opinion | HR'S EXPANDING ENTERPRISE ROLE
www.thehrdirector.com
PAINTING BY NUMBERS
If old-school HR was singled out for its lack of strategic and commercial value, now the profession is poised on the verge of an exciting threshold, a data revolution full of promise and potential. But having huge amounts of data on tap is not the panacea to HR’s commercial credentials conundrum. Without data skills, it’s just a lot of numbers.
ARTICLE BY AMRIT SANDHAR, DIRECTOR - THE ENGAGEMENT COACH
“You need to be more strategic”, are always damning words, when they are directed at HR leaders about how the organisation perceives the function. That commercial enterprise is an Achilles heel, is telling about the sector, but why is this? There is nothing ‘pink and fluffy’ about; organisational culture, people management, talent development and understanding and the “employee experience” is fundamental to improving organisational performance. Yet, for some reason, the lack of data-driven forward-planning, has left HR finding itself open to being questioned about its strategic and commercial value. To be more strategic relies upon access to good quality data, analysis of patterns and trends, and triangulation of data to pull out compelling insights that could predict what might happen in the future, everything HR couldn’t achieve with the HR systems of the past, which were cumbersome, stand alone, full of inaccuracies, and difficult to interrogate. HR, therefore fell into a routine of responding to the needs of the organisation, as opposed to being proactive. The profession’s own governing body, CIPD, pulls no
punches in its summary of research findings that the HR function; “lacks the skills, knowledge and insight to ask the right questions of the HR data they have at their disposal”. Whilst HR might be seen as not altogether comfortable with numbers and data, some HR functions have begun to create data analytics teams, that will correlate data such; as demographics, tenure, employee experience data, with performance metrics, to identify links and patterns. The exponential advancements in technology means the processing of big data is increasing the demand for data analysts by 372 percent and data visualisation skills by 2574 percent, but conversely, the world of AI is also changing how important these skills might be. Innovation in software to process, analyse and pull insights from large volumes of data has also improved, reducing the need for such data analytical/visualisation skills, and this is the exciting area HR can embrace.
TO BE MORE STRATEGIC RELIES UPON ACCESS TO GOOD QUALITY DATA, ANALYSIS OF
PATTERNS AND TRENDS, AND TRIANGULATION OF DATA TO PULL OUT COMPELLING INSIGHTS THAT COULD PREDICT
WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE
Data insights via a myriad of tools is one aspect of this new world, but the ability to ‘show’ the data in ways which tell a compelling story, through data visualisation, means HR finally has a way of providing good quality insights, not available from any other function, which will be critical to the success and delivery of the organisational strategy and increased commercial outcome. Where often the Finance Director has a big influence over the strategy due to their ability to pull out trends and insights, the HR Director now has the ability to better understand the employee input and experience at every stage of the operational lifecycle. Organisations advanced in this area are focusing on predictive analytics, where their strategies are based upon knowledge of what employees are likely to do or likely to want, ensuring they improve the experience, by tailoring to the needs of various employee groups, thereby making the organisation more attractive. With tools such as Power BI, even those HR leaders who are not able to build data analytics teams, can gain great insights and tell compelling stories that would compete with any finance presentation, but more importantly, provide valuable insights that would support the delivery of the strategy. This is the new battleground; being able to compete with other organisations to attract the best talent, through the best experiences, and HR can play a critical role to support this through data insights, allowing organisations to focus on the things that really matter to people. HR Directors now play a very prominent enterprise role, influencing the organisational strategy, and helping define the culture needed to provide a competitive commercial edge.
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FOR FURTHER INFO
WWW.THEENGAGEMENTCOACH.CO.UK
26 | thehrdirector | DECEMBER 2019
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