How to start your first People Analytics project
4 tips to consider before starting any People Analytics project inside your business
When the term “People Analytics” was first appeared in Google’s search in 2005, many organizations still had not ever heard about it. Since then the search interest toward this term has increased significantly. And now People Analytics, this data-driven management approach is not an unknown concept anymore.
Today, the majority of large organizations have People Analytics teams and seventy percent of managers and decision-makers name People Analytics as the top priority to manage their teams.
It is obvious that due to globalization, and the rapid technological changes, companies need precise and efficient HR decision-making strategies to power up their businesses, and People Analytics provides them the possibility by mining the patterns and trends of their people data.
The benefits of People analytics for the HR professionals
People Analytics provides new insight for the decision-makers by showing them the hidden parts of their people, culture, and business they have not ever noticed.
In general, companies spend around 70% of their budget on personnel expenses and they should evaluate the effectiveness of this huge investment on their business progress and outcomes. This is where the financial value of People Analytics comes into play.
Essentially people analytics focuses on people and the impact they drive by providing the interpretation of meaningful patterns in people-related data and business results.
Every dollar invested in People-Analytics returns 13.01$ for the organization.
The required steps to start your first People Analytics project in your organization
If you are among those organizations who intend to start their first People Analytics project to investigate how people impact the business and how analytics can support your real-time people-centric decisions, here are some tips to consider:
1. Define the right business question first
Finding the right business question that challenges your team and involves your team leader’s time and focus is more important than finding the right answer. The machine and algorithms are in the process of analyzing the data and getting the possible answers, but you are the main responsible person to define the exact clear questions for them. So do your homework.
2. Avoid starting big
Companies with very ambitious People Analytics project plans wait so long to start because they want to master everything in their first project. Start small. You will discover during the project many different points to consider for the next steps of the project.
3. Data is the most challenging part
They said Data is the new currency but it has to be gathered properly and with confidentiality. It has to be cleaned, standardized, aggregated, and integrated accurately to give you an unbiased outcome. So again, Start Small, recognize a few questions, and pull data together that help answer those specific questions.
4. Create the culture
It is so hard to change people’s mindset and their manner of making decisions. You might prepare the best People analytics dashboards and ask your people to use the insights for their future people’s decisions, but they might still prefer to use their gut feelings as they get used to it. be patient and try to show them how they can benefit from these processes. Make them feel what they will achieve afterward by using the power of data and automating many of their processes.
