People analytics teams HR Technology Supplement
planning in the workforce
transformation practice at
Deloitte. “High-impact people
analytics happens where there are
partnerships across the
organisation,” he says. “Analytics
should focus on business
challenges so, yes, the people
analytics team should look from
an HR lens, but they should be
focused on achieving broader
organisation objectives.”
At Swarovski this means the
people analytics team plays a part
in the wider strategic goals of the
two company divisions: retail and
beyond the boundaries of the
organisation to industries, labour
markets and communities,” she says.
“Finally, the z axis is about the way
you’re using the data. Are you
executing processes, doing
reporting, analysing in search of
patterns, or creating algorithms that
can effectively recommend courses
of action?”
There are “two very different ways”
of looking at the role of a people
analytics team, feels Levenson. “One
is that it is just a data processing
function. If you set up an HR
analytics team that way you’ll not
have to worry about business impact
or being a true business partner –
you’ll literally just be a dataprocessing
chimp,” he says.
“But if the goal is to get insights
that actually help the rest of the
business to run better, you can’t just
be a data processor. It needs to be
about insights, and not just HR
insights but business insights.”
The latter – focusing on business
data and issues rather than just HR
data and issues – is the direction
teams should be headed in, agrees
David Fineman, specialist leader in
people analytics and workforce
High-impact
people
analytics
happens
where
there are
partnerships
across the
organisation
hrmagazine.co.uk October 2019 HR 15
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