Driving business transformation through analytics and insights

By Andreas Papadopoulos

In today’s fast changing business environment, tremendous forces are radically reshaping the workplace. The bad news is that making decisions for our people and organisations has never been more complex as it is today. The good news is that we have never been more equipped to make better decisions than we are today and that’s primarily because of People Analytics.

The rising need for a data-driven HR

What is very clear is that COVID-19 has forced Top Management and Boards to make fast and critical decisions to cope with unexpected changes and events. In a period where organisations are undergoing unprecedented change and transformation, HR functions should not be just acting as facilitators of this change. There is a need for HR functions to go beyond traditional reports of headcounts and qualitative assumptions into meaningful insights that are linked to the strategic priorities of the organisation, relate these to tangible business outcomes and drive transformation through a people-centric and data-driven culture.

Exploiting the power of People Analytics & Insights

Leveraging insights from our people, will not just identify the obvious, or the “what I‘ve heard”, but will get to the root of a problem and provide a more concrete and justified snapshot of it. Communicating to management that our rewards do not really motivate our people is one thing. But presenting through data that 75 per cent of our people believe that a particular reward practice which costs the company €20.000 annually, is not of real value to them, is a totally different game.

Another benefit of unleashing the power of data, is that it can reveal things you haven’t even thought of and because it’s data, it’s evidence, it’s therefore hard to argue or ignore. For a Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals business, the analysis of their people data helped them acknowledge the need to create a new Performance Management System (PMS) and offer a more personalised experience to their employees. Following the launch of the new PMS system, 95 per cent of people said they preferred the experience gained from the new PMS, a 33 per cent increase was noted in people having more meaningful objectives to work on, a 29 per cent increase in receiving better and more developmental feedback and 22 per cent increase in feeling rewarded and recognised for their contribution. Evidently, without proper information, there are no proper decisions, but with People Analytics & Insights, you don’t assume, you know.

From knowing, to anticipating and doing

With that in mind, and the potential that exists from your people’s insights, the critical question when it comes to decisions is: What would you do if you had all the data you need to make a decision? What if you knew not whether your people perform better or worse during their shift in a hybrid working mode, but what specifically would boost their performance and engagement and how that would impact your company’s strategic priorities. What if you could support your strategic decisions with insights gained from your greatest asset, your people.

HR has been stigmatised for making decisions based on assumptions and anecdotal evidence, but now, HR must act with the capacity to bring insights in the areas that are critical for long-term success. Imagine having an in-house Strategic Business Partner that brings all the data you need to know around your organisation’s ability to perform in the future, to make wise decisions. Imagine having all the data you need in the critical areas of success – Leadership, Processes, Culture and Capabilities – to make decisions that enable transformation.

It’s not intuition or data, it’s both

When it comes to making decisions, there may be no “right decisions”, but what we can have, are evidence-based decisions. Besides, we will never replace human intuition and experience, but we can definitely reinforce it with insights gained from our people, to make better, faster and data-driven decisions.

Start small to go big

Transforming into this people-insight driven organisation is not easy. However, the creation of database and critical data channels to enable meaningful data collection and analysis is a solid step towards this direction.

Andreas Papadopoulos is a consultant on people and business transformation at PwC Cyprus