People & HR Analytics Archives - CHCI

How to Increase Employee Retention With Data

admin — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 10:31:13 +0000

Your search is over. You finally found an ideal candidate after months of screening and interviewing. It took a lot of work (and many awkward conversations) but thinking about your new hire’s potential contributions to the team made it all worthwhile.

However, don’t pat yourself on the back just yet… because one third (33%) of new hires quit their job after about six months. So it’s time to ask yourself some hard questions: What are your retention strategies? Do you know if they work? Who is in charge of retention in your organization? Is it an HR issue, or a leadership issue?

These are all important questions. And one of the best ways to answer them is by using human capital analytics.

What Is Human Capital Analytics?

Human capital analytics (which I like to call people analytics) is the application of data analysis tools to assess areas of organizational performance. Or as Human Resources Today explains, it is “the art and science of connecting data to discover and share insights about your workforce that will lead to better business decisions.”

In practical terms, using human capital analytics helps organizations make decisions based on evidence rather than feelings or intuition. It also helps HR professionals and organizational leaders dispel misconceptions, debunk myths, or (dis)confirm held (but untested) beliefs.

The fact is you probably already have a lot of the information you need to create a retention strategy based on data. However, knowing how to organize, share, and analyze the data is another story. That’s why organizations that don’t have a people analytics teamwork with human capital analytics professionals.

But how do data analytics actually help with retention? Let’s take a look at the big picture. Here are three important questions about retention that people analytics will answer:

Three Important Questions About Retention That People Analytics Will Answer

1. What is your retention problem and how much is it costing you?

Some organizations know their retention rate, but often the data are not collected uniformly, which doesn’t give you the information you need to see overall trends.

People analytics makes uniform data collection easier and can help you better understand what’s happening with your retention.

Once these data are collected, it’s time to look at who is resigning and the associated costs. Replacing one employee costs the equivalent to two and a half to four times their salary. So when you look at who is resigning, pay attention to their salary too. While it will cost less to replace a new hire, replacing them on a constant basis adds up. Another cost to consider is loss of knowledge. If you are losing your top performers, it’s costing you more than just money.

2. What is causing the attrition?

After clearly identifying a retention problem, it’s time to look at what is causing the attrition. Using analytics enables organizations to take a look at what factors correlate to resignation. For example, you could evaluate how compensation ratio, promotion wait time, pay increase, pay increase per gender, performance, performance evaluations, training opportunities, and management opportunities for minority workers, all correlate with turnover. This information can be used as part of your retention strategy, by informing decisions about pay changes, promotions, learning opportunities and more.

3. Who is leaving?

Looking at the resignation rates across locations, age, gender, diversity groups, performance level and tenure gives you a better picture of what type of work experience you are providing. This helps decide which programs to invest in. For example, you may identify a large number of resignations from women in middle management across all locations. This data can be presented to leadership to highlight where to invest.

There are also data analytics programs that can determine the potential risk of employee resignation. Let’s face it; you can identify who may leave more efficiently with data than with your intuition. And it’s much easier to stop an employee from leaving than to bring her back. Finally, if these flight risks are management or subject matter expert positions that would otherwise be vacated, the savings from preventing departures can be significant.

After answering these questions, you’ll better understand where to focus your efforts; with the knowledge of what drives people away, you can create an employee retention program. Let’s walk through two common scenarios.

Two Common Reasons Behind Attrition and What To Do

1. Lack of Personal Development Opportunities

You may find that your retention issues have to do with the fact that your organization is either not offering training opportunities or is not encouraging team members to take the time to participate in these programs. In this situation, you would present the data showing this relationship and request an increase in the training budget and/or more time for learning programs.

Once any new programs are implemented, don’t forget to measure the effectiveness of the training programs! You’ll want to look back on that data too when it’s time to re-evaluate the budget.

2. Lack of Career Advancement Opportunities

Your human capital analysis may show that there is a lack of promotions in your organization. This will require a closer look at how promotions are handled in the organization. What are the parameters? Is there a particular age, gender or ethnic group that experiences fewer promotions?

To tackle this problem, set clear promotion goals, measure these goals in the same way for each person every time, and create a compensation plan that gives the same amount of increase to promoted employees. After the implementation of this promotion protocol, measure the data again on a future date to see if you are experiencing the same amount of resignations related to lack of career advancement.

Who Owns Retention?

Deciding who will be responsible for the creation of retention solutions is important. Will this be solely HR’s responsibility? Will leadership be responsible for developing solutions based on the reported data? Will it be a collaborative effort? This is up to you and what’s best for your organization.

The important thing is to clearly define who is responsible for translating data into solutions. Otherwise you might end up trapped in a classic house fire analogy, otherwise known as the bystander effect: If a house is on fire and one person sees it, they do everything they can to put it out. But if a house is on fire and 30 people see it, most wait for the other people to step in and help.

The use of data to make informed decisions is a real game changer. When you’re able to pinpoint exactly what and where the problems are, you have the opportunity to design innovative solutions.

