From The Dark Ages to The Enlightenment - People Analytics in Practice (1/4)

After reading so many interesting articles and interviews about the fascinating People Analytics ball game I want to share my personal journey too. This one started around 5 years ago in the Talent Acquisition domain and expanded to the broader HR field. In this first chapter it's about the early beginnings: The Dark Ages of analyzing and sharing first results.

Part 1. The Dark Ages

I have to admit, despite of being teach Human Resources Management, my personal interest always belonged to the data, process and business corner of HR. No wonder I came up with a brilliant idea related to this field.

Only a couple of years ago my team and I proudly present a new methodology of analyzing the recruitment processes of the company we worked for. At that time the organization was improving the entire End2End recruitment process flow, implementing standardized templates, upgrading the tools and so forth. All related to reduce time to fill and other recruitment metrics. We, on the contrary, shared the belief that the biggest gain in effective recruitment management can be found BEFORE a vacancy pops up, not exclusively DURING the vacancy process.

Our solution was as simple as one can imagine, though very powerful in terms of recruitment effectiveness. Based on statistical data analyses we were able to answer questions such as (and not limited to):

-         predicting the chance of hiring a new employee headhunted from a direct competitor;

-         predicting time to fill per functional discipline, location or per job grade;

-         predicting the chance we were able to hire a new employee from another country or region.

This information, we were convinced, would add huge value to our business managers and we were better than before in managing expectations. Moreover it should empower us to hire the best possible candidate: so overall an increased top line performance. One can imagine how excited we are to present our findings to a bigger audience, especially where the responses we gained from several business managers were promising.

So, to me it came as a big surprise that the reaction within the HR departments was, so to speak, mixed. Most heard comments? “We talk about people, this is not a factory”. Others just took it for granted and moved on with their daily work, business as usual. The results were there, the added value is visible and in terms of investment costs are close to nothing, how come people aren’t enthusiastic? Maybe at that time our stakeholder management was not that efficient, moreover I faced in practice how tough it is to change the status quo. However, it strengthened my belief we were on the right track and part of something big. 

Dr. Salvatore Falletta

Author, Creepy Analytics: Avoid Crossing the Line and Establish Ethical HR Analytics for Smarter Workforce Decisions (McGraw-Hill, 2024)

7y

The Dilbert is gold and elucidates the ethical implications of Big Data and people analytics. Haven't we learned anything from Edward Snowden's revelations? 😀

Interesting blog Mattijs Mol

Meh, I post here so there's something controversial about me. Most everyone else is about as bland as it gets

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