Making a Business Case for People Analytics at Your Company
This article by Mike West steps us through how to create a business case for people analytics and the pitfalls to avoid along the way. He puts a strong emphasis on finding and solving problems to win people over and add value rather than trying to create a general business case for analytics. His suggestions invoke great change management techniques and can be summarised as:
- Focus on solutions to problems
- Don’t guess or assume what is wrong – talk to people and learn about their needs
- Take the lead – on helping people think about solutions
- Use data, be evidence-based
- Think about people’s feelings – their fears and hopes – when exploring and helping them change
“The Good News / Bad News
The good news is that everyone (you, the head of human resources, the head of recruiting, the business leaders and employees) share identical interests: you all want the same thing, you just don’t know it yet.
You all want solutions that help the company succeed through the collective inputs of employees. The business leaders get the things they think should be done. Employees get to advance their career. Recruiters and HR people get to facilitate. It is a beautiful thing. It feeds families and it drives the economy.
The bad news is that often the business leaders aren’t aware there is a people problem, aren’t aware people analytics can help them solve the problem or don’t look to HR to help them solve problems with analytics. They look to HR for other things but not data and analytics.
Continue reading Mike West’s article.