Do you use people analytics to improve retention? I’d love to hear about your successes or failures with this approach.

Leave a comment below, send us an email, or find us on Twitter.

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People Analytics: How Managers And Organizations Can Leverage Their Employee Data

admin — Tue, 08 Sep 2020 10:19:47 +0000

Today we’ll be exploring Data and People Analytics, topics you may have heard of before but may not know exactly what they are or how they can benefit your organization. Even if you’re not already a data scientist, we’ll introduce you to these skills and show how you can start leveraging the data that your organization and employees are already generating

What Is Data Analytics?

In a nutshell, data analytics is the process of examining a raw data set and drawing conclusions from it. Hopefully, these conclusions improve organizational processes in some way.

Every organization generates all kinds of data about performance, sales, compliance and more. This data is being generated, regardless of whether it is being captured purposefully, by every action, process, and result that occurs within an organization. Leaders would benefit from capturing it and making use of it, instead of ignoring it. Then they could make data driven decisions.

Why Analytics Matters: Going Beyond Your Gut

Some managers may feel like they gain all the information that they need to make decisions through observing and talking with employees. And of course, talking to employees is valuable, so don’t ever stop doing that! However, analytics helps validate assumptions before a decision is made. The analytical tools are available so that people do not have to just go off their gut feeling anymore.

“How Good is Your Gut: In a room with 23 people in it, what is the chance that at least two people have the same birthday?”

There is an example from probability theory that shows how humans are intrinsically ineffective at assessing probability and thus assessing certain risks. This example is called the birthday problem or the birthday paradox, which asks how many people would need to be in a room to create a 50% probability that at least any two people in that room share the same birthday. Most people tend to guess a high number. However, probability theory and empirical studies have demonstrated that there is a greater than 50% chance at only 23 people. Surprising, right? This is just one example that shows how people can vastly misjudge a problem based only on their gut feeling.

“Every organization generates all kinds of data about performance, sales, compliance and more. This data is being generated, regardless of whether it is being captured purposefully…”

People analytics is simply data analytics applied to all the data describing and generated by organizational employees and processes. One small example of this would include employee development. A manager or leader might want to know, “How many of our employees are following a career path in our organization? What are the results of those who follow a career path?” So, people analytics would look at the career path data set to identify how the employees are progressing throughout their careers, their skills, and certifications, when they get promoted and to which position.

Another example of applied people analytics is employee retention. For instance, IBM has a retention program to track talent. With this system, they are able to accurately assess the flight risk of senior employees, to determine if they are leaving or staying with the firm. They also track what types of incentives were used to enable that process.

Cisco Systems, Inc has also taken interest in their talent acquisition and management strategy, hosting a Global HR Breakathon in 2016 to bring together ideas that can help redefine the employee experience using software and data solutions.

These are not rare interests. According to Brian Kropp of Gartner, “Almost every Fortune 100 company has a head of talent analytics and a team of data scientists in human resources.”

Analytics Is Not Just For Large Organizations Or Scientists!

Most people say that learning about analytics from scratch takes too much time. Yet the busier you are, the more you need these analytics to help you make complex decisions or even accurately assess a situation.

Unfortunately, active data analytics is not an out-of-the-box replicable process. It really depends on your own tailored questions based on the problem you are trying to solve. In addition, there needs to be a tight relationship between who is performing the analytics and the person guiding the process to get from point A to point B, which is the actionable conclusions.

To start with the basic skills and begin thinking about your own analytics process, Coursera is excellent starting point. Once you decide to take the plunge, here are three tips to help you.

Three Tips For Starting Out With Data Analytics

Tip number one is to define your questions that may solve the problem. What are you curious about? In which areas do you want additional insight? Use those questions to inform yourself about where to look or what other data you may need to capture. Then you can begin to determine what analytic methods would best answer those questions.

The second tip is to understand what kind of data you already have. You may already have data; it’s just not organized or aggregated yet. Are you currently capturing the data that your organization is naturally generating? Or are you letting data pass by because you do not have the processes in place to actually capture it? Without the knowledge and expertise to implement this first step around your business practices, all other thinking about data analytics is moot.

Finally, keep things simple because oftentimes your questions take you in new directions. Just try to take a look into any initial idea or hunch and see where that leads you.

Deepen And Share Your Insights With Data Visualization

Data visualization is a key component of the analytics process to help assess your data after its been captured; first you can use visualization and summarization tools to look at the data in various ways to help determine trends or other interesting features. If your results surprise you, then they may be able to hint at where to look further. And if not, then you may be able to save time by eliminating parts of your data and simplifying your model.

Throughout the analytic process, it’s essential to have your data and conclusions tell a story, often to non-data people. There are many visual tools to show the results in a way that helps managers make better informed decisions. For example, we recently used this color-coded bubble chart (Figure A, below) to clearly show management that certain data among their business units had distinct groupings and were starting points to address (data labels have been modified to protect confidentiality). To learn more about our process, you can read the business case study here.

Figure A: Visual representation of distinct groupings found in the data from two business unit dimensions.

