HRD Live Podcast

Although inclusion and diversity are now ongoing initiatives at nearly all major organizations, to varying degrees of success, many leading organizations have established clear five or ten-year benchmarks through a long-term DE&I strategy. Virgin Media O2, for example, has four core ambitions at the heart of its five-year ‘All In’ strategy that it aims to achieve by 2027:

• Equal representation of women and men in the company’s wider leadership team

Long-term DE&I strategies acknowledge that inclusive change is sustained. Organizations are unlikely to achieve meaningful progression overnight. But it is equally important to reflect on milestones and progress on a more frequent basis. So, how is Virgin Media O2 doing one year in?

We begin the HRD Live Podcast mini-series on DE&I in conversation with Nisha Marwaha, Director of People Relations, and DE&I, at Virgin Media O2, to find out.

At the heart of ‘All In’, Virgin Media O2 is aiming to create a more equitable, and inclusive company. The markers stated above are bold but achievable ambitions. They represent the diverse communities it serves as a mass media company. Moreover, they create an environment that attracts and retains top talent.

But how is it achieving these goals in practice? Marwaha quickly points out Virgin Media O2’s focus on family-led policies that improve gender parity and inclusivity for minoritized groups.

“We’re now giving our employees 26 weeks paid maternity or adoption leave, and 14 weeks paid paternity leave. I’m also proud that we’re one of the first UK businesses to offer paid carers’ leave and paid neonatal leave. We’re offering people up to five days paid leave to support with any caring responsibilities, and up to 12 weeks neonatal leave.”

“We’re also giving them up to 10 days’ leave if people have tragically experienced pregnancy loss. So, it’s a package of support that we’re hoping demonstrates to our employees that we just really want to be there when it matters most to them.”

Marwaha is also eager to emphasize the importance of taking an inclusive view of what family means and moving away from traditional family norms. “Traditional definitions of the family can exclude a lot of family scenarios,” she explains. “We took a lot of guidance from our employee resource groups as well.” Virgin Media O2 employees can now decide if someone feels like family to them and apply the policy to their situation.

To ensure it is working closely towards its DE&I strategy goals, but also to maintain an up-to-date and agile view of employee experience, Virgin Media O2 is measuring its progress in a variety of ways. Empirically, the uptake of the advanced leave policies detailed above is an essential indicator of how its actions resonate with employees. Moreover, measuring ENPS scores create a richer picture of whether employees would advocate for the organizations. “If they feel like that, they’re working for an employer that’s creating the right culture where they can be themselves,” explains Marwaha. Virgin Media O2’s Diversity and Inclusion team also conducts regular check-ins with ERGs that will quickly point out what isn’t working.

Lastly, as with any DE&I strategy, Virgin Media O2 cannot claim meaningful progress without external validation. “It’s the progress that can be measured by what third parties are saying, or the external market,” notes Marwaha. Indeed, Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index named Virgin Media as a top 100 employer.

Much of Virgin Media O2’s journey to ‘All In’ by 2027 lies ahead. Whilst progress has been positive, Marwaha acknowledges some areas where there Virgin Media O2 has work to do.

“We are now supporting departments on an individual basis, or divisional basis to look at what their goals are going to be. To understand what specific barriers might be in their areas to attracting and retaining talent.”

“We’ve just launched a range of workshops, which we’re calling Ally Up. It’s hitting some of the key points that we have distilled from feedback by our employees, especially about inclusion.”

There is a heavy focus on empowering employees to educate themselves and boosting the profile and visibility of employee resource groups. Moreover, it is seeking external partnerships that can help it drive change forward. Partners such as 2020 Change will help create structured programs that ensure a strong pipeline of minoritized talent. Marwaha concludes with a reflection on the journey ahead.

“Challenges will be different in different parts of the business. And it’s not always a one size fits all approach.

“It’s just about supporting on a local level, as well from the top-down, to make sure that we’re doing as much as we can.”

00:09 – Introduction

01:00 – Can you outline Virgin Media O2’s ‘All in Strategy’ and the ambitions you hope to achieve by 2027?

