People data is a must-have, but how do you unlock its true potential?

When organizations take advantage of workforce data to inform their people decisions, research has proven that they outperform those that don’t.

From “The Economic Impact of Visier People to European Organizations” whitepaper

When organizations take advantage of people analytics to inform their people decisions, it’s proven that they outperform organizations that aren’t doing so. The adoption of people analytics links to better workforce data for decision-making and from there, to higher employee engagement, higher employee productivity, and improved talent management.

The problem for people leaders, is what to do with, and how to manage, the sheer scale of data they have now.

For example, in their 2020/2021 HR Systems Survey, Sapient Insights Group cites that on average organizations are using 10.3 applications to collect and manage people data. And that’s hardly surprising, with the explosion of capabilities in collecting data on your people and the technologies available to collect this information.

But, how do you break things down and make your people data comprehensible, easy to access, and discoverable in a single ecosystem of insights?

Watch this on-demand session to hear first-hand how Olly Britnell (Experian) and Ian Cook (Visier) are leveraging people data and analytics to deliver simple and effective answers to key business questions, at scale.

Watch this on-demand webinar to learn:

• How the enterprise people data and technology ecosystem is evolving
• What a typical data analytics ecosystem looks like to benchmark your own situation against
• How to empower people managers and business leaders with insights at scale through people analytics
• How leading organizations are moving to an ecosystem of cohesive insights to deliver actionable results for business stakeholders
• The role of the broader HR function to deliver people insights to support & drive better people decisions

Hear more from Olly here: Experian’s Olly Britnell on the benefits of people data and analytics for HR 

Key people data trends

Our expert panelists discussed some of the top-line trends and changes in the people data and insights space. Here are some that were covered in the session:

• In many organizations, HR’s use of data has enabled them to cement their seat at the decision-making table, giving them the same weight as Finance and Sales departments on driving business strategy.
• There has been a heightened usage of data and analytics during the pandemic, given the need for understanding an organizations’ people, whilst oftentimes working remote. This has increased the uptake of things like sentiment analysis and employee surveys.
• There is a heightened pressure on organizations to report certain information (for example, areas like DE&I, where interest and the need for transparency and accountability have risen sharply). This puts pressure onto HR teams, especially those working in data and analytics, due to the need to report on this information and reliance from the wider business on them to track and drive progress for the right behaviors and metrics.

No one size fits all

Olly outlined that getting to grips with the data insights in one organization is not something that you can really do in comparison to others. Every organization uses different HR technology, different KPIs, different levels of data quality, and different maturity levels when it comes to their data. For example, at Experian, Olly has been there for 8 years, they have a disparate technology landscape, using about 5 or 6 systems and they’ve had to work really hard to get individual teams to manage the data that then flows into Olly’s team, right.

In equal measure, Ian too outlined the need for HR leaders to understand that there’s a progression journey to maturity that each organization will go through.

Enabling change management

Both of our panelists outlined how leaders can turn people data into a comprehensible, easy-to-access ecosystem of insights. They also nodded that these insights can be a great change management enabler. Olly considered, that Experian’s HR strategy relies on data and analytics, which helps the company in areas like retention, diversity and inclusion, and skills.

And in our recent interview with Olly, he outlined, “To build on the visualization and analytics piece that Visier helps Experian with, Olly explained that the credit company has created its own forward-looking predictive solution. This product is similar to its credit risk scoring tech, but rather than relying on financial data, Experian’s attrition prediction tool relies on people data to figure out people’s flight risk from organizations. It allows companies to have “real insight around the factors driving attrition”. For instance, it can track if someone has had multiple managers in the last year or they haven’t had a promotion or pay rise for three years, and then figure out the likelihood of them leaving the organization.”

Having these kinds of insights, in a manageable, readable, and discoverable ecosystem is so important to the success, and ability to future scope and adapt within an organization.

Watch this on-demand webinar now.

Both Olly and Ian share some really tangible and helpful starters for managing your data ecosystem, from knowing who should own data and the quality of this, to the scalability and considerations of efficiency.

If you enjoyed this session, watch this space for our upcoming webinar in partnership with Visier on Thursday 9th December.