How to define your Employees’ Journey like the Moneyball?
When People Analytics can increase your business value
Suppose you have watched the film “Moneyball”. In that case, you have a good perception of the effect of analytics in managing talents and increasing profit in your team without investing a considerable amount of money for this purpose.
The film’s story is about the general manager of a baseball team and his surprisingly impactful methodology to manage the team and define the strategies to win that season. The team members had different financial problems and had no considerable budget to hire super hitters. So they decided to do that in another way, using statistics and analytics. They hired some data analysts to look at their people’s data and give them any hints to define the following steps to win the season. The analytics team used data to clarify who they should invite to the group, which skills and in which role, and how to manage those diverse people to provide the expected result for the team. As you can imagine, data helped them win not just one game but the season. It gave them the possibility of recognizing the skill gaps in the team, discovering the players’ abilities, and staying ahead of the curve.
And obviously, it is the real power of data if any team applies it appropriately.
It is precisely the story of People Analytics in your company when you do not want to invest a considerable amount of money yearly to replace your people but manage the current talents to win the game. How to hire people, engage them, who to promote, and how to retain is the story behind your people’s data and analytics if you want to hear it.
What is the current situation of HR departments in my experience ?
Unfortunately, most companies define data solutions in many aspects of their business. However, HR tends to be the one they wait to look at later in the process.
Companies that I have talked with about our People Analytics solution at ComeMit tended to be in the early stages of implementing their data-driven solutions in HR departments. Sometimes, they were not clear on what information they have collected about their people and how they would leverage them.
Most of them had no idea about the role of data and analytics to facilitate the HR process as it has always been a manual task for them. This unawareness comes from the HR leaders’ perception of the importance of data and analytics in their daily roles.
In my conversation with HR managers, I frequently saw that HRs had the feeling that what they have to do is reporting for administrative purposes and recruiting the right talents to drive the organization forward. While they did not consider that analytics can be the right tool for performing those tasks, they were often not exactly sure how to even it could do so.
On the other hand, in many organizations that I addressed, there was the perception that the analytics tasks and predictive reports were not approachable for the HR and People analytics team. Still, instead, they would occur in other parts of the business like the BI team.
The truth is that what the BI team does in their daily routine is Descriptive Analytics which People Analytics also covers. In short, BI tools’ objective is to aggregate, visualize, analyze, and report data. But People Analytics approaches will be powered by machine learning and AI to cover predictive and prescriptive analytics. Understanding employees and optimizing their productivity is the key part of People Analytics. To fulfill this purpose, it applies HR components as analytic parameters to function accurately.
People Analytics tools use statistical models to tell us what is likely to happen in the future about our people and business. These models generate new strategic KPIs, such as employee exit risk. Results in addressing problems before they happen:
“Turnover will increase by 10% in the next six months”.
Prescriptive analytics builds on the results of predictions and suggests solutions to future problems.
To sum up, most companies have the data needed for People Analytics approaches but rarely analyze them beyond basic reporting in their HR department. In general,
companies leave many vital insights locked up in their HR systems and are unaware of the value they can gain from them.
This fact makes it mandatory to know that you have the data that lead you to be the strategic partner for the business as an HR professional. You have the possibility of adding value by making data-driven people-centric decisions that improve the business. It is all about discovering the right balance between HR and the organizational purpose, and most companies struggle with this core issue.
How can companies leverage people analytics?
One way HR teams can start to get involved in analytics is by applying the data-driven methodology in each phase of the Employee Journey.
What is Employee Journey
Employee journey is the visualization of the main stages and touches points that employees experience from the time they become aware of an opportunity. That means the employee journey starts from interviews and continues throughout their first day of employment, into their first year and last tenures, and then ending when they leave the company.
By collecting data from each phase of this road map, you as the HR professional can start your data-driven approach to figure out where the challenges and bottlenecks, as well as opportunities and chances, are in your prepared employee journey. Does your recruitment process need to be improved, or do your newly hired ones need more solid onboarding and support?
It helps you discover where to apply resources and make the most impact on the employees at any given phase of the employee journey.
When Surveys Can Help
The next step is to indicate how you are going to measure company performance at each stage. To do that, you should rely on the accurate data collected through Surveys’ conduction. Different kinds of surveys for different phased of the employee journey can help you see the journey map beyond the numbers and stories. With the data gathered from surveys, you can measure each stage of the employee journey to know the average, the range, and trend over time, compared by segment and level of the employees.
With this information, you will be able to concentrate on improving the issues at earlier stages that you know are important because of the long-term consequences for your company.
Make a Data-driven Model
By making all the phases of the employee journey data-driven, you can make a model that helps you track your candidates and new hires from the first time they hear about your company through the whole employee lifetime. In this way, you will be capable of managing your new hires’ requirements and your current workforce retention activities at the same time.
Accept it or not, your company will be successful if you manage both your HR team and your sales or marketing teams in the same manner. You can make your HR team a strategic partner that can provide cost-effective insights and help you manage your overall employee lifetime value in the same way you do with your customers.