01:56 – What policies have you implemented to begin improving inclusion?

03:23 – Could you share how you’re taking a ‘family-focused’ approach to DE&I policies?

04:26 – Do you have any examples of how the policies are impacting your people?

06:11 – How are you using Tidal Equality’s ‘Equity Sequence’ to guide the policy-making process?

7:31 – What metrics or markers are you using to track the progress you are making to improve inclusion and equity?

08:57 – What have been the biggest learnings on the ‘All In’ journey so far?

10:31 – What more will you be doing in 2023 and beyond to hit achieve your ambitions by 2027?

12:14 – Why is it important to balance policies at the organizational and team levels?

The post ‘All In’ by 2027? Virgin Media O2’s five-year DE&I strategy one year on appeared first on HRD.

To an HR and People Director or Vice President, Moneyball may not just be an Oscar-nominated movie or a heartwarming David and Goliath story. Although it is a surface-level look into the origins of sports analytics, it offers a host of lessons and insights on creating a data-driven organizational culture.

The final episode in the HRD live mini-series on people analytics features Teymy Bahmani, former VP of People Analytics at Thomson Reuters, and long-time sports fan. Having addressed common barriers to adoption, hybrid working, and actionable insights, we now consider what HR leaders can learn beyond the HR discipline from the world of sports. What benefits can one-to-one coaching bring? How can HR learn from the random incidents that influence sports matches? Why are meetings the equivalent of a set piece?

Join Teymy Bahmani as we unpack his unique analogy and discover how HR leaders can emulate high-achieving sports teams and drive organizational performance through analytics.

“It’s really important to steal as many great ideas as you can from other disciplines,” begins Bahmani. In his case, the world of sports is a source of inspiration. Thanks to the maturity of its analytics discipline, it is ripe with lessons and comparisons.

Bahmani begins by calling out a straightforward comparison: Substitutions. In the world of sports, teams track their player’s level of energy and exhaustion, and at the right time, pull them from the pitch for a break. With burnout reaching an all-time high, organizations are not measuring, or not acting, when their employees reach high levels of exhaustion and stress.

“And we don’t separate the score or result from the performance”, he adds. With sports teams increasingly measured against their performance, rather than the result itself, HR Leaders may wish to take a more holistic approach to measure performance based on input, rather than just output.

Expanding on this comparison, Bahmani offers the comparison of a Danish sports team.

“There’s a team that said, we’re not going to look at the table, or the traditional structure based on how many points you have. Instead, we’re going to hold the manager accountable for things they can control. Are you playing your youth players? Did you have a great performance, but the scores didn’t work out?”

“From an HR standpoint, we think about strategic workforce planning on 18 months cycles, and even up to five-year time cycles. Why don’t we recognize that random things will happen?”

Just as a random penalty or event in a sports match may influence the outcome, by redefining how employees are held accountable and allowing for randomness, Bahmani argues you can unshackle your workforce from events they have no control over. This freedom gives employees the space to focus on their performance, as opposed to random events, improving results in turn.

Taking his analogy to further depths, Bahmani advises HR Leaders to position their meetings as set plays. Fluid and fast-paced sports games mirror the increasingly fast pace of business and organizational change. Set pieces offer a moment to pause, assess, and even implement a well-practiced play.

“Meetings are set plays. They are points in time where you have complete control. You know who’s going to be there, at a fixed point in time, and you can prepare. You can be ready for those meetings.”

“There are very few companies that have a meeting culture, or put effort behind it and say ‘this is a place where we can get 5-10% better.”

Although meetings are low-hanging fruit, they are another example of where sports teams study data to determine the best course of action for the event to follow. Bahmani argues these marginal gains will stack up across each touchpoint of employee experience to drive improved business results.

00:10 – Introduction

01:00 – What inspired the comparison between sports analytics and HR or people analytics?

02:54 – Let’s talk through a few of the links you’ve drawn. Firstly, they both have a history of relying on gut and tradition. Can you talk us through that comparison and what HR can learn from the world of sports?

