Outlining Your HR Data Strategy

Hi again! This will be the first in a Monday Learn Day series that will span Q4 of 2022 and Q1 of 2023. Why? Because we at Nemeon believe there is still much to improve when it comes down to working with HR data. For one, one of the oldest associations of HR professionals (the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development - CIPD) has recently revealed that the latter still take most business decisions based on their "gut feeling." Trusting your gut can turn out well but should definitely not be your only compass. Think about a scenario where different managers have a different "gut feeling." More often than not, you'll need to approach HR issues from a more scientific angle.

When talking about "the scientific method," HR professionals do not seldom ask me: "where do we start?"

For most of my readers, it has been a while since they were taught to think scientifically (if at all) - probably dating back from their time at uni. In either case, it is usually a good thing to "start with the why." In other words: "what would you like to know?" In case you don't know, ask "how are you as an HR professional being evaluated?" Once you put some questions to paper, start in the following order:

• Descriptive questions (they paint the picture "as is.")
• Predictive questions ("if this, then that")
• Prescriptive questions (aimed at deciding which course of action is most suitable in a given situation).

Don't jump the gun and start with the latter category, one first needs to understand the "mechanics." But to understand how the machine operates, one needs to dig into the cogs that make up the machine. In other words: YOU NEED DATA. With your research questions in mind, think about which data could answer them.

For example:

Question: what is the average cost per hire?

Answer: you'd need to gather information about the wages of your recruiters, external agencies you work with, tools you use to track and evaluate applicants, sign-up bonuses you might hand out (list is not exhaustive).

As you may notice, even simple questions may necessitate a combination of different data sources. In many cases, you'd need different systems to gather and store that data (e.g: an HR Information System HRIS; an Applicant Tracking System (ATS), ...). If you do not yet work with these: time to do some homework and read in on how you could set up your HR tech stack.

What you may expect in the next posts: we'll dig deeper on the different HR tech systems and also share our experiences in this domain. Next, we'll also drill down a bit deeper on some of the most common HR analytics you must certainly start tracking if you are not yet doing so. Stay tuned!