Remember: Data Analytics Is An Ongoing Process

Data analytics is an ongoing process. It’s not one-time analysis saying, ‘Oh, there is the data that I have. What can I do with it?’ It is about creating a learning process within your own organization. A best practice is to use your tools to constantly assess and generate conclusions from your data on an ongoing basis. This means those key questions at the beginning a data analytics project may change over time. So, flexibility is the key!

How deeply do you rely on use of data analytics in making decisions? Does it overcomplicate the things? Is it complex and time consuming? Let’s share experiences! Leave a comment below, send us an email, or find us on Twitter.

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Three Tips to Manage a Toxic Work Environment

admin — Thu, 26 Mar 2020 09:48:16 +0000

Organizations are full of individual and group relationships. Even if you work on a small team in a mid-size organization, it’s possible to have over 25 different working relationships when you consider a relationship with each person on your team, peers, colleagues on other teams, clients and vendors.

According to the2014 Globeforce survey, 78 percent of people who work between 30 to 50 hours per week actually spend more time with their coworkers than with their families. Having friends at work increases organizational commitment, improves employeeengagement and increases overall employee satisfaction levels. However, unhealthy work relationships decrease each one of these factors.

Impact of unhealthy work relationships

A Harvard Business Review article states that there are three traits top leaders use to maintain healthy and powerful relationships: a clear purpose, an understanding of the kind of relationship needed and a commitment to pursue that relationship even in the hard times. In addition, healthy relationships include trust,integrity and respect.

While we all want healthy work relationships, unhealthy work relationships can develop.Unhealthy work relationships lead to workplace stress, higher disengagement and lack of loyalty. About $500 billion is lost by the US economy because of workplace stress. According to a study by Queens School of Business and Gallup, disengaged workers have 37% higher absenteeism, 49% more accidents, and 60% more errors and defects. Lack of loyalty leads to the increase in voluntary turnover by about 50%.

One thing that creates unhealthy work relations is organizational power dynamics, which refer to how different levels of employees deal with each other and where one of these employees / groups is more dominant than the other employee/group.This use of dominance does not involve use of force; instead it uses workplace influence, which could be created by gender, organizational hierarchy, ethnicity, social bias and other factors.

The development of careers, particularly at senior levels, depends on acquiring power. How does this happen? Individuals gain power in absolute terms at someone else’s expense. As most organizations have a pyramid structure, there is a scarcity of positions as one moves up the organizational hierarchy. This is what determines how the power dynamics play out.

How can leaders spot unhealthy power dynamics before the workplace relationships become toxic?

Three Tips for Managing WorkplacePower Dynamics

1. Create clear, professional boundaries

Regardless of the organizational size, ensure there are established, professional boundaries in the workplace. For example, if a boss calls a direct report on the weekend, is the direct report expected to return the call on the weekend or on Monday? Is alcohol allowed on the workplace premises and if so, what are the norms when someone says something inappropriate or wants to drive while under the influence of alcohol? Finally, what is allowed or not allowed while traveling? Establishing workplace norms prevents an imbalanced power dynamic from occurring.

2. Monitor language

Words matter because words become thoughts and thoughts become behavior. So be mindful of the accepted organizational verbiage. Expressions such as ‘Man up!’ or ‘Don’t be so emotional and sensitive’ are generally said by one gender about another gender and therefore sexist. ‘You don’t understand how the game works’ shows an imbalanced power dynamic, as one person implies that s/he is smarter or more experienced than the other. Someone regularly saying, ‘That’s not what happened’ can create a feeling of gaslighting, making the other person question reality and become subservient in the power dynamics.So listen for language that may inadvertently create an unhealthy power dynamic.

3. Notice office volatility

Employees are human, and regardless of how talented they are, every person has flaws. Some of those shortcomings maycreatea volatile work environment, which creates havoc on work relationships and causes stress for everyone. The key to managing this volatile environment is to manage individual responses. Take time to learn what triggers people’s emotions and avoid conversations that can contribute to the overall volatility. Employees need to stay calm rather than engage in office drama.

Let’s share experiences. Leave a comment below, send me an email, or find me on Twitter.

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Why are employees leaving your organization?

admin — Fri, 16 Aug 2019 15:51:44 +0000

In our daily lives, we use personal biases, intuitions, and gut feelings to make our decisions. And that’s perfectly fine. They serve us well in many ways.

However, when it comes to improving work performances, personal biases, intuitions, and gut feelings just don’t cut it.

Data can improve your own, your team’s, and your organization’s performance; people analytics can help. People analytics is the data that identifies workforce patterns and trends. Here are some questions that can be answered with people analytics:

How engaged are our employees?
What skills does my organization need to invest in, to achieve our mission?
Why are my employees leaving the organization?

These questions and many more are the kinds of questions that people analytics can answer. Even if you don’t regularly use data in your job, you can still learn a lot with people analytics, regardless of your supervisory level.