05:06 – Sports teams are, from the top down, constantly taking data-informed decisions. How can HR leaders create a similar culture within their organization?

08:06 – Why should HR leaders be aware of the role of randomness and not rely on analytics for perfection?

10:53 – Each team has a ‘style of play’. What does a ‘style of play’ look like in practice for HR?

12:53 – Many sports teams will have a 1-1 ratio between players to coaches. Is this something for HR and People teams to aspire to?

14:43 – Why is it important for HR leaders draw comparisons from sports or other areas of popular culture?

The post Moneyball: What HR leaders can learn from sports analytics appeared first on HRD.

72% of workers would prefer long-term flexibility over extra money. And yet, with organizations including Amazon and Disney implementing some type of return-to-office mandate, the hybrid working conversation continues to frustrate employees and employers alike. But as we seek a future that draws on the respective advantages of in-office and remote working, are organizations taking a data-informed approach to hybrid workforce collaboration?

Bradford Williams, Head of HR Technology & People Analytics at Northwestern Mutual, advocates for the use of people analytics and data insights when developing hybrid strategy at an organizational level, as well as supporting employees at the individual level to feel productive and engaged. In the latest HRD Live Podcast episode, he shares the as-yet unsolved issues with hybrid working, and what metrics matter when creating hybrid organization networks that produce successful business outcomes.

Although the conversation around hybrid working feels well-worn, much remains unsolved. Williams argues we are still learning how to practically implement the idea that different types of work are suited to in-office or remote working. Within a single day of work, activity varies between focus time and collaboration time. Finding a productive balance between the two is a work in progress for many organizations.

So, where do people analytics fit into the picture? According to Williams, the best place to start is to measure who is coming on-site, and who isn’t. Although obvious and basic, it begins to create a picture of which individuals elect to come into the office. “Understand who’s coming into the office looking at badging data,” Williams explains. Augment this view with data from collaboration tools such as Slack, Zoom, or Teams. These basic metrics begin to create a spider web of the different individual preferences and organization networks that will help to define and govern your hybrid working policy.

Having modeled where each individual sits on the scale from in-office to fully remote, further employee listening can help turn individual preferences into healthy hybrid working practices. “Tap into their sentiment through employee listening to learn why or why not certain individuals are coming in. Develop strategies around those to bring more people on campus,” explains Williams.

He also emphasizes the need for caution around encouraging people back into the office. “You can’t incentivize people back into the office by throwing free lunches, raffles, concerts, or happy hours. To incentivize bringing people back into the office, you need to understand what’s meaningful to those individuals and why certain individuals come in.”

Through initial badging data, and subsequent employee listening and survey data, people analytics can co-create strategies to encourage individuals back into the office if this is the company’s strategic direction. But this data may also indicate another course of action will better meet the needs of an organization’s workforce.

Beyond basic requirements for in-office or remote working, people analytics and people data can help HR to equip leaders to manage their teams successfully. This includes collaboration between organizational networks. “We’re looking at how networks are distributed within our organization and understand how collaboration works. Both within teams or departments and outside of those teams and departments,” Williams explains.

Teams should prioritize understanding the moments that matter to employees during collaboration, both on-site and remotely. Sharing these insights with people leaders and managers equips them to make the best decisions for their teams. It empowers them to structure day-to-day work to be more productive, efficient, and effective.

We know the future of work is uncertain and will continually evolve. Whilst there can be an element of prediction, Williams argues that there will inherently be new and unexpected challenges that disrupt the workforce. “Embed yourself with your HR business partner, or whomever your deliver arm of HR is, and your people leaders. Co-create and co-solution those challenges together,” he emphasizes.

Preparing for the future of this work requires people analytics teams to equip decision-makers with the data and insights they need to make decisions that benefit their people. But this alone is not enough. “Teach, coach, and upskill individuals on how to interpret the data,” Williams adds. “How do you use it? What decisions can you make?”

