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Through this article, Mathew Thomas, discusses the importance of using data-driven insights to empower HR partners in making strategic decisions. Thomas highlights key industry challenges, including improving analytics skills, ensuring data quality and demonstrating the business value of people analytics. He also discusses the cautious use of AI in HR processes, sharing a successful AI-driven talent acquisition project that improved diversity and skill matching.
From Consulting to People Analytics: A Transformational Journey
I have had a varied and rich experience in the industry, with different roles that have enhanced my skills. I started my career at Accenture, where I mainly worked on project management consulting for clients like Microsoft, British Gas and BP in the UK, where I learned from different industries.
"People analytics has the potential to be a game changer for business outcomes, but only if leaders recognize the connection between people data and performance."
My career reached a turning point when I joined Reckitt in 2019, with the responsibility of creating and improving project management skills, especially during a time of entity restructuring. This experience highlighted the value of governance frameworks in organizational changes. I had the chance to perform various roles, including rolling out the SAP template for UKI Commercial and implementing the Group Financial Reporting system on SAP Hana. My path then took me to HR transformation, where I headed the Programme Office to enhance employee experience and introduce a shared service model to support business operations efficiently.
During this change, I understood the importance of using data for strategic planning, which led me to take charge of people analytics. This role enabled me to incorporate data-based insights into HR processes, helping HR business partners to make intelligent decisions and enhance their strategic value to the organization.
During the last 18 months, I've committed myself to improving analytics in our HR system, using data to support strategic projects and increase overall organizational efficiency.
Data, Skills and Strategic Decision-Making
There are three main perspectives to consider when considering the industry's challenges. One is the urgent need to improve skills, especially in analytics and the HR community. Merely flooding teams with data won't ensure the best insights or choices. Instead, the goal should be to enable HR partners to get valuable insights for smart decision-making.
Another challenge is making people's analytics data more influential in business decisions. It's essential to show how such data can affect net revenue, productivity and engagement. This requires a change of attitude at senior levels to understand the connection between people's data and business outcomes, making it relevant for business leaders.
One crucial factor for success is to ensure data quality. Even with advanced technologies like Power BI and strong data platforms, data quality is still very important. It is essential to have strong governance and controls in the data flow process, including different data sources like engagement surveys and financial data, to ensure trustworthy insights for decision-making.
Trends Shaping Tomorrow’s Workforce
We have been careful in addressing the use of AI solutions for dealing with sensitive data, especially data related to people. We have used AI carefully in the group, but our use in the data space has been limited because of data sensitivity, so we have used Power BI Q&A models instead. These models allow users to interact with the system by asking questions for data insights, and they suggest graphs and visuals as answers. Also, we have changed our reporting to match our main business strategies, which helps us quickly analyse which markets are doing well or poorly based on key performance indicators (KPIs). This approach helps us find outliers and underlying problems that may not be visible in aggregated data, improving our ability to deal with specific market challenges effectively. Therefore, we focus on intelligent data insights and strategic restructuring before going further into AI applications.
Transforming Talent Acquisition
We recently completed a project using an artificial intelligence solution for our talent acquisition process. The goal of this project was to increase candidate diversity and match skills better with job requirements. We've seen positive results in the diversity metrics and skill mapping quality. However, data quality is very important. We've realized that how well the AI solution works depends greatly on how accurate and complete our data is. Going forward, we're working on improving our data structures and fields to make them more AI-friendly, which will help us integrate AI into our recruitment processes faster.
Forecasting the Future: Workforce Planning and AI Integration
The space is expected to undergo some major changes in the future. One of these changes is the increased use of secure artificial intelligence-powered analysis, which will speed up the process of providing insights to the business. This change will likely make people analytics more integrated, extending beyond basic HR and into roles that involve insights and analytics across functions. Moreover, there will be a stronger focus on linking data with measures of productivity, both financial and non-financial, driven by both HR and business leaders' efforts.
Strategic workforce planning will undergo significant changes, especially regarding the skills landscape. People analytics will be crucial in forecasting future skills needs and preparing the organization for them. This involves knowing the evolving skills landscape, anticipating skill changes and aligning learning and development initiatives with future skill expectations to keep a competitive advantage. In general, