My summary of the 4th Australian Annual People Analytics & HR Data Conference.

The 4th annual People Analytics & HR Data Conference took place in Sydney last week.?This was my first time attending and as I had the honor of chairing, I thought I would do my best summarising my experience and key takeaways from the two-day event.?

Having attended similar events in Europe and North America I was very impressed to see such an exciting line up of speakers and topics spanning across data, technology, and analytics. It was very interactive and there was lots of practical examples and advice on how HR Data and People Analytics is being used to improve decision making and drive organisational effectiveness.

For me the highlight had to be the audience (~130 attendees) who were very engaged and diverse, there was a real mix of technical and non-technical, and it was wonderful to see more and more people joining this amazing community outside of HR. There was also good representation from both private and government sectors (even a few regulators) as well as overseas representation which bought a diverse range of views and perspectives.

Before I jump into my summary for Day 1. I would like to extend my thanks to all the speakers, the conference organizers Aventedge with a particular thanks to Laura Matekovic and team for putting on a fantastic event as well as the conference sponsors Visier Inc. and One Model .?

Day 1 Digital illustration Summary by Devon Bunce

Key themes for Day 1 included:

·???????Future of Work and the war for talent

·???????HR Digitalisation and change management

·???????Working with predictive analytics

We kicked of the conference with a great keynote from Rian Thompson on using people data and an evidenced-based approach to make smarter people decisions. It was great to hear how NSW department of Education are using their people data to get targeted personalised insights to inform attraction, retention, and L&D strategies to address challenges in rural schools. I was particularly impressed how they are effectively harnessing data to produce valuable insights around skill gaps within their organisation.?

We then had a panel discussion with Adam McKinnon, PhD. , Stephen Pearce , and Annette Slunjski on strategic leadership for the future of work planning for emerging challenges.?I had the honour of moderating a lively conversation where we discussed ethically managing the collection and use of employee data as people analytics leaders. How to collect and curate data to be both consumable and meaningful for your organisation and c-suite leaders. As well as determining the key skills of leading analytics leaders to embed in your strategic leadership plan.

My key takeaways from the session were that the maturity models are not always linear (i.e., you do not need to do each step simultaneously) its iterative, and you should do both reporting and analytics in parallel. Australia should also take some notes from Germany where they have Work Councils where employees review the ethics and appropriateness of on People Analytics & Data projects. Lastly you should go straight to the business value, answering their key questions/challenges.

We then heard from Visier Inc. Ian Cook who presented on the people analytics imperative – Winning the New Normal. Ian shared how people data and analytics teams can “do more with less” in the era of increasing economic volatility, constant transformation and the shifting balance of power between employer and employee. He unpacked the components of the people analytics operating model that enable delivery of personalised insights, on demand and at scale, as efficiently as possible. Before discussing the importance of reviewing and blending the right toolset, with the right skillset and focussing on the right business problems.

My key takeaway was how we should move away from ‘Sheep Dipping’ (i.e. once size fits all) and leverage the power of data and analytics to create more personalised solutions and experiences. It was also interesting to hear the origin of this well-known phrase.

We then had a presentation from Vincent Chung on lessons learnt from implementing a digital HR system. Vincent discussed how to connect disparate human resource information systems to achieve coherence and effectively transition into a data-driven function. How digitising processes and assets are shifting towards cloud adoption and digital collaboration. Before sharing tips and insights into what worked and what didn’t throughout the journey to installing a more centralised HR Information System (HRIS).

My key takeaways were the importance of understanding the business, IT and HR strategies and selecting the right tool that best aligns to these, identifying the must haves and nice to haves, establishing the foundational data architecture (e.g., organisational hierarchy, job architecture etc.) and ensuring you have the right talent and capability to drive this change.?

We then had another fantastic panel discussion on Leading Data and Analytics change management to create value for organisations by James Aslan , Mike Battye , and Ryan Swindells , moderated by Tim Rogers .

The panel discussed designing a People Analytics operating model to scale the impact of Data and Analytics. Driving adoption through strong human engagement to grow transformation momentum as well as building an organisational data culture by taking a user-centric approach.

My key takeaways were the importance of understanding your key stakeholders, aligning your people analytics strategy to business strategy, and taking a human/user-centric approach to change management.?

We then heard from Joshua Reader who presented a Case Study on how One Model is helping Medibank deliver People Analytics at Scale to HR and People Leaders.

Joshua shared how Medibank operates in a highly regulated industry with unique business and workforce challenges and has leveraged OneModel solution to bring together data from their disparate systems and deliver insights across the organisation.?I was impressed how their small core team were able to deliver an enterprise scale people analytics capability and to hear some practical examples on how they were able to shape people strategy and business outcomes.

My key takeaways were the importance of preserving your data history, which is key to performing analytics (need a minimum of two years), and “less is more” don’t overwhelm your audience, slowly release and phase functionality instead of a big bang approach.

We then had two interactive roundtable discussions.

Ian Cook presented on how to building engagement with executives to drive support to the people analytics team. Key areas of conversation included how to get out of the starting blocks, as well as operating models, team size and where the capability should reside etc.

Jason Teoh, FCPHR ????? presented on deriving insights from data sets to help improve inclusion and belonging with disengaged talent groups. FYI Jason has written an article providing a nice summary of his presentation click on this link here.

We then finished the day with a wonderful interactive mini workshop on Predictive Analytics to Solve Business Problems by Kirsten Edwards .

Kirsten discussed how they have added business value through predictive analytics in the Rio Tino people function by employing data science and machine learning to develop predictive capabilities and generate future insights. She went on to shared how understanding trends across hiring data helped to identify key factors to incorporate within retention strategies. I thought this was a great example of how people analytics is enabling the business to be more pro-active and strategic.

My key take away’s were to take an iterative approach and importance of seeking feedback along the way from the business and HR stakeholders to refine and finetune the model. ?As well as the importance of understanding the limitations of your data models (e.g. did not apply to smaller teams/sample sizes).?

Overall, a fantastic first Day. My biggest takeaway was to avoid a one-size fits all approaches (no magic pill), instead leverage data to get targeted and personalised and don't just focus on the averages, it is important to look at the outliers. The people data and analytics journey is not linear you need to experiment, test, seek feedback and iterate along the way - this is where change management, senior leadership buy-in and ethical considerations are key. But above all, go straight to answering the business questions to ensure People Analytics and HR Data is aligned to improve decision making and drive organizational effectiveness which will hopefully open the door for further investment and opportunities.

Day 2 summary coming shortly....