00:11 – Introduction

00:59 – What are the core challenges with hybrid working that remain unsolved in many organizations?

02:23 – What are some of the most important metrics you feel people analytics can help with?

04:35 – How can people analytics be used to develop optimized hybrid working models?

06:23 – What data is important when analyzing organization networks and understanding how teams collaborate?

08:50 – How can people analytics help align your work with business challenges to demonstrate value and impact?

11:25 – How will people analytics equip leaders with the tools to navigate a volatile future landscape?

The post Perfecting hybrid productivity with people analytics appeared first on HRD.

Think about the most recent data insight that gave you a clearer picture of your people, your organization, or how your HR policies are performing. Do you know if the insight is a ‘lagging’ or a ‘leading’ indicator? Or, in other words, do you know if it is indicating the outcome of an event, or foreshadowing a potential outcome to follow? Knowing the difference, and working with both types of indicators, is vital to moving your data insights from informative to actionable.

Mark Stelzner, Founder at IA, presents the lagging and leading indicator concept on the latest HRD Live podcast episode. This approach ensures insights are actionable by driving rigorous and conscious attention. This helps HR teams to improve any business outcome that data may be supporting, from turnover to employee mental health.

Step-by-step deconstruction of data insights is the only way to truly understand what your data is telling you, and what actions you need to take. The first of these steps is determining whether each insight is lagging or leading. Stelzner offers two small analogies to explain each.

“A leading indicator is often a less precise preview or contributory element of something to come. Think of it as the proverbial canary in the coal mine, signaling potential actions or outcomes that may or may not correlate to a downstream KPI. It’s going to give us a preview, potentially, of what those outcomes might be.”

“A lagging indicator is the ability to look in our rear view mirror. Looking back, we often have the benefit of much more correlation or causation associated with it. But unfortunately, it’s after the fact.”

Once you have determined whether your insight is a lagging or leading indicator, you understand what is missing from your picture. Stelzner offers a real-world example of a large global manufacturer with around 60,000 employees in almost 90 different countries. This manufacturer has a lagging indicator of high regrettable turnover in the first year of around 40% to 50%.

“It’s very concerning with the cost of recruiting the cost of onboarding, induction training, and productivity for their employees. But the premise in which they attack this project is that they have an onboarding problem.”

“The hypothesis is that the leading indicator is issues associated with one’s induction into the organization.”

With each data insight, consider the leading indicator that your lagging indicator may be referencing. From there, Stelzner argues you can begin to peel back the layers even further.

“Maybe it’s something to do with the job descriptions and the promises that we’re making to our talents. So, what are the activities that one goes through from top to bottom, from the first moment that one becomes aware of the position all the way through the application process, the recruiting, the qualification, the background checks, the drug screening, the pre-boarding, the onboarding, the induction, and the training.”

Quickly, from the lagging indicator of high regrettable turnover, we now have a leading indicator that can separate into a huge map of potential action areas.

The next step on the path to actionable data insights is measurement. Far too many people functions are measuring for measurement’s sake, particularly within diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. To move from curious or fascinating insights into action, we need to care about what we are measuring, and whether we can trust what we are measuring is accurate.

Stelzner argues we must deconstruct the mechanics of measurement to understand what is impacting the timeliness, accuracy, and veracity of data – whether it is a meaningless metric, or an actionable metric.

“I’m not a fan of measurement for measurement’s sake. We have more data in HR than we ever have in the history of this function. So, it’s not an issue of access. It’s an issue of viability and actionable outcomes.”

“It starts with hyper transparency. As we move into the C-Suite, or the leadership functions of these organizations, where data is primarily a decision driver, one of the problems is our confidence level. What confidence level do we have in the data? Or where do we have opportunities for improvement?”

He also highlights the need for timeliness in an ever-changing business landscape.

“We must bring situational awareness to how the data has been gathered and how aged the data is. Again, is it a lagging indicator that represents what happened 90 days ago? Or is it what happened 90 minutes ago? How close to real-time can we take action? The timeliness of these interventions and executive insights will determine how much we can empower real-time change in our managers.”