A brief primer on people analytics

Before we answer why employees are leaving your organization, let’s start by defining a few terms:

Data are facts, statistics, or other items of information. Data are all around us; you just have to know how to look for it, compile it, and make sense of it. We can use data to understand problems and processes at a micro level (between individuals), at a mezzo-level (team-level), or at a macro level (organizational level).

So who uses data?

One group of people who use data are data analysts. Data analysts organize, examine, analyze and use data to draw meaning. They tend to focus on understanding previous events to describe things that have already happened.

Then what’s big data?

Big data refers to enormous volumes of data. We’re talking millions of cases. Big data require a special skillset to effectively manage, organize, examine, and analyze.

Data scientists are the people with those skills. Data scientists use machine learning and algorithms to work with and draw meaning from big data. While they can use their data to describe things that have already happened, like data analysts, they have additional skills that allow them to use their data to make predictions. These predictions tend to center on how likely something is to happen and estimate the consequences of its occurrence, using data about events that have already happened.

The data analysts and data scientists that work in people analytics use their skills to understand and improve the workforce. People analytics is the application of data science and data analytics to understanding human resources and human capital processes in and across organizations. You may have heard people analytics referred to as talent analytics, HR analytics, or workforce analytics.

Even if data analytics, data science, or people analytics aren’t skills you currently have in your toolkit, you can still benefit from people analytics to better understand your workforce.

I’m just not a data person

Right now though, you may not see your relationship to data. You might even be thinking, “Listen, I’m just not a data person.”

And to that, I’d ask you a few questions. Do you:

Track your steps?
Check your ‘likes’ on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn?
Post on social media at particular times of day, with the hopes of reaching a wider audience?

If you answered yes to just one of these questions, you’re a daily consumer and user of data, even if you don’t actively work with it yourself. So you are a data person and can use it to identify why people are leaving your organization.

Steps to using data

Using data to improve your organization’s performance is the essence of people analytics. Let’s pretend you work for a tech company that builds educational phone apps targeted toward getting girls interested in STEM. In the last two years, the company grew from three people to 75 people! However, you’ve noticed that even though you’ve grown, you tend to be losing some of the best sales people and programmers. They’re getting replaced, but why are you losing the good ones?

Using data to answer questions

That is a people analytics question. Now let’s talk about how we use data to answer these questions. As I mentioned, we have our intuitions and gut feelings, but these amount to anecdotes. While they help get us interested in topics and can help us to start formulating a more scientific response, they are not subject to the rigorous treatment data require. As a result, we cannot trust the validity of anecdotes over the validity of sound data.

Define your questions

The way that you can harness data to improve your workforce is through a scientific approach. The first step is to define your question as best as you can. Be as precise as possible here; you’ll need to refine your thought to a point where the question is answerable. For example, you might start with a question of “Why are people leaving the organization?” but eventually wind up with, “What percentage of the workforce plans to stay with the company in two years?” It’s not the only question you could ask, but it is a start.

Qualitative or quantitative data?

From here, you need to figure out the type of data you need to answer your question: qualitative or quantitative? Qualitative data is data concerned with descriptions, which can be observed but cannot be computed. On the contrary, quantitative data focuses on numbers and mathematical calculations. It’s important to note that one type of data is not better than another; determining which data to use depends on the question you ask. Answering “Why are people leaving this organization?” will use qualitative data. Determining “What percentage of the workforce plans to stay with the company in two years?” will likely use quantitative data or both.

Collecting data

Once you determine the type of data you need, it’s time to collect your data. Qualitative data can be captured with interviews, surveys, focus groups and workshops, whereas quantitative data is often captured through recorded workforce data.

Cleaning data

Then, before we can analyze it, we have to ‘clean’ the data, which is just fancy-talk for making-the-data-work-for-us. You might need to “recode variables” or “create an index” using the data.

Analyze data

Once the data are clean and ready to go, we analyze them using the appropriate techniques. The technique will vary based on the type of data you have, the type of question you have, and your desired end state.

Putting data to work

The next steps is to use those data for something, and put it in action at the micro-, mezzo-, and macro-level. For example, you can answer questions about attrition by reviewing individuals’ performance appraisals. At the mezzo level, you could also look at how teams compare, or perhaps other sites. We can also take a macro-approach and look at organizational performance over time and see which areas have improved and which areas can use further improvement? Any level can help you identify why employees are leaving your organization.

As you can see, while the idea of people analytics can feel overwhelming, breaking the process into steps will help you make data-based decisions about your workforce. And using a systematic approach and yielding the benefit of people analytics will guide you on your journey. Want to learn more? Contact us now.

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How To Coach As A Manager: A Vital Skill

admin — Wed, 06 Mar 2019 23:30:41 +0000

Managers, do you want to learn how to coach? If you’re interested in having a direct, positive impact on both your team members and organization, coaching is a vital skill to learn.

First, what exactly is a coach? A coach is someone who helps another person reach higher levels of effectiveness by creating a dialogue that leads to awareness and action.

Let’s look at this definition in detail:

-To help another person, you need to have concern for another person and want to see them grow.

–Reaching higher levels of effectiveness means that they’re better in all areas of their work.

