People Analytics for HR: Supporting HR Adoption of People Analytics

“I worked for an organization that deployed a costly people analytics platform intending to democratize data to HR practitioners and data leaders. Non-technical users didn't understand the point of the platform - adoption at its height was less than 10% of HRBPs and most business leaders ignored the tool and continued to request traditional decks with business unit specific data. The lack of understanding of the purpose for people data and the failure to adequately integrate the tool into the flow of work for end users was a big factor in what ultimately led to the failure of the solution's adoption.” – Adam Treitler

The above example that Adam shared is one that no People Analytics team wants to see happen at their organization. A lot of hard work and money goes into building and implementing People Analytics solutions, all with the goal of having high user adoption and value creation for the organization. Unfortunately, there are many organizations that still follow a “build it and they will come” approach, where the goal is to build awareness by showing HR and business leaders what’s possible with HR data. However, the risk with this approach is that you don’t involve the end user on the journey, and you don’t ensure you’re building the solution in a way that they will be able to consume it and act on the insights. This is both in terms of relevance (is it useful?) and understanding (do they know how to use it?). Another unfortunate reality is that when there is low adoption, it is often blamed on the lack of data literacy of HR professionals, or their lack of interest in data.

“The act of buying (consumption), implementing (buy-in), and acting (action) is where People Analytics goes from a nice to have to a must have for the company. This is how ROI is generated for People Analytics. However, many People Analytics investments today are only happening on the sell-side (pushing out information).” – Richard Rosenow (1)

While it’s true that there is still work to be done in terms of upskilling HR to work with data, from my experience working with HR professionals I have seen that many want access to more HR data to inform decisions and recommendations. This is either because they understand the benefits or because their business leaders are asking for it. The challenge is that they don’t have the time (or sometimes the skills) to analyze HR data on top of their day job. This is why I think it’s time to stop blaming HR professionals when a People Analytics solution has low adoption rates. And this is why I sought to understand what I can do as a People Analytics professional to support the adoption of HR data and analytics by HR professionals, regardless of their level of data literacy.

“Make it easy so people don’t have to learn it” – Isabel Naidoo, Chief People Officer at Wise

The above quote from Isabel is from the 2024 People Analytics World conference in London, and it captures exactly what I sought to tackle as I reached out to my network to hear from them about what works and what doesn’t. I read articles, blogs, and posts, including content from outside the People Analytics space. I captured and synthesized my notes to come up with some key takeaways to apply to my work, which I am now sharing with you.

Include practitioners in the design process

“Whether it's crafting a simple report, designing a slick dashboard, preparing a compelling slide deck, or implementing predictive models, everything [People Analytics professionals] produce is a product that meets the needs of their stakeholders.” (2) And for this reason, including HR, business leaders, and anyone else you want to use your tool regularly in the design process is key for designing solutions that are successful. Moreover, think beyond the COE or program manager designing the processes/programs. Their input is important, but they are not the only ones that will be using it.

Including all of your stakeholders can mean developing user stories (3) or personas (4), but ideally it involves collaborating and co-designing the solution. Following a human-centered design (5) approach takes it a step further by interviewing your stakeholders or observing them in their processes with the goal of understanding the problem you’re trying to solve or the process you’re trying to support with data, including their pain points. But avoid asking them what kind of data they need. Instead, ask them to talk you through their process. What kinds of questions are they asked? What information do they wish they had to inform better decisions??

“When you incorporate or include the user in the development, you get a better product and higher adoption. When you don’t, you end up doing a lot of rework.” – David Meza

Bring the solution to people in their environment where possible

As you design your solution, focus on the people and their processes, rather than the technology or solution. In doing so, your goal should be to increase the proximity between the solution (data, insights, etc.) and the process by making the solution visible and easily accessible, or by building it into the process when feasible. Doing so not only increases general adoption, but it gets people the information they need when they need it, contributing to better decision making.

“Accurately timing your people analytics delivery aimed at the right stakeholders will accelerate decision-making. In other words, people analytics can enhance decision quality and efficiency by integrating outcomes with business processes and technology.” – Patrick Coolen (6)

Consider the consumption process and how long it takes to plan and act on insights

As you develop and launch People Analytics solutions that get pushed out to HR and business leaders (e.g. survey data, key metric updates, etc.), it’s important to consider how long it takes for HR and/or the business to consume the data, process what the data means, plan and strategize to address the insights/learnings, and ultimately take action. This all takes time and varies depending on the organization. Consider the culture and pace of your company (i.e. agile or slow moving) and use this to inform how often you provide your stakeholders with new data. Lastly, consider how long it will take for actions taken to impact the data, allowing you and your stakeholders to properly measure the results of their efforts.

“It’s impressive if you can analyze and push out a lot of data quickly, but you don’t want to bombard your stakeholders with data, or they will start to check out.” – Greg Newman

Observe people as they consume your solutions to collect feedback and iterate over time

When you launch a new solution, it is just the beginning. Your goal should be to iterate over time to make the solution better. And watching people interact with your solution is a great way to gain insights on how it can be improved. Stephen Smith from Crunchr , a People Analytics platform, shared how they hosted an event with a customer where they brought together the HR professionals who use the tool to see how they’re using it. They saw people using the tool in ways that they didn’t expect, which inspired ideas on new features that they’ve started building into the platform. The customer also got ideas on ways to support HR adoption at their organization by better understanding what kind of information they were looking for.

Include HRBPs – don’t go around them!

Strategic HRBPs are the eyes and ears of the business areas they support and are trusted by their leaders. They know what the challenges are, and they own the HR strategy and processes. While there may be projects and use cases where the People Analytics team can benefit from working directly with the business, it’s best to include HRBPs when it comes to solutions designed for regular consumption, intended to support decision making for key HR processes. Going around HR because they’re “not data literate” is a missed opportunity. Instead, aim for well-designed solutions that bring HR professionals on the journey. One People Analytics leader I spoke with mentioned that they worked very closely with their HRBP team when implementing Visier . There was constant and ongoing feedback to inform how it was being set up, and HR has since shared that they now feel empowered to use HR data in their work. Ultimately, this should be the end goal.?

I have so many more notes, but this sums up the main takeaways. And with that, I’ll end with this quote to hopefully inspire you to bring HR on your People Analytics journey.

“You have to make the data inviting and compelling to get people to use it. Help them to feel comfortable with the solution so they can use it effectively.” ?– Amit Mohindra

I want to thank the below people who gifted me their time to discuss this topic and share what they've learned in their career. This article is a compilation of their insights and my reflections. ( Adam Treitler , David Meza , Rekha Gurnani Chowdhury , Greg Newman , Stephen Smith , Amogh Rao )

Note: The scope of my discussions and the above learnings is related to People Analytics solutions such as reports, dashboards, and other products that are rolled out at scale, intended for regular consumption. Special projects to address specific business questions and hypotheses are different in nature, though some of this still applies.

(1) Buy-Side People Analytics , Richard Rosenow

(2) Making People Analytics Agile , Willis Jensen

(3) User stories with examples and a template , Atlassian

(4) Persona , ProductPlan

(5) What is Human-Centered Design? , Harvard Business School Online

(6) Establishing people analytics as a common practice , Patrick Coolen