Gene Pease is a globally recognized thinker, pioneer, and educator in workforce optimization and people analytics. He is the author of three books on people predictive analytics published in the Wiley and SAS Business Series and has more than 25 years’ experience as a CEO and board member. Gene was the founder, CEO, and board member of Vestrics (formerly Capital Analytics), one of the first SaaS people predictive analytics solutions, that was acquired by Ultimate Software in 2016.

What key aspects of employee performance can HR analytics
uncover?

HR analytics can discover a multitude of factors that impact both an employee and an organizations performance. Employee engagement, retention and performance are the most commonly measured factors. We now can uncover collaboration networks, meeting and communication overload, special influences, health factors, among others.

How can HR Analytics enhance employee performance?

We know that the application of HR analytics shows insights into people’s behaviors, connections, and performance previously unknown. Many studies show that organizations that create an analytics-driven, fact-based culture outperform their competitors. Done right, we know that people analytics delivers insights to improve people’s careers.

Analytics is helping senior leaders to understand attrition, hiring metrics, and employee engagement, segmented by a manager, business unit and geography. A hospital is using analytics to understand the patterns of patient outcomes and how wellness initiatives contribute to these outcomes. A sales organization has partnered with HR to develop a complete model for sales productivity.

Make sure your organization has moved from reporting and descriptive analysis (reports, dashboards, benchmarks, etc.) into predictive analytics. There is significant market confusion on the difference between reporting and analytics. Most dashboards simply report activities, maybe adding in trends and benchmarks, reporting the past. Reporting answers the question What Happened? Moving into analytics allows you to understand Why it Happened? As well as predicting future outcomes (such as regrettable turnover). You can now make adjustments to various initiatives to optimize the employee experience, as well as improve organizational performance.

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

CEO’s are interested in the metrics that drive the organizations’ performance. These business metrics typically revolve around revenue, market share, and profit, so HR must concentrate their work on the important business issues and communicate in business terms, not HR speak.

CHROs must balance privacy and trust in the handling and use of employee sensitive data. They need to make sure the organization has established data privacy and security protocols for transmitting and using personal data.

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

HR is making significant progress in understanding the complexity of hiring, training and retaining key employees. New work in the social sciences (such as organizational network analysis, ONA), as well as new data mining techniques, are allowing for greater insights into the workforce.

For example, moving from annual to quarterly engagement surveys give a much better picture of an organization’s engagement. New technologies now allow constant monitoring of the “voice of the employee.” This allows management to have a “real-time” pulse of their workforce.

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

Absolutely. Advanced analytics can now track and analyze a dizzying amount of employee data, including data harvested from voice communications, personal interactions, and video interviews. Predictive analytics tools now analyze recruitment, performance, employee mobility, and many other factors. The sentiment of employee emails can now be measured and monitored. Data-driven tools now uncover collaboration networks, enable innovation, analyze employee feedback to identify management challenges and send coaching tips to leaders. Data-driven tools measure training comprehension in real-time and even analyze employee patterns for time management driven by email and calendar data. These new amazing insights have been significantly driven by technology advancements and all further our understanding of peoples behaviors and performance.