–Create a dialogue with the person by asking questions and fully listening.

-All of this leads to awareness, which helps the person discover the ways in which her attitude is hindering her level of success.

-Then that person can take action and do something differently to change behavior and be more effective in all areas of her work and life.

How do you know when to coach?

In order to know when to coach, use the Success Equation. This strategy was constructed to help managers and leaders:

a) pinpoint what’s going on that may be causing a problem for that employee (clarity); and

b) analyze how successful a team member is going to be before he even begins the work (certainty).

Here is the Success Equation:

Aptitude + Attitude + Available Resources = Success

In this equation Aptitude is defined as the skills and competence to complete the task. Attitude is defined as the drive, focus and motivation to complete the task, and Available Resources are the physical tools needed to complete the task. All three components must be present, in equal parts, to achieve success.

A very simple example is a child learning to ride a bike (the Success Equation applies universally, not just at work).

At first, the child has the Available Resources – the bike, perhaps even training wheels, and a safe place to ride. The child also has the Attitude – the motivation, energy, focus and desire to ride. However, in the beginning, the child lacks the Aptitude – the skill sets or competence. So in the beginning, he will be at most 66% successful because he’s missing one of the critical components to the Equation.

Once the child practices and gains the Aptitude through experience, all three components are present and he’s off to the races, successfully riding his bike.

Business is no different. Let’s look at the Success Equation for an analyst. She needs Aptitude – the required skills to analyze and interpret data. She needs the right Attitude – the motivation and energy to work with others, as well as the focus and determination to stay positive and maintain a challenging schedule. And she must have the Available Resources – a phone, a computer, a software program. If any one of these components is missing, she will be 33% less successful.

How Does the Success Equation Work for Managers?

How does the Success Equation work? It can be leveraged when someone comes to you with a problem, or at the beginning of a project. If Rebekka comes to you with a problem, ask her if the problem is about Aptitude, Attitude, Available Resources or a combination of the three. And if one of your employees is about to embark on a new project, ask him if he has the Aptitude, Attitude and Available Resources to do the job.

If the problem is an Aptitude issue, you give your employee skill training to build their competence. If it is an Available Resource issue, you get the resources they need, within your budget. And if it’s an Attitude challenge, you coach them to success.

But how exactly do you coach?

The Coaching Process

Let’s look at the coaching process. As a reminder, when it’s an Aptitude issue, you train. When it’s an Attitude issue, you coach. And when it’s a lack of Available Resources, you reduce, reuse or reallocate resources.

The difference in communication styles between manager and coach is profound. The former is often one-way, enabling and potentially disempowering. The latter is two-way and engaging, and as a result, precipitates two things: awareness and action.

If you want thoughtful, empowered people on your team, it is critical that they are self aware of how they can get in their own way with old patterns and beliefs. They also proactively think for themselves and take action.

Effective Coaching Requires the Right Questions

By asking coaching questions, you grow your team members into thoughtful, empowered people. Here are the five key components, in order of importance, to asking an effective coaching question:

Open-ended. Questions that can be answered in one word preclude anyone from having to think. If you want to turn your team into thoughtful, aware people, ask open-ended questions that open up a conversation and begin with “what” or “how”. Examples might be: “How can you move forward on your idea?” or “What’s the impact of that on the team?”
Keep it short. Most people ask long questions or worse, ask 3 questions in one sentence. This results in skipped questions and critical data being missed. Ask one short question at a time, preferably 8 words or less. “What resources do you need?” is more effective than “What possible resources will help you achieve this exciting goal, how will you get those resources and when will you do it?”
Advice-free. Part of the reason you made it into management is because you know the answers already. Most managers tend to think for their team members and consequently, the employees never learn to think for themselves. They become robots with a tie. Advice-free questions with team members may take a bit longer in the short run yet will make your life a lot easier and more leveraged in the long run when you have team members who can think for themselves and make good decisions on their own. So avoid questions such as, “Have you tried this?” or “Why don’t you do that?”
Forward focused. Get out of the story and into the action. Translated, this means get out of the past and into the future. The story only creates drama. Drama is a productivity-killer. Forget what happened in the past. Move on and focus on what action to take in the future to fix, improve, or exceed. Instead of saying, “What happened when Josh did that?” ask “How do you want to behave with Josh in the future?”
Thought provoking. As you get well-practiced and eventually master asking coaching questions, you’ll get to this “ninja” level of asking thought provoking questions that literally cause people to stop in their tracks. Your question is so powerful that it pushes people beyond the limits of their current thinking capacity, and forces them to take some time on their own and report back to you. These types of questions can be simple: “What is your role in that situation?” or “Where can you take responsibility?” If you want maximum thinking people on your team, ask these types of questions often.

Coaching Goal: To Move Someone from Awareness to Action

Now that you understand how to ask effective coaching questions, let’s look at moving someone from awareness to action. This means moving someone from understanding the impact they are having on the team to having them commit to small steps that will change their behavior.