00:17 – Introduction

00:59 – You’ve talked about people or data analytics as either a ‘lagging’ or ‘leading’ indicator. What do you mean by those terms?

01:53 – What steps can HR leaders take to spot when an indicator is lagging and leading?

06:09 – How can HR leaders move from informative insights to actionable insights?

10:46 – What steps can HR leaders take to act, and empower managers to act, on the right insights?

15:13 – Can you share any other major pitfalls when it comes to leveraging data-driven insights?

19:21 – How can people analytics and data-driven insights help solve challenges in the long term?

The post Mark Stelzner: Deconstructing HR data to drive real-time change appeared first on HRD.

In a previous episode of the HRD Live Podcast, Richard Rosenow described people analytics as employee listening at scale. Our latest guest, Stephanie Murphy, Talent Analytics Director at Dell, shares this viewpoint and argues we can apply people analytics to each stage of the employee lifecycle by beginning with employee listening.

This approach breaks down siloes between recruitment, onboarding, development, retention, and exit. Pulling insights from each stage through careful listening builds a narrative richer than the sum of its parts. Murphy shares her insights on collating clean employee listening data, how HR can scale these insights to impact the full employee lifecycle, and Dell’s progress to date.

Applying people analytics practices to the full employee lifecycle can be a daunting prospect. But at its heart, it’s simply another form of employee listening. Murphy argues this is the best place to start.

“It also helps with staying grounded in the people aspect of people analytics. To start with employee engagement or satisfaction. To start with what people are feeling and what they believe.”

With this grounding in your people and their experience, it becomes easier to add in what Murphy calls ‘hard data,’ such as numbers from HR systems. As with any change management model, starting with quick wins can help secure greater buy-in. Employee listening through surveys and other feedback methods is a ‘softer’ approach that can quickly bring stakeholders onside. Murphy goes on to discuss how this ‘hard data’ can tie in with employee listening insights.

“If you look at recruitment data or candidate data, what was their experience? If you look at DE&I data, what are the different pockets? We had low diversity in one part of the organization. Merging that in with the employee listening to see what they said in the survey, we looked at the people that had left the company in the past year and what were they saying to us through surveys. The surveys of sentiment are at the heart of it and feed into all the different pieces of the employee lifecycle. That’s how you start seeing a full story start to form.”

Clean, consistent, and healthy data is the lifeblood of any healthy people analytics program. But, especially for global organizations that operate in different markets, countries, and contexts, and under different legalities and regulations, the story becomes complex.

“We get all this data, we collect it in different ways, across different systems and different platforms. It’s just about trying to be as consistent as possible. Even things that simple like wording and naming. The key is to have consistent nomenclature, and make sure people are calculating things the same way.”

“One of the things we noticed was that we were looking at generation brackets differently. We were cutting off millennials at a certain year and someone else in the organization was cutting it off at a different year. When we tried to merge the data or compare the two, we were looking at different generation brackets.”

To establish consistency, Murphy recommends a ‘data dictionary.’ All those who are working across data within the organization can rely on this to ensure consistent definitions. Beyond this, consistently scrub data and look for consistencies. This can help leaders trust data to inform actions across the employee lifecycle.

Data insights and predictive analytics can give a clearer picture of future challenges. But some events and trends cannot be predicted. However, a healthy people analytics program informed by employee listening can help give organizations the agility to adjust to fresh challenges.

“Build systems that allow you to easily adjust and prepare. There are always going to be things that pop up. If you design your system where you’re ready for curveballs, it’s much easier to adjust to the monkey wrenches that are going to come your way.”

By starting with employee listening and scaling people analytics across the full employee lifecycle, HR teams will have a broader picture and understanding of their people. This better prepares leaders to adapt with the next ChatGPT, ‘quiet quitting,’ or future emerging trend.

00:18 – Introduction

01:05 – How can people analytics be used at each stage of the classic employee journey?

02:23 – For organizations in the early stage of their people analytics journey, this may feel a little daunting. How should such organizations begin to scale their people analytics strategy and are there any parts of the lifecycle to focus on first?

