We're changing my job title at the ADP Research Institute. Here's why.

You may have noticed that I changed my job title from market intelligence director to director of people analytics research. I’m still at the ADP Research Institute, still doing labor-market research, but now with a new label. Here’s why we changed my job title.

Reason 1: People analytics is having a moment

In the words of Emilio J. Castilla, professor of management at the MIT Sloan School, people analytics is “a data-driven approach to improving people-related decisions for the purpose of advancing the success of not only the organization but also of individual employees.”

This two-sided approach to human-capital research took off earlier this century. According to LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends 2020 report, 94 percent of talent professionals say employee experience is becoming more important to the future of recruiting. It’s not surprising that 85 percent of those professionals think people analytics – with its dual focus on employer and employee – is becoming more important, too. Google Trends shows that interest in the search term “people analytics” rose 48 percent from 2012 to 2022.

Interest in search term "people analytics" over time. Data source: Google Trends (https://www.google.com/trends)

As companies hire more people analysts and build people-analytics infrastructure, so should groups that study the broader labor market.?

Typical labor-market research cites hiring rates, separation rates, and labor-force headcounts. These metrics are important, but the ADP Research Institute plans to dive deeper to understand how the decisions and feelings of workers influence labor-market dynamics.?

To do this, we’ll dig into the same data from human capital management systems that people analysts use, but on a larger scale, examining detailed information on individual-level wages, employment history, and feelings about work. Eventually, we’ll delve into job-posting histories and application-tracking logs to tease apart the hiring process.

Situated at ADP, which has payroll data on 20 percent of the U.S. workforce, the ADP Research Institute’s labor-market research team is well-positioned to take on this challenge. We collaborate with the Institute’s people and performance research team to design large-scale surveys of worker sentiment, then?connect those survey results to labor-market metrics derived from data about ADP clients and the people who work for them.

A cornerstone of this approach is a people analyst from the trenches, someone who has dug deeply into a company’s HR data to advance the success of both employer and employee. That’s where I come in.

Reason 2: People analytics is my passion and expertise

To effectively study the labor market using data from human capital management systems, you need someone who has deep experience with the way it’s collected and analyzed.

Before joining the ADP Research Institute, I worked for the people experience and technology (PXT) organization at Amazon for two years. I advised organizational leadership and people analysts about how best to analyze employee recruiting and retention performance. I interviewed and surveyed front-line associates to understand how feelings about work at Amazon relate to career trajectories within the company.?

Before PXT, I built a system to predict the engagement of delivery drivers in the Amazon Flex program so we could target the right drivers at the right time with the right content about the value of Flex work.

Before Amazon, I worked at A Place for Mom, the largest senior-living referral service in the U.S. There, I designed a survey of the company’s senior-living advisors to inform the design of a system that prioritizes referral leads.

Before A Place for Mom, I worked for two years at Redfin on pioneering research into how an agent’s previous experience in real estate predicts their voluntary attrition risk, customer service scores, and monthly deal-closing at the tech-powered brokerage.

A running theme fueling all this people-analytics research is my inter-disciplinary training as an anthropologist and demographer, which gave me expertise in both qualitative and quantitative research methods: in-depth interviews, survey design, statistical analysis, and demographic methods. My training also dosed me with a healthy skepticism about the claims that people sometimes make with data.

And that brings me to the third reason we’re calling me the director of people analytics research.

Reason 3: People analytics needs oversight

Those who follow me on LinkedIn are aware of my skepticism of certain practices in machine learning, data science, and people analytics. Just check out my LinkedIn posts and articles for some examples. Criticism of faulty analysis is my schtick, I guess.

But when faulty analysis informs decisions that affect the lives of hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of workers, it’s right to be critical. It’s smart to be skeptical. That’s why the title director of people analytics research is about more than how I’ll use people-analytics methods to study the labor market. It’s also about how I’ll do research on the practice of people analytics itself.

I’ll draw on my expertise in applied social science, statistics, causal inference, and machine learning to evaluate common people-analytics practices. Where an opportunity to use a new method presents itself, I’ll assess its benefits and drawbacks. Where the field’s methodology errs, I’ll suggest workable alternatives. Where the field succeeds, I’ll encourage those practices and explain how to use them.

I’m stoked about my new job title, and here’s why

It’s simple, really. The title director of people analytics research describes my dream job. Much thanks to my boss, ADP Chief Economist Nela Richardson, for the opportunity to live that dream.