Key to Awareness: Understanding Impact

Most managers are good at the action part—setting goals, building a plan and ensuring accountability. The awareness part is often more challenging. For this, coaching for managers is also provided by many organizations. How do you help someone see the impact they’re having on an organization and team? First, start with the five effective questions tip detailed above. Then ask questions that focus on impact, such as: What’s the impact of that on X? You could never ask this question enough. For example: What’s the impact on the person? Team? Organization? Stakeholders? Clients? Donors? Community? Employees? Once they start to understand the impact of their behavior, then they will move to action on their own, instead of being told what to do.

The next crucial element of coaching is listening. Next week we will explore why listening is so important for leaders, and outline ways to improve listening skills. In the meantime, if you are a supervisor, manager or leader committed to being an excellent coach, check out our two-day course: Coaching to WIN BIG.

The post How To Coach As A Manager: A Vital Skill appeared first on CHCI.

People Analytics: Creating The Ultimate Workforce

admin — Thu, 27 Dec 2018 18:38:12 +0000

People analytics, historically referred to as HR Analytics and utilized strictly as an HR function, has evolved into a systematic data-driven approach to improving your entire business.

If you are a leader or manager in a large organization, you are probably familiar with these terms. But you may be unaware how your organization can benefit from people analytics and what it will take.

That is what we will discuss today.

What is people analytics?

People analytics is the process of leveraging new or existing data within your organization to provide invaluable insights into your workforce and help you make better business decisions.

People analytics delivers facts about your organization such as why people are leaving your organization, the challenges they face, how much this is costing you, and more. Equally importantly, it paints a picture of how to anticipate and prevent these staffing challenges.

Difference between HR, people, and workforce analytics

People analytics, HR analytics, workforce analytics, and even human capital or business analytics are all different terms that share a common purpose: to improve all areas of business performance through the use of workforce data. Whatever you call it, the goal is to create a productive, innovative and powerful workforce, which positively affects the bottom line.

How organizations benefit from people analytics

The true value of a well-structured people analytics initiative will reflect directly on your bottom line. We’ll talk more about this in a minute, under the ROI section.

For now, here are a few ways your organization can benefit from people analytics.

Ten Ways Organizations Benefit from People Analytics

Understand and improve retention
Identify patterns of racial bias or inequity in compensation
Create effective, non-biased processes for hiring and promoting
Strengthen workforce decision making
Increase accountability
Shift team silos
Improve employee productivity and commitment
Determine the traits of your quality employees
Seek better employee sourcing options
Develop a culture where decisions are made in accordance with the evidence

How does it help my organization make better decisions?

A crucial component of people analytics is the ability to make informed decisions based on user data. An example of this is McDonald’s. They learned that employees working in groups containing a healthy mixture of generations tended to be happier. Happier workforces can lead to improved service, product quality, and teamwork, all creating higher value for the restaurant brand.

When CHCI worked with a shipment and transportation logistics business and analyzed personnel data, we determined their attrition rate alone was costing the organization millions of dollars. We were only able to start addressing the problem once we identified the root cause and fundamental elements of the problem through people analytics.

Google, a top 500 company, benefited tremendously from understanding their workforce at a much deeper level. Google is continually analyzing data and discovering solutions to improve their workplace, while creating an unstoppable powerhouse and attracting some of the most innovate minds from around the world.

Using data to solve problems

Leaders often make a decision based on “gut feeling” or “a hunch”, which is ineffective and unnecessary. This approach offers zero certainty that the solutions were the right ones, or what the effect of a different approach to the problem could have been. In contrast, having evidence that supports those decisions has a much higher chance of being correct.

Where do you begin?

Knowing the critical role that data plays in solving business and workforce-related problems, where do you begin?

CHCI has a meticulous process called PODAMIA, an acronym that describes the scientific, human capital problem-solving process. At a high-level, the process consists of understanding the strategy and critical business areas, identifying the right questions, and then answering those questions with data.

CHCI’s PODAMIA Process

The power of PODAMIA lies in its powerful six-step process to solving problems through data. It is specifically designed to improve the probability that the problem in question, the insights obtained, and the advice given by the leadership team are all in line with the organizational goals.

Let’s have a closer look at the steps:

Problem: Identify and prioritize key problems for the organization.
Opinion: Solicit opinions (not data) and think through possible solutions.
Data: Determine the type of data required to answer the problem defined in steps 1 & 2. Data may already exist; if not, establish a formal data collection process and begin data collection.
Analysis & Metrics: Start analyzing the data and metrics. Our team of analysts uses specialized software to interpret the results.
Insight: Our team of skilled analysts takes a close look at the entire picture and draws insights from the data, including answers to the questions defined in the beginning. These findings are then communicated to leadership in plain language.
Advice: Once these insights have been reported, leadership, now armed with data analytics, can make data-driven decisions.

How other organizations leverage people analytics

Many organizations have successfully implemented and enjoyed the benefits of people analytics, and those numbers are growing fast.

Another organization that is leveraging psychographics is Seedcamp. Their objective is to identify groups of employees (teams) that have the greatest odds for success.