03:47 – How does applying people analytics to the whole employee lifecycle give a picture that is greater than the sum of its parts?

04:50 – What practices have you learned from employee listening that you’ve scaled to the employee life cycle?

07:27 – What are some of the most important data sources for employee listening?

09:01 – What best practices are there for ensuring the data collected is clean and healthy?

10:45 – What relationships do HR or People Analytics Leaders need to build to scale people analytics to this level?

13:20 – Can you talk us through your people analytics journey and the biggest lessons you have learned?

16:47 – Why is this approach to people analytics a long-term strategy that can help HR teams prepare for the future?

The post How Dell scaled people analytics across the full employee lifecycle appeared first on HRD.

Barriers to implementing data-driven or data-informed workflows are consistent across business divisions. Just as many marketing directors struggle with leveraging customer data, HR and people analytics teams must also overcome concerns around ethics, financial buy-in, and skepticism. But at its core, it is another vital component of employee listening. Without overcoming these barriers, people analytics functions are doomed to fall at the first hurdle.

Richard Rosenow, VP of People Analytics Strategy at One Model, has scaled people analytics at Nike, Uber, and Facebook, and is no stranger to these challenges. In the latest episode of the HRD Live mini-series on people analytics, he unpacks the confusion around privacy and ethics, establishes clear advice for generating buy-in, and offers a controversial take on how it will shape the future of HR.

“Data,” argues Rosenow, “is a way to listen at scale.” This simple explanation tying data to employee listening highlights the need for data to tell a story. For example, might attrition data be pointing out a ‘toxic’ manager? Or perhaps the onboarding process has gaps, causing employees to leave right away. But this approach to data still requires humanity.

“Data listening is a way to tap into some of the things that HR is best at. We are thoughtful, we are caring, and we are empathetic about humans and people in the workplace. And that’s still something you can carry with you into the data.”

Indeed, the conversation around the use of employee data does raise questions about ethics and privacy. Expectations change by context, team, country, and region. Without an ethical grounding, HR teams will struggle to implement people analytics at scale. Rosenow emphasizes the need for a clear value exchange.

“The only way we move forward as a business is if people understand: ‘If I’m contributing my data, through workforce systems, chat systems or collaboration tools – if my data is coming into the company – am I going to see value from it as an employee, or is the workforce going to improve?”

The workforce needs to hear clear communication from people analytics teams about how sharing their data will help them enjoy their job, be productive, and ensure they are happy and looked after. This will reassure employees about the safety of their data and feel more comfortable with how it is handled.

Any major HR initiative will require buy-in from finance, and people analytics is no different. For a transformation such as this that may require technical support, buy-in from operations and IT teams may also be necessary. Rosenow argues the best approach to overcome this barrier is to demonstrate the value of analytics to each team.

“The finance leader and the IT leader are also people leaders. They also have teams that they need to understand, businesses they need to run, and people they care about.”

“Bring the CFO and the CIO into the conversation and say, this is why people analytics is good for the business. This is where this is good for us as an organization. And this is why this is good for you as a leader and as a person.”

This approach helps each stakeholder to understand their workforce in deeper ways. Without investment, and without the right technology, people analytics teams will simply struggle to get off the ground.

The proudest champions of people analytics believe it is the unequivocal future of HR, and a data-driven mentality can reshape HR from the inside. Rosenow disagrees and presents an alternative viewpoint.

“I think that HR in the long term will look more like HR was twenty or thirty years ago. When we start to automate and understand data, these processes will move into the background. The strategic elements of HR will be left. How do we work with, how do we understand, and how do we support humans? It’s not about data. It isn’t about technology. It’s about how we are pulling together these large groups of people to drive a common purpose.”

This is where people analytics can help move HR to the next level and can enable a focus on the qualitative components of the HR function.

00:09 – Introduction

01:01 – Why is it important that we reduce the barriers to people analytics?

01:50 – Why are HR leaders still afraid of people analytics?

