Getting started with HR Analytics: An HR Director's Tale - Part 1

Our HRD plans to resort to James Bond style tactics to crack HR Analytics in his business

Picture the scene. The chastened HR Director stumbles out of the CEO’s office having received an almighty rollicking. The CEO had just got back from a few days of hobnobbing with his peers and he was furious. The reason for his ire was the fact that he was so damn impressed with the HR Analytics the likes of GE had. He had heard how they had used this data to directly inform business strategy and that the positive impacts on business performance and bottom line had been marked.

Never one to be made to feel behind the curve in any way to his peers, the CEO wanted HR Analytics and he wanted it now. He’d given it to the HRD with both barrels and as the shellshocked recipient reflected, the CEO’s hairdryer treatment made Alex Ferguson’s look like a mere breeze in comparison. He now had a month to compile a plan on something he’d previously regarded as a mere fad – “Data in HR? What’s wrong with intuition?” the HRD muttered to himself.

Where was he going to start? Remembering that the CEO had blasted that “big data was the last chance for the HR function to be relevant in the business”, he resolved that he’d better begin at the start.

Read some books

First thing’s first the HRD thought, was to get on-line and download some reading material onto his Kindle. He was surprised at the number of books there were on HR Analytics and immediately felt a bit foolish. He really was a bit out of touch he had to admit to himself. He bought three books: HR Analytics: The What, Why and How by Tracey Smith, Keeping Up With The Quants by Thomas Davenport and People Analytics by Ben Waber.

Join some LinkedIn Groups

Having mentioned the predicament to his Generation Y daughter, the HRD had been advised to join a couple of LinkedIn groups focused on HR Analytics. After much searching and a couple of additional calls to his daughter to help him navigate his way around LinkedIn he found what seemed to be two excellent groups: People Analytics: Data Driven HR and what would become as time wore on a very familiar hang out for the HRD – Measuring Human Capital.

Sign up to some HR Analytics blogs

His daughter also advised the HRD to seek out and subscribe to some specialist blogs on HR Analytics. The HRD was flabbergasted at how many blogs they were. Some chap called Bersin was particularly ubiquitous so along with his The Business of HR, the HRD subscribed to the excellent HR Intelligence Blog and All About Human Capital.

Start utilising his Forbes and HBR subscriptions

Last time the CEO went to Davos he came back and eulogised to the extended leadership team (the HRD wasn’t on the ACTUAL leadership team although he was beginning to think he might if he could crack this HR Analytics gig) about how they should all read the likes of Forbes, The Economist and Harvard Business Review. The HRD had wondered if this was really relevant to him preferring to occasionally browse the odd HR publication alongside his Harry Potter obsession but had signed up to the company paid subscriptions in any case. Now he was visibly shocked at the treasure trove of information he had had access to all along. It was going to take a month to read it all!

Go to a conference and network

Being in HR, the HRD liked nothing better than going to a conference and networking with his peers. He wondered whether there were any conferences coming up where HR Analytics was one of the key themes. He was surprised to see that there were 14 HR Analytics conferences in 2014 alone and asked his PA to sign him up to a couple straight away.

Get all James Bond with Google

The HRD didn’t know much about HR Analytics (although he was already quickly beginning to learn) but he did have a nephew who worked at Google and he knew that when it came to HR Analytics, Google was the daddy. Indeed, his nephew had sent him an article that had appeared in The Atlantic entitled How Google Uses Data To Build A Better Worker. He put in a call to see if his nephew could fix him up with a meeting with someone from Google’s People Analytics Department. He chuckled to himself, he would be like James Bond infiltrating Spectre except he would be going undercover at Google.

This should give him the basics, the HRD thought. At least he’d know what HR Analytics actually was after all of this. Read Part 2 in a week or so to see how he gets on...

All characters appearing in this work are entirely fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental... though perhaps not a surprise.

David is Director of Business Development for Cielo (formerly known as Pinstripe & Ochre House) in Europe. Please feel free to connect on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter @david_green_uk