Saberr uses algorithms that enable them to focus on the core values and behavioral traits of their candidates. They feed data into their algorithms to help them compare key values, behavioral compatibility, and diversity, thus helping them ultimately predict with much higher precision the strength of the interpersonal relationship between the applicants and potential employer. They are able to eliminate the initial bias, by using a survey for both the employer and applicant.

Understanding the ROI of people analytics

How much does it cost your organization to replace an employee? Do you know your cost per hire? What is the cost of absenteeism per salaried or hourly employee?

By understanding the answers to these and other relevant questions we can start to see the kinds of returns your organization can experience.

How do people analytics affect the bottom line?

Let’s take a hypothetical example:

Say your organization has 1,500 employees, with an average turnover rate of 18.5% (up from 15.1% in 2013). Let’s also assume your average employee salary is $70,000.

Lastly, we need an employee replacement rate. Some studies estimate 50% to 60% of an employee’s annual salary, while others say the ranges may be even higher for jobs that require a higher level of education and specialized skills, such as 213% for senior or executive level positions.

In our example, however, we will keep it simple and say it costs a third (33%) of an employee’s annual salary to replace them. Keep in mind our example does not include cost per hire or cost for absenteeism, which would drive our loss even higher.

Let’s throw these numbers into a spreadsheet so we can begin to see the real value people analytics can bring to your bottom line.

In this example, it’s costing this organization almost six and a half million dollars ($6,500,000) to replace employees every year.

Now that we understand the loss (and potential gain), we can start to analyze and explore solutions that will help increase the retention rate and reduce employee turnover. By drilling down on the data and understanding why people leave the organization and the things we can do to prevent them from leaving, we can start to see the impact this would have on the bottom line.

In our example, we only used ‘averages’. Your actual numbers may be much higher or lower. Without people analytics and the invaluable insights it can reveal, it’s difficult to assess the opportunities that can improve the long-term performance of your organization.

A study by the Work Institute pointed out that over 75% of reasons employees leave can be prevented. The question then becomes: how is your organization dealing with this?

How should organizations implement people analytics?

Understand the return the organization can ultimately gain from a well-planned people analytics program. The example above is a great way to start thinking about this.
Sit down with your team and start asking where the challenges are and how those tie back to the organizational mission and strategy.
Research consulting companies who are experts in the field of people analytics and have the capability to develop a solution customized specifically for your organization.

What to look for in an analytics consulting company

Working with an analytics company that will execute successfully is a crucial step in the process. A reputable analytics consulting company has a team who are experts in the key areas of statistics, qualitative and quantitative data analysis, predictive and descriptive analytics. They also dominate an array of analytical tools that help understand vital aspects of the workforce.

Let’s bundle this up into a short list of key items to consider:

Determine if they are experts in the field of people analytics
Examine vendor portfolio, papers, and research
Check references
Interview the consulting company(s)
Consider and evaluate carefully (with your team)

What is the cost of implementation?

The cost for a successful people analytics implementation will depend entirely on the size of the organization, the kinds of questions you are trying to answer based on business goals, and whether existing data can be utilized or whether you will need to collect it. We encourage you to reach out to our people analytics team of experts for information on planning, strategy and investment.

Think of ‘cost’ in a different way

If you are an executive, particularly in Human Resource Management, then you know full well the challenges, and more importantly, the costs involved in hiring the wrong employees, the loss of those stellar ones, and the pain of dealing with absenteeism. Therefore the investment your organization makes in people analytics can easily be offset by improving those areas – quickly.

Anne Loehr, our Senior Vice President, said that organizations and top performers with advanced analytics strategies tend to enjoy increased revenue growth and operating margins of 15% or more.

The challenge then becomes how to align those issues with the strategy and mission, to solve these revenue-draining problems.

How does CHCI use people analytics to help organizations?

Our team of analysts is obsessed with discovering insights that are strictly based on evidence. Put simply, we help leaders make better workforce related decisions.

Our analysts are experts in the following research methods:

Quantitative and qualitative data analysis
Organizational network analysis
Future workforce trend analysis
ROI analysis
Survey design
Thematic and numeric content analysis

Getting a bit more technical, CHCI calculates and extrapolates information from descriptive and inferential statistical tests, including measures of central tendency, variability, correlations, chi-square tests, linear, logit, probit, and selection regression models to support analytically-based, human capital decisions. Why? To achieve measurable improvement in productivity and engagement across an organization.

Overview of capabilities

CHCI uses an array of analytical tools to assess an organization’s workforce characteristics. These tools help you make data-informed recommendations on topics such as talent acquisition, workforce planning, employee engagement, and performance evaluation.

Below is a list of the characteristics of our process. For a detail view on each of these, we invite you to read our complimentary people analytics summary paper.

Analysis of existing data
Survey design
Performance assessment development
Existing policy review
Organizational network analysis

Conclusion

Having the ability to make decisions based on evidence is important. While we need the data of people analytics, this process will always rely on a ‘human element’ as well.

