The Fundamentals of Business Analytics and The Connection With People and HR Data
This panel was part of the Hacking HR event: The People Analytics Global Summit
Ever wonder why business analytics is so important in HR?
Business analytics is deemed as pivotal in the workforce because it is one of the underlying factors that could help an organization analyze and scrutinize their past business performance. That said, the acquisition of that information will be advantageous in order to prepare for the future.
Business analytics encompasses the analysis of data with an intention of establishing predictive models, including the employment of optimization mechanisms, and dissemination the results to the employees and customers. It leverages a data-driven approach to the business realm, particularly placing reliance on statistics and data modeling to generate insights for the business.
In today’s rapidly changing environment, it is undeniable that every organization is seeking for means and ways of coming up with much more efficient and effective decisions that would put their businesses to success. And with the help of business analytics, this could be done.
Having said that, our first panel under the The People Analytics Global Summit falls under the importance of business analytics and its linkage with people and HR data. We have invited esteemed individuals from different backgrounds that will ensure a fruitful and insightful discussion. For this panel, we have been joined by: Kiran Menon, CEO and Co-Founder of Tydy; April Hepburn, Director of HR of Transcendent; Taylor Bradley, Global Head of HR Business Partners of Turing.com; and Brie O’Malley, Senior Director, Talent Acquisition of City Year.
Kicking off the conversation, we asked the speakers to briefly introduce themselves which was followed by sharing some of the key data insights that they think one should be giving emphasis on. Taylor and Brie were specifically the ones being asked; hence, Taylor started to open the discussion. According to him, most of the successful organizations he knows are the ones that clearly adapt to the challenges that the business is facing. Afterwhich, they surgically apply the HR expertise to help navigate and provide solutions to those issues. However, he added that every organization has different issues they have to address so it still depends on the situation. Nonetheless, he also stated organizations must also focus on how smooth and well the onboarding process is and think of the information that you can bring to the table to tell a better story. Apparently, storytelling becomes compelling and reliable when it is backed by data and other organizations. Figure out what the business is trying to achieve and what data points are relevant to telling and helping navigate that story.
Following this, Brie added that it is also important to take a look at our sources. Instead of casting a really wide net, it is much better to delve deeper into the places that we find our strongest sources are. Look at the places that give us the best candidates. In addition to that, it is also important to be less transactional and more relational. Learn how to become better coaches and source for new talents at our different sites. Be very smart and tactical. Use our data to outlook talent in a different way.
In connection to that, another question has been opened wherein the speakers were asked what they do about quality candidates. According to Brie, speaking from her experience, they really pushed the envelope in terms of contributors that are cultural contributors. They carefully chose people who are not only producing, but contributing to help us grow. On one hand, April mentioned that it is mainly around the employee experience and we take that into our talent acquisition process. Also speaking from personal experience, the thing they first look into before hiring someone in the team is the attributes they carry. People can be easily taught how to perform; thus, it is important that the attributes they embody are aligned with the organization’s culture. Furthermore, she also shared the metrics that they are doing which is the indoctrination process wherein it focuses on how long it takes for an employee to be adoptionated into the culture of an organization.
Moving to another area of discussion, we also asked the speakers this specific question: What are some of the key insights and data tracks that you are looking at and how are you converting that into actionable insights?
Kiran spearheaded the discussion and mentioned that it is important to stick with the onboarding world. He also emphasized that onboarding is not an HR problem. Rather, it is being dealt by multiple teams coming together to make sure the person they are hiring is successful. That said, it is also important for employers to live in an employee-first culture and try to view the world from their perspective. Likewise, everyone's got multiple options coming into an organization that bring in other types of data in for your analysis. It’s not just HR data. You have to bring in other data across the entire organization to really understand and that actually makes the organization a lot more responsive. Ergo, data analytics really throws out the visibility that it is not an HR problem anymore.
As we are concluding the discussion, the speakers shared some of the other business metrics that they find to be really salient.
Taylor stated that one of the ways we can leverage turnover data to help provide continuity for the business is through opening evergreen roles as we hire more people. He also said that no matter what you do, there’s going to be a natural course attrition throughout the year. That said, you have to control your cost as a business. On the other hand, Brie gave emphasis on the importance of pay transparency. As for them, they really try to share the range of their roles in job postings in order to make it clear for the job seekers how much their company is willing to pay. Likewise, April added that for them to retain talent, it is also important to include total cop and base salary. As for Taylor, people should focus more on distribution and impact. Invest with your people and focus on internal development.
You can watch the full video of the panel here!
-----------------------------------------------
The Hacking HR's Experts Council
We are thrilled to invite all Directors, VPs/SVPs, and HR C-suite level leaders in companies with over 100 employees to join us as Founding Members at the Hacking HR's Experts Council!
The Expert Council's goal is to provide insights, ideas, recommendations and expertise about very specific topics to the thousands of members of the Hacking HR community and the extended HR global community.
The Experts Council is also a place for community for senior HR leaders to share and also ask, to be safe while having vulnerable and open conversations about the challenges in HR, and from there to generate insights and ideas and innovations for the extended Hacking HR community!
In addition, Founding Members in the Council will always be our priority to invite for our Hacking HR events, particularly our annual global online conference, and also podcasts, and much more!
Almost 400 HR leaders from around the world have already joined, including multinational and local companies, for profit, nonprofit and government institutions, different sectors and industries as well.
Do you want to join us?
Are you an HR leader (director, VP/SVP, C-Suite) in an organization with more than 100 employees?
Reach out to us: [email protected], and let us know more about you!
(Please note that at the moment we are not including consultants/vendors in the Council.)