above. First, we have been talking a lot about prioritizing projects and at the same time building partnerships and engaging HRBPs. A critical issue that should be kept in mind, however, is how to cut down on ‘low’ value requests when they are considered valuable and must-have by HRBPs without alienating them?
Second, while the overall aim was to transform HRBPs into the ‘consumers of analytics’, we might have to revise the role we generally tend to ascribe to HRBPs in the first place. We often tend to see them as “superheroes” that are expected to know everything and if they don’t, their skills need to be upscaled or they need to get out. However, can we really expect them to know all this? Do we even have to educate them at all? And finally, do they actually need to be those superheroes or should it be more the job of HR analytics to properly translate results?
These critical comments are intended to question the recommendations made above and to assess which are applicable to your own organization. After all, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to HR analytics.
We would like to hear your own experience on this topic and look forward to reading them!
If you want to learn more about how to work with HRBPs and improve your HCA function contact us at [email protected].
All information regarding the HCA Hackathon 2017 and other events can be found on www.cbs.dk/hc-analytics.
Compensation at ANZ Bank
7 年thanks Abhilash Bodanapu :)
Global Head of People Analytics Solutions@Capgemini
7 年Sankalp Nanda In my humble opinion, while Attrition looks to be the most usually applied area but often not its only a metric and a consequence of your action in the specific stages of life cycle of an employee, if your question is specific to the sphere of HRBP, then here are things you can give a thought about - 1) L&D -> Identify the top impactful programs centred around Emp performance, ROI or Feedback,etc., Remove unnecessary programs, make effective budgets and focus on only identified sensible programs for business and individual. 2) C&B -> study the historical patterns and derive correlations to understand what combination of parameters works better for whom and which businesses and make a model out of it.Apart from the typical parameters like performance and compa ratio, think about considering Total experience, Last promotion dates, Productivity metrics, etc. This could bring in a lot of effectiveness to the usage your budget. Likewise think about the dependent variables in Emp Promotion criteria, Engagement levels, Diversity (Contextual though),etc., Pick a question, start small and build applicable models around it !
Compensation at ANZ Bank
7 年Hi, I am currently working as a hrbp in one of IT organizations. My question is can you please identify areas where analytics can be used by us for better performance. Attrition is perhaps the only area where we work on some kind of analytics. But what are other areas where analytics can be used and what are major parameters of analysis for the same.
HR Project Manager at Telia
8 年Thanks for opening a new viewpoint to the people analytics discussion! I agree with Dave Fineman. HRBPs should not only be engaged but we should co-operate with them closely and provide analysis that will help them and the managers making better decisions. The engagement will come along with the results. However, what is the challenge to get started, is to be able to recognize those business pain points where we can be for help in a new ways and start gaining this trust and engagement.
Interesting read, especially on the challenge of substituting value-added, business-aligned projects for the low-value work that tends to clutter the agenda.