We are living in an age where almost everything we do generates some form of data, known as big data. And if you are not putting systems and processes in place today to help your organization leverage that data, you are falling behind. Without the ability to extract context that allows you to make sense of that data, it serves no value for your business.

So ask yourself where your business will be in ten years. Did you adopt analytics early enough to position your organization for success in the future? Will you have people and business analytics in place that will help you stay competitive? And lastly, will you have organized the data in such a way that allows you to seamlessly merge with AI technology?

These answers will not be straight-forward. However, what is certain is that only you can answer them.

The post People Analytics: Creating The Ultimate Workforce appeared first on CHCI.

Confession: I’m a Closet Data Geek

admin — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 21:06:07 +0000

Years ago, I dropped out of an Ivy League school to become a chef. Back then, chefs weren’t the celebrity stars they are today. So when it came to telling my parents I wanted to trade those hallowed halls for hot kitchens, and turn in my white-collar career path for the literal white collar of a sous chef’s coat–well, let’s just say the conversation was tense.

But I did it. After working as a chef for some time, I wound up back at an Ivy, eventually completing my degree at Cornell University’s hotel school. Hospitality was a good field for me because I’m a people person; my love for the humanities and other cultures has always pushed me toward human interactions–toward getting to know people.

For the first half of my career, that was always an in-person, hands-on, totally analog process. Much more recently–and much to my surprise–I’ve learned how to do it through data, too. Here’s how.

People to Patterns

At 25, I moved to Kenya to run a hotel that had more staff than guests, a 10% occupancy rate, and 12 wine glasses. I was the only woman, young, overly confident, and struggling to manage a staff twice my age. I cried myself to sleep just about every night for six months straight.

Eight years later, I’d finally turned the hotel around and decided to start an eco-safari company. It was only after both of those businesses sold, around four years later, that I found myself confronting a new cliff’s edge of career choices, no less difficult than my earlier decision quit college to cook: If I could do anything, what would I do?

I found myself focusing again on those people skills–which at this point in my career now included the relationship-building and leadership chops I’d gained by overseeing 500 employees from all different backgrounds while facing down tsunamis, food shortages, lions, and more. So I became a certified executive coach, wrote books, gave talks, and developed online coursework that blended management coaching with diversity training. And the more of this work I did, the more patterns I began to notice.

I’ve always loved patterns. Hospitality is all about “people patterns”–understanding who guests are, what makes them tick, how to motivate them. My job was to uncover the patterns that made them return for another holiday or a meal. But quite honestly, even the patterns in intricate pastry design drew me in. After leaving hospitality, I similarly found the patterns of communication and energy that take place within a group of people in an organization enthralled me just as much.

That’s what led me to the world of data. Yes, a former pastry chef who ran a hotel and eco-safari company in Kenya–a speaker, writer, trainer and coach–is officially coming out as a closet data geek. Ta-da!

The Proof is in the Numbers

Why? Making a difference is important to me. All the speaking and training I’ve done to help organizations increase their emotional intelligence, find their values, prepare for the future of work, and increase their employee engagement was always really interesting to me. Yet I had a nagging question in my mind: Was this a “random act of training” that would go in one ear and out the other? Or was I actually helping change organizational behavior on a large scale and for good? I’d collected anecdotes that certain programs indeed made a difference, but I lacked statistical proof.

I found myself searching for a way to quantify the results of my work. How could I really know if my ideas increased employee engagement? What evidence did I have that a particular unconscious-bias training changed organizational dynamics? How could I prove that losing employees cost a lot more than just the price of recruiting a replacement? Well, now I know how: with data–specifically, “people analytics.”

HR departments have been collecting data for decades: head count, attrition rates, diversity numbers, absenteeism, maybe even satisfaction results. Yet merely reporting those numbers faithfully isn’t doing anybody good. The field of people analytics represents an opportunity to gain deeper–and actionable— knowledge of the workforce. It’s a way to track the work being done inside organizations, then making g data-driven decisions to improve them, instead of just writing a narrative of reform based on intuition or subjective experience. To me, this is a natural and fascinating extension of the people skills I’ve spent my whole career developing. The through-line couldn’t be clearer.

Here are some examples of why data is exciting: I can geek out and learn things like why attrition in certain demographic group is on the rise. I can alert leadership that despite a low turnover rate overall, their “high performer” turnover is actually quite high. Then we can sit down to find out why and focus on solving that particular problem. I can speak to and train leaders on how to improve their organizations’ employee engagement, and then I can test if behavior actually changed. And if behaviors don’t budge? I can look at the new data, reevaluate, and try again. However, from time to time many organizations provide best employee engagement programs to further enhance productivity.

It all comes down to the patterns and trends–footprints in the sand left by hundreds or thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of human beings, all moving in various directions, sometimes together and sometimes, well, not. I find it fascinating, but I also find it extraordinarily meaningful. With the data to back up the work I’m doing, I’m finally able t0 prove that I’m making a difference.

The post Confession: I’m a Closet Data Geek appeared first on CHCI.