Jouko is one of Cubiks’ Executive Directors and heads up the company’s People Analytics department. As a data enthusiast, Jouko is passionate about connecting people and data to create actionable insights on the trends, opportunities, and challenges that matter to HR. He believes that People Analytics is about much more than algorithms, and he’s passionate about helping HR understand the unique talent stories data analytics can tell.

• More information on Cubiks People Analytics insights and articles.
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What are the key aspects of employee performance that are critical to the success of HR Analytics?

I would like to approach it a bit differently and start with ‘What is the business problem you want to tackle?’ That’s the real power of HR analytics. Your company’s HR Analytics projects will only be successful if you first define the problem you want to solve. I have seen companies spending a lot of time (and money) exploring the people data they have without a clear purpose, or direction. These projects are doomed to fail.

So let’s assume the challenge is to improve employee performance, the first step would be to think about how performance is measured in your organization (and/or how it could be measured). Data such as annual reviews ratings, productivity numbers, sales results, and individual KPIs could be used for this purpose. Then, the second step would be to define what could be predictors of performance such as education, skills, and competencies. The third level of depth to add would be events or situations that are influencing performance and/or engagement such as L&D activities, an M&A or retention issues in the workplace. In an ideal world, this layered approach of the three areas of data works best. However, we all know how hard it can be to extract multiple data sets from a company. Quick successes and insight can also be formed with people data that is somewhat easier to get your hands on such as such as education, competences, and tenure.

How can HR Analytics enhance employee performance?

In so many ways. I truly believe that the promise of people analytics, which is broader than HR analytics, is huge and that we are just in the early stages of adoption. Fundamentally though, People Analytics is empowering both employees and companies to achieve their potential.

Most companies still need to start their people analytics journey or have just started. In the early days, most companies start at an operational level with People Analytics focused on HR topics such as time to hire, retention and engagement. People Analytics is making it easier to monitor and visualize these topics continuously (no more monthly reporting).

Once confidence builds and results are seen companies often start moving onto a more tactical approach to their analytics. They start to combine data streams and create new information. For instance, combining engagement and productivity on a real-time basis can enable companies to continuously improve productivity by proactively influencing engagement.

Then you move onto the strategic use of people analytics and this is where the best results are gained. Here you start to create predictive data sets enabling a viewpoint on the future, although the promise here is great I do believe that most companies still have a lot to gain by getting the basics in order first.

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

People Analytics can help HR get ‘a seat at the table’. It makes HR more about facts and allows HR professionals to speak in a more credible and impactful language that resonates with senior business leaders. C-suite leaders are most interested in hard metrics enabling a crisp and clear overview of the strengths, challenges, and gaps in the current workforce. Furthermore, they want ‘actionable’ insight that helps them look to the future to help plan for future success. But it should move beyond insights, it should also include execution and inspiration. People analytics can provide all of these.

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

In most companies, manager ratings are still heavily linked to yearly salary reviews and discussions. I think we all know that the quality of this data is not very impressive, but it is often the only thing we have. So to take People Analytics to the next level and really make a big step in improving and predicting employee performance we need to get our heads around other ways of measuring performance. There have been some interesting experiments already with companies overlaying client and peer feedback on an (almost) real-time basis.

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

Yes, definitely. Those jobs with tangible outputs and results illustrate this well. People Analytics is enabling continuous and real-time performance. Next, in measuring the tangible outcomes it is crucial that the insights (feedback) are appropriately shared with the employee. To improve performance it is critical that the feedback is focussed on the improvement and development of the employee and that it is shared in an easy and comprehensive way. As soon as the employee feels that the data is being used to disable, rather than enable them – the trust is gone and the development opportunity sacrificed.