If Google Believes in People Analytics, Why Don’t You?

As marketers and consumers alike become entrenched in the digital age, businesses have grown accustomed to and understand the need for data analytics as a tool to improve customer service and boost ROI. And as businesses continue to evolve and compete on a global scale, HR executives must likewise evolve to maintain, if not improve, retention and performance – and ultimately to increase revenue. Enter people analytics.

Former Google SVP, People Operations (CHRO) Laszlo Bock recently addressed the importance of people analytics as a means of furthering the growth and assessing the role of HR. Bock suggests that ‘Doubters’ may set up roadblocks that impede their efforts to employ people analytics, while ‘Believers’ will be able to adapt more easily to the process.

People analytics improve retention and performance, resulting in increased revenues.

In this video presentation, Peter Hartmann, Business Intelligence Expert for Maersk Drilling, makes a compelling case for using data to improve decision making. The crucial point, he emphasizes, is the need to link data directly to business results. While Maersk is a logistics company with 89,000 people working in 135 countries, what Hartmann does on a broader scale can easily be adapted to smaller and mid-size companies. How?

• Start with a business problem, not an HR problem
• Gather existing knowledge on the issue
• Align KPIs with overall strategy
• Standardize the metrics – adjust the targets as needed

Hartmann also suggests that organizations do not need to reinvent the wheel when there is so much data that already exists to help create a strategy – as long as strategies are customized to meet an organization’s unique needs. And this is something that we at East Tenth Group whole-heartedly agree with.

Improve the quality of hire, leadership development, and reduce turnover with people analytics.

People analytics helps HR develop more precise and detailed answers to these questions:

• How can we increase employee diversity?
• How can we improve individual and team performance?
• How can we retain and engage top talent?
• How can we create more collaboration?

The ROI of People Analytics

According to research from Deloitte, companies that are “datafying” HR have two to three times better results in quality of hire, leadership development, and employee turnover, which directly translates into higher revenues, lower costs, and more profitability for the companies making these improvements in HR. Why argue with results that measure such improvement? Just do it. Become a ‘Believer.’

Now is the time to start identifying the business problems you can solve with people analytics.

Originally posted on the East Tenth Group blog.

Michelle Tenzyk is the founder and president of East Tenth Group. She is fiercely committed to helping leaders and their businesses thrive in today’s complex environment. Michelle also founded the movement The Truth Behind Our Titles® ~ Strength, Resilience and Hope for the Professional Journey, dedicated to helping to shift the belief that in order to be professionally successful, our inner difficulties are to be hidden and ashamed of. She believes that our greatest challenges are often the key and the door to our greatest successes, whether we are running a company or managing our careers. If Michelle isn’t running her company and working with her clients and team, she can be found weight training, downhill skiing, playing tennis, hiking, playing with her Bernese mountain dog Zoey, or enjoying the view of the Hudson where she lives.