WHY PEOPLE ANALYTICS?

"There are only three measurements that tell you nearly everything you need to know about your organization's overall performance: Employee Engagement, Customer Satisfaction, and Cash Flow. It goes without saying that no company, small or large, can win over the long run without energized employees who believe in the mission and understand how to achieve it" - Jack Welch

In the early stages of my career, I successfully managed all facets of the Customer Life Cycle. During my tenure focusing on customer retention, we diligently gathered extensive data to comprehensively understand customer behavior, informing every decision with a strong emphasis on data-driven insights. However, what truly intrigued me was the parallel between the customer life cycle and the employee life cycle, yet the significant disparity in our understanding of our workforce. Employees invest nearly 100,000 hours of their lives at work, and it is imperative that every organization “make work more meaningful and fulfilling”.

Two out of the three measurements mentioned above by Jack Welch — Customer Satisfaction and Cash Flow—are closely monitored, reported on, tracked, and managed by virtually every business. Organization obviously needs cash to survive and without customers there will be no cash flow. In contrast, although many organizations measure Employee Engagement, they often struggle to effectively align it with specific business objectives. The question is:

Why do we need to measure and analyze People data? What has changed?

EX (Employee Experience) has emerged as a direct response to CX (Customer Experience), they share some parallels. So if we examine the history of CX, in olden days customers had limited options for the businesses they’d patronize, so they’d visit a brick-and-mortar shop, make a purchase, and move on with their lives. Businesses too knew their customers, what they like and don’t like, their lifestyle, they could easily segment their market and provide product and services accordingly. Rapid globalization and the Information Age led to a significant role reversal for businesses and consumers, fundamentally altering the dynamics of supply and demand. Nowadays, consumers have the power of online shopping, choose from any product not just locally but globally, engage in conversations with other customers, and openly share their experiences, whether positive or negative.

CX has transitioned from a transactional model, where emphasis was primarily on delivering products or services efficiently, to a more holistic approach around customer satisfaction and loyalty. Early on, CX was primarily viewed as a post-purchase interaction, focusing on resolving complaints and ensuring basic service standards. However, the evolution of CX has shifted towards a customer-centric model, emphasizing personalized experiences, proactive engagement, and building emotional connections with customers.?

Modern CX is characterized by seamless omnichannel engagement, data-driven personalization, and the integration of advanced technologies to deliver exceptional experiences throughout the customer journey.?

If we look at Employee Experience with the same lens we will notice that before we felt the impact of globalization on steroids and digital revolution, candidates had limited job opportunities and employees would usually stick with an organization for a longer tenure. Teams were local and smaller, it was easier for managers to know every team member personally, they knew their background, experience, career aspirations, where they lived, knew about every major event in their life and no one ever felt the need for any people analytics.?

Organizations today are much larger with global presence, it would be impossible for the owners, senior management to know their employees. Digital revolution means? employees today have varied global opportunities to choose from, they are looking for opportunities where they feel supported, valued, empowered and motivated to contribute their best. Websites such as Glassdoor, LinkedIn help candidates learn more about the organization they plan to join and engage in conversations with current and past employees.?

Today, EX has evolved from the traditional HR perspective focused on providing competitive salaries and benefits to attract and retain talent to a more strategic approach aimed at creating an inclusive and supporting environment, positive workplace culture and enhancing employee well-being. This evolution has been driven by the realization that engaged employees are more productive, innovative, and likely to stay with the organization long-term, aligning EX with broader business objectives.

Why is it so hard to capture and analyze People Data?

If we again look at CX, decision making currency for anything CX is "DATA". Ask any marketing, sales or brand person, how do they decide on which product to develop and launch or what is their target market? or Who is their customer? their answer will be by analyzing data. They have reached a level of hyper-personalization and CX is seeing the benefits of it by way of increased conversion rates, improved support metrics and improved customer loyalty and Lifetime Value. There is hard tangible data, improved customer experience means increase in Sales and CLTV which in turn means increase in Revenue and finally profit.

When it comes to People Data things are not that straightforward, it has to rely on Soft Measures such as employee engagement, employee satisfaction or Manager ratings, how can one align these soft measures to broader Business Objectives??

How many of you or your organizations have implemented a “People Analytics Project” only to lose steam after a couple of months when you experience disappointing results. Majority of the organizations have managed to move in the right direction by generating basic HR dashboards covering employee headcount by demographics, turnover, absenteeism, health and safety, remuneration banding, training, promotions, transfers, Secondments, leave liability ,gender pay gap and if lucky some employee survey or pulse survey data. No doubt it's a good start, but the issue is? the majority of them are lag measures and by themselves it's hard to? link any of them to business objectives. What we often label as "analytics" amounts to basic reporting with limited lasting impact. Majority of organizations struggle to consistently integrate data analytics into day-to-day HR processes and harness analytics' predictive potential to drive better decision-making. While the majority of people analytics teams are still in the early stages, striving for greatness in this field involves a transformative shift beyond basic reporting.?

Way Forward:

My objective is to explore organizations that have effectively leveraged People Data to optimize their talent management strategies, enhance employee experiences, drive organizational performance, and ensure compliance with regulations—all crucial elements for achieving strategic business objectives and cultivating a positive, productive workplace. To achieve this, I intend to research and connect with professionals who have successfully implemented People Analytics projects. Additionally, I aim to gain practical experience by delving into predictive analytics myself.

Some of the questions for which I am seeking answers to:

• What have successful organizations done differently?
• What is the role of research in People Analytics?
• Is People Analytics just Research or there are tangible benefits??
• Does one size fit all? Can Organizations copy from more successful peers?
• Does the size of the organization matter? Can smaller Organizations benefit from People Analytics?
• Along with quality, does the quantity of data required matter?
• How important is technology??
• Does implementing HR technology such as Workday, Successfactor or Oracle automatically give organizations the ability to carry Predictive Analytics???
• What are the capabilities / Skills required?
• How can People Analytics go big quickly?
• What are some of the unique data points captured by organizations?
• Is employee survey answer to all People issues?
• Examples of People Analytics driving Business Outcomes