projects,” agrees Andy Papworth,
director of people insight at Lloyds
Banking Group.
Fink notes the teams she has
worked in have housed a host of
backgrounds and expertise even
beyond HR and IT. “There’s generally
a core of graduate-level industrial,
organisational psychologists, but also
folks with backgrounds in other social
sciences like cognitive, social,
educational and developmental
psychology, anthropology, economics
or government; those with MBAs and
consulting backgrounds, and folks
coming out of hard sciences like
physics, chemistry, mathematics,
engineering, even geology,” she says.
“I’ve seen really effective people
come from being paralegals, or
teaching... or HR generalist roles.”
Fink cautions against building a
people analytics team to hard and
fast rules. “Just like parenting, there’s
no one right way to approach people
analytics work. The structure and
charter of my team reflect the size,
complexity, priorities, challenges and
culture of the organisation I am
serving at the time,” she says.
“Part of what’s fun and exciting
about people analytics work is that
it’s not one size fits all.” HR
People analytics teams HR Technology Supplement
Setting up a people analytics
function at GSK
Tim Haynes, VP and head of global people data and
analytics at GSK
“First, a confession. I am not a data scientist, mathematician,
statistician, or anything similarly ‘techy’. I am in fact an
organisational change and development specialist who believes
in the value of evidence-based decision-making when working on
complex organisational challenges. So when the opportunity
came up to lead the new global people analytics team at GSK, I
jumped at the chance.
My job is not a technical one but is essentially change management – helping
GSK’s global HR function become more data savvy and using workforce data
and insight to aid better business decision-making.
My global people data and analytics team sits within the talent, learning
and organisational development centre of excellence (CoE) in HR. Being
in a CoE (instead of in operations or being decentralised in the business) has
allowed us to grow our capabilities in a focused way and to develop
people data and analytics products, services and standards globally for
the HR function.
I don’t believe being in a CoE is necessarily the only option for a people
analytics team, however; and once we have established a strong enough global
capability in people analytics, I would expect that to be deployed more directly
to support the business units.
As it is today, the global people data and analytics team is organised into
four groups:
1
2
3
4
Organisation and people analytics – data analysts and business consultants
who focus on solving complex organisational questions with clear business
outcomes, such as what workforce factors are driving higher sales
performance.
Reporting and insights – focused on providing high-quality insights from our
core HR systems and using relevant business intelligence software to visualise
workforce data, making it easy to understand and act on.
Surveys and measures – focused on the design, delivery and analysis of
GSK’s core culture and leadership measurement processes, such as the global
employee survey.
Master people data management – this is a new extension to the team
which we’re just in the process of standing up to ensure we have appropriate
governance and standards to deliver high-quality workforce data and insights.
Having a team that takes a global perspective brings value to HR and the
business. It has enabled us to develop some common global data and insights
products and services for HR, such as a Global Workforce Dashboard containing
core headcount, talent, diversity and other vital datasets used by senior HR
leaders around the world.
It’s allowed us to deploy expert resources on challenging issues such as
the people dimension of manufacturing quality outcomes in our supply
chain. And it’s given us the ability to measure things that are diffi cult to measure,
like company culture and the quality of people management practices.
But it’s not all plain sailing. Because of the complex, unpredictable nature of
people and organisational data, demonstrating and delivering hard, tangible
business benefi ts from people analytics takes time. Additionally, the ethics of how
we use employee data is of paramount importance.
But this slows things down. In an era where there’s much talk of ‘Agile’ ways of
working and the appetite to consume more and more data is growing
exponentially by the day, it’s a constant challenge for us.
It’s one which requires careful stakeholder management to set clear
expectations about what can realistically be achieved in what timescales.”
hrmagazine.co.uk October 2019 HR 17
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