Dave has a business (risk/lending) and HR background based in financial services where he was a key internal consultant involved with the research, design, and delivery of a range of performance/competency-based consultancy solutions for a range of businesses and brands in the NatWest/RBS Group.
Dave’s real passion revolves around the vital role that HR can provide to organizations and has been supporting HR functions to become more commercially focused so that they can provide a transformational workforce experience to their employees.
He is a regular presenter at conferences promoting the future of HR, the role of technology and the need for analytics to demonstrate tangible business value in the ever-changing digital world of work.
He is regarded as a social media guru through @HRCurator, being referenced as being one of the Most Influential People on Twitter in a number of subject areas.
What employee performance KPIs are potentially useful as inputs to HR analytics?
As we know people analytics have become a crucial tool for HR functions as they help organizations to make smarter, more strategic and more informed talent decisions. However, they are only as good as the data that is available and therefore if a scorecard-based approach is being adopted in an organization it is important that there is a clear alignment between the organizational goals/KPI’s and those of individuals within them.
That means that KPI’s that have an obvious link to organizational performance such as:
- Sales performance
- Levels of Productivity
- Operationally driven outcomes that relate to for example process and customer outcomes
- Customer experience-based outcomes can be a good place to start
However, we do have to remember that every organization has a unique culture, a set of values, areas of competitive differentiation and a unique customer offering all of which mean that a generic list of KPI’s can
sometimes be misleading.
sometimes be misleading.
How can HR Analytics enhance employee performance?
All HR analytics considerations have to start with the business problem that they are trying to resolve and obtain greater insight into. So, if for example a performance issue was being seen within a certain part of the workforce then one way to use analytics to enhance performance is to consider an outlier-based approach (i.e.: what is it that high performers do that lower performers aren’t doing?)
These approaches revolve around:
- What are the business critical roles where there are performance issues being seen? (for example, there is a 150% difference between high and low performers in a specific role).
- Collect all the available data from all the job holders in that role.
- What are the differences between the group of higher and lower performers in those roles? These can be business data, capability data, specific experiences etc.
- Quantify those differences by analyzing the data to provide insights into what are the performance differentiators in terms of inputs and outputs for these groups.
- Based on those findings report the outcomes of what is being seen.
- Devise a plan that calibrates the high-performance criteria and differentiators as the basis for future recruitment, development, performance management, and workforce planning purposes.
- Ensure that the leaders and managers responsible for those job holders change their approaches so that they reinforce these differentiating factors in all their day to day and team management efforts.
- Ensure that revised KPI’s reflect the new demands required from the job holders.
What do CEOs/CHROs look for in employee performance analytics?
They are looking for analytics-based insights to indicate how higher levels of performance could be generated, reinforced and/or sustained at an individual, team and organizational level.
I believe that they are looking for analytics to better inform decisions that relate to:
I believe that they are looking for analytics to better inform decisions that relate to:
- Where should I invest the organizations’ money to obtain the best return on investment?
- What can be done to better manage and more efficiently facilitate cost management?
- Where are the opportunities to build and grow the organization through better individual and team performance?
- What can we learn from certain parts of the business where performance is at a higher level than others?
- How can we use real-time data and analytics to better facilitate and manage change processes in an organization?
What is missing in terms of employee performance data that could make HR Analytics even more meaningful?
For me, the most significant gap in most organizations is their ability to effectively and accurately measure productivity and tangible outcomes from individuals and teams in their organization. If that type of reliable data was available across the board then a lot of the complexities associated with the analytics process would be minimized.
Can HR Analytics play a prescriptive role in helping employee finetune performance real-time?
This is most certainly possible and a number of organizations are already exploring this real-time opportunity when it comes to well-being, stress levels, real-time project-based feedback, peer feedback etc. The technology is available but understandably the need to resolve the level of intrusiveness is a crucial element before widespread implementation is seen.
The breadth and depth of quality data that could be obtained could be significant and take analytics to a different level; the challenge is whether organizations and their employees are ready for it today.