03:54 – How can we make it more accessible and encourage HR leaders to think of data insights as another form of employee listening?

05:52 – Where does confusion around privacy and ethics arise, and how can HR leaders reassure their employees?

08:34 – How can HR work with finance or IT to help navigate concerns around the cost or need for analytics?

10:25 – How will overcoming these barriers help HR leaders to scale people analytics at their organizations?

11:57 – How do you feel it will shape the long-term future of HR?

The post Ethics, buy-in and skepticism: Overcoming barriers to people analytics appeared first on HRD.

Amid a talent shortage and frequent layoffs, which organizations are winning? The answer, it seems, is careful workforce planning. Apple, at the time of publication, is the most notable technology company not to announce layoffs. Unlike many other technology giants including Twitter and Facebook, it did not accelerate hiring during and following the pandemic. Prudent workforce planning has allowed it a degree of calm amidst the chaos. But where does people analytics come into the conversation?

Brandy Parker, Senior Director of People Analytics, Coca-Cola, is the latest guest on the HRD Live Podcast, and the first in a mini-series on people analytics. Parker is a strong advocate for the use of people analytics as a strategic partner for workforce planning. She shares best practices for spotting talent availability and collaborating with core business stakeholders such as finance and talent development and considers how people analytics can offer long-term stability to organizations alongside short-term adaptability.

People analytics can support workforce planning in numerous ways. Parker calls particular attention to talent availability, and the insights people analytics can bring to this business challenge.

“If you have a great repository of information in your organization about worker skills, even if it’s self-identified, and you don’t have a lot of proficiency information, people analytics gives you a starting place to say, where do we think we have gaps? Where would we want to grow our talent? Where do we want to invest our dollars to help with training individuals?”

Moreover, workforce planning often brings together teams and leaders from different functions, from finance to talent development. Crucially, people analytics should be a means to grounds different stakeholders in the same definitions. Parker offers the example of headcount.

“If you talk to someone in finance, they may think of headcount as ‘FTE’ (full-time equivalent). If you’re talking to someone in compensation and benefits or talent development, they’re thinking of physical people. It’s surprising that can trip up conversations so much. You end up focusing too much on numbers not matching, or people having different understandings. If we had ground ourselves in the definitions of the data pieces themselves, as well as the metrics we’re calculating, that could clear up a lot of confusion.”

A further best practice Parker references is the objective lens people analytics brings to each conversation. Each party rightly brings its subject matter expertise to the table during workforce planning. People analytics holds the role of objectivity through data, insights, and inferences that make internal viewpoints and external trends relevant to the conversation.

Whether workforce planning sits under talent development groups, finance, or another business division, people analytics should serve as its strategic partner. Workforce planning relies heavily on its ability to leverage multiple data sources, whether that be employee perceptions around organizational change or skills data. People analytics is a vital source of data for these topics.

“People analytics teams can inform the strategy of building versus buying talent. For example, if we need certain skills data, we may want to look at external job market trends to inform hiring decisions, or whether or not we want to bring in contractors.”

Moreover, people analytics teams frequently contain leaders with experience in change management or design job analysis. Such individuals bring in a huge amount of subject matter expertise that can augment the data or statistics they bring to the table. In short, these individuals are a vital resource for workforce planning teams.

Beyond the short-term adaptability it can offer to help solve immediate challenges such as talent gaps, people analytics can also ensure long-term stability. Parker emphasizes the need to integrate data insights from people analytics into day-to-day business practices, to help long-term growth strategy.

“Every time we talk about data, it gets compartmentalized as a separate thing that has to be cared for, managed, or addressed. Really, the more we can fold it into day-to-day business practices, the better off we’ll be.”

Parker argues that spinning up people analytics into a huge project that will disrupt organizational structures can create change fatigue and frustration. Instead, organizations should leverage people analytics teams to make data a more natural and consistent part of any conversation. This requires partnering with other functions such as finance. Understand their workflows and build the habit of data use to drive long-term business stability and growth.

