Lecture 1
People function has three priorities
● Data: informing the people strategy
○ The success of various people practices in terms of adding value
○ Opportunities for improvement and enhancement across bot people practices and
experience
○ Alignment between strategies
● Design: shaping the culture and employee experience
○ The design of the new organization of the future
○ Designing the new and reshaped jobs that automation will demand
○ Identify new behaviours and technical capabilities and requirements
● Digital: Driving the change process
Many definitions of HR Analytics: The systematic application of predictive modelling using
inferential statistics to existing HR people-related data to inform judgments about possible causal
factors driving key HR-related performance indicators (Edwards textbook) → Results of this
modelling can be used to make tangible predictions about particular results or people outcomes
At this moment, HR department is doing reporting (focus on past and reason) rather than analytics
(focus on future and what can we do to make something happen)
Problems of today's HR analytics
● Teams spend considerable amount of time and effort producing descriptive reports • Such reports only show a
“snapshot” of what is happening
● Tell us a little about why things are happening (e.g., we have a high turnover, but why is that?)
● After the descriptive reports are written, there is a lot of unused data
● Usually, such reports fail to test or check if data is robust or valid (e.g., how should we measure human capital?)
● Such reports lack any “predictive” paradigm
Measuring the return on people
● 80/20 switch: moving from measuring tangibles to measuring intangibles (like human capital
value, wellbeing)
● Intangibles:
○ Consumer: brands, reputation, partnerships, customer trust, consumer health
○ Intellectual: Patents, Copyrights, Know-how, organizational competency
○ Human: Workforce capability, workforce deployment, talent mobility, intellectual
capital, workforce wellbeing
○ Infrastructure: Culture, management process, technology systems, Innovation,
Relationship
● Past/present: HR is not a decision-making profession, HC data comes from accounting, HR
just costs but does not produce profit, HR measures workforce through costs and process. The
future is ISO 30414 which is a standardized way of raising the standards of HR. Each step of
HR has metrics to be used (think of employee journey → each step could be measured)
Predictive modelling. Predictive HR can be understood in three ways
1. Prediction is related to identifying predictors and causes factors
2. Changing the predictor and expecting a different outcome
3. Predicting how employees behave in the future
Benefits of HR analytics: Provide diagnostic and predivtive data that will inform stratefies and
practices designed to improve the effectiveness of PM in Os
, ● Determine the impact of people on the business
● Demonstrate that HR practices produce value for money in terms, for example, of return on
investment
● Guide future HR and business strategies
Challenges of HR analytics
● Aligning practice with findings of HR analytics
● HR people don't give a sh$t about data
● General management not asking about HR analytics
● The abundance of HR indicators
● Info overload
If analytics is used, these are the problems
● Measurment focused on expendirue not returns
● Time lag between action and result
● The influence of HR is limited
● No people analytics strategy at all
Future: Khan textbook: shift of HR into a people function
● HR function (everyday support)
● Strategic HR function (insights improve organizational performance)
Changing HR function
● Proactive&responsive, measuring value > become financially oriented and accountable,
adding value (ROI), effective people practices, being strategic, leadership focus > line
managers role, HR capability > relationship manager is not enough
● Strategic function needs to be people function
● People function rather than Human capital because the focus should be on talent, not capital;
people should be the new frontier: also ouside approach
● Lack of knowledge is a problem
● The emergence of Chiefe People officer
● Strategic HR: measures, reports, analyzes intangible value, develop people strategy, align
workforce strategy to business strategy
● Selling people function to top management: commercial mindset
, ○ the people function as a profit center → value add people function right
inbetween commercial focus, growth focus and data focus
● Ulrich and Dulebohn (2015): HR analytics is one of the four pilars of HR investments
- others are: HR deparment, HR practices, HR people
- in his argument HR journey has one direction: add value to organization
● The analytics team is located in the HR function now, but it must be split from HR to have
access to more relationships and data
Ch 1 - Khan
HR and the new world of work
constant disruptors to the markets and external forces: external challenges, business pressures, talent
marketplace, contingent work explosion, expectation management, automation and robots
Overwhelmed workforce
● Execution: achieving more with less
● Employee expectations: learning more about new processes
● Manager priorities: finding a balance between operational task/process completion vs the
increasing desire for the human touch
● Leader bandwidth: defining breath and depth of issues is a challenge
● Wellbeing: more of an issue
Constant change is the new norm. These are the challenges
● Resilience to change; Change programs: should be a series of small programs creating a
bigger picture
Making work personal
● employee experience is important. Belonging, purpose, achievement happiness, vigour →
5 dimensions that captured the key elements of the employee experience
● Automation driving an employee-centric experience: Recruitment and selection,
Onboarding and job interviews, Performance dialogues and pay, Employee management,
Engagement and continuous listening, Development support, Personalized learning →
not only improved experience but also improved efficiency. With the data that these
methods generate comes insights and evidence to back why something should be done
Shaping jobs: New skill demands
● 1) What is the emerging business demand? 2) What impact will this have on jobs &
processes? such as job content, behaviour, mindset, and learning requirements, 3) What is the
appropriate automation solution to use? 4) What changes will need to be driven by local
management? 5) What impact does this have on future talent demands? 6) Which people's
practices need to change as a result? (workforce, succession planning, recruitment)
○ this automation follows 2 steps: 1. deconstructing the work and evaluating the return
on improved performance and 2. optimizing human and automated work by
considering the types of available automation
● 3 major dimensions of work: the work (what is being completed?), the workplace (where?),
the worforce (who does the work?)
New business models
● no longer a golden bullet of what works → stability and predictability is no longer what
drives digital or business control
● nowadays: need for fluidity and responsiveness
Data analytics driving decision making
● every organization has data
