Giovanni is a global expert on Organizational Strategy, People Analytics, and HR.

A Harvard Business School alum, he serves as Senior Advisor for multiple forms across the globe, including Boston Global – a Harvard affiliated consultancy, Qlearsite – a People Analytics startup and PeopleCart, a Social Rewards & Recognition company.

Giovanni is a passionate writer and speaker on The Future of Work, Strategic HR, and People Analytics. He has been a speaker at the global SHRM and CIPD annual conferences. His writing and thinking are featured on TLNT.com, in Changeboard magazine and in the people analytics practitioner’s textbook “The Power of People”. Outside his corporate life, he recently produced “SHE”, an award-winning documentary on Female Empowerment in the Middle East.

What are the key aspects of employee performance that are critical to the success of HR Analytics?

Quality of the measurement system, the granularity of the data, the extent of subjectivity (less is more) and the availability of historical (consistently captured) data.

How can HR Analytics enhance employee performance?

HR analytics can help you understand what happened and where, what is currently happening and where plus, provided you have the quality and sufficient history of data – how certain interventions will impact what will happen next. Understanding the key drivers for performance specific to each subset of employees can help develop programs, policies, and initiatives that optimize performance for each of these groups.

What do CEOs/CHROs look for in employee performance analytics?

Leadership should look to understand and solve business problems through HR and performance data. I like to say that if all you do is solve HR problems, you are not doing it right. The goal should always be to identify how HR data and insight can drive business performance, and this starts with the entire leadership team, led by the CEO, meeting to discuss and agree on a set of critical strategic questions that HR analytics would need to answer. Without these questions, analytics is a means to no end, and getting any meaningful, actionable insight will be hard.

What is missing in terms of employee performance data that could make HR Analytics even more meaningful?

Most organizations have not reached a level of ‘scientific’ measures for performance. Certain industries like Call Centers, Factory Work or Back Office operations naturally lend themselves more for a robust set of easily measurable, quantitive and qualitative metrics. Most white collar/knowledge worker roles, however, are far more difficult to measure when it comes to performance and often have a large component of subjectivity and proxy measures. If the quality or quantity of your performance data is not what it needs to be, it will become hard to get any meaningful insights out of HR analytics. Garbage in – misleadingly convincing garbage out.

Can HR Analytics play a prescriptive role in helping employee finetune performance real-time?

There is no reason why it won’t in the near future. Much like playing console games and getting real-time performance feedback and coaching. Its no different from professional sports either, American Football teams use highly sophisticated sensors, coupled with real-time analytics and simulation software to measure athletes stamina, injury proneness, efficiency and accuracy in real-time during practice or games. This allows coaches to provide augmented coaching specific to each player and context to ensure optimal performance at all times. If you think about it, coaching a professional sports team is the ultimate metaphor for HR, from identifying to attracting, to developing and performance managing players.

Related Resources:

In Analytics, the Questions Come First

Giovanni Gavino Everduin, Senior Advisor HR at Boston Global Communications & Performance Inc.