00:17 – Introduction

01:09 – Why is people analytics such a vital component of workforce planning?

02:55 – Are there strategies or techniques to help organizations spot talent availability?

04:39 – What best practices are there for people analytics functions when collaborating with different such as stakeholders like finance or talent development?

08:00 – What resources or investment does a people analytics function need to best support workforce planning?

11:40 – How does a data-led approach to workforce planning offer business leaders’ short-term adaptability?

13:05 – And how does a data-led approach help organizations plan for long-term growth?

The post Coca Cola: Using people analytics to supercharge workforce planning appeared first on HRD.

In this episode of the HRD Live Podcast, we hear from Dave Millner, author, futurist and consulting partner at HRCurator, on how HR can become more data-driven. 

Dave is an occupational psychologist with nearly 30 years HR and consulting experience working across the world with global clients on their assessment/performance, employee engagement and organizational development-based challenges.

Dave has a real passion regarding the transformation of HR functions and the need for a more commercially focused response to client demands and the role that analytics and new ways of thinking can help to change the perceptions of HR.

0.45 – Why is being data-driven becoming more important than ever to HR?

2.29 – What does it mean for HR to be more commercially focused?

5.31 – How can HR demonstrate commerciality?

8.05 – How important is technology to this data-driven approach?

11.40 – What role do HR metrics and KPIs play?

14.27 –  What is the feasibility of HR practitioners undertaking complex analyses themselves?

Additional resources: HR Business Partners: A Practical Guide to Becoming Data Driven

The post Dave Millner on optimizing HR success with data-driven strategies appeared first on HRD.

In this episode of the HRD Live Podcast, we hear a conversation between Danielle Harmer, Chief People Officer at Aviva, and professor John Amaechi OBE.

John is a respected organizational psychologist, an award-winning International (Sunday and New York Times) bestselling author, and a sought-after public speaker, as well as an executive coach and the founder of APS Intelligence Ltd. He is a non-executive director of a FTSE 250 company, was a ten-year director of the UK’s largest healthcare organization, and a board advisor for several footsie 100 organizations in the financial, legal, and professional services, technology, publishing, engineering, and retail sectors.

In their conversation, Danny and John discuss, at its core, how to build trust in organizations. What is workplace transparency? How do we break down silos and open lines of communication? Are diversity and transparency connected?

John also offers his three key takeaways for HR leaders today.

1.18 – What is workplace transparency?

 9.19 – Trust and communication often go hand in hand. How can organizations open lines of communication and break down silos?

13.17 – To what degree is respect (both top-down and bottom-up) key to transparency? 

23.14 – Diversity within organizations and effective transparency–connected?

35.37 –  If you had 3 takeaways for HR leaders out there today, what would they be?

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The HRD Live Podcast recently sat down with Theresa Palmer, Global Head of Diversity & Inclusion at BAE Systems Digital Intelligence. 

Theresa’s career has spanned over 20 years in the technology industry having held posts in finance, account and relationship management, customer success and DEI among others.

Most recently Theresa has spent the last five years developing, launching and maturing the diversity and inclusion strategy and execution at BAE Systems Digital Intelligence as well as contributing toward a cohesive company-wide strategy across all of BAE. 

In 2020 this remit extended to also drive awareness and enhancements to mental health, wellbeing and engagement in BAE Systems Digital Intelligence, further strengthening a ‘whole’ employee view when delivering upon the diversity and inclusion strategy.

To tell us more about BAE’s initiatives, their challenges, and their successes, here is our recent conversation with Theresa. 

1.20 –In your role, what are the main challenges you attempt to address and have those changed over time?

5.00 – What initiatives or projects are you especially proud of at BAE?

10.30 – Could you speak a bit about the leadership glass ceiling? Many companies are reporting their gender equality numbers are improving everywhere but at the leadership level.

14.17- We’ve all heard a lot about the gender pay gap. What does BAE do to address this issue?

19.11 – If you could offer 2 or 3 takeaways for other women in the tech industry, in HR or otherwise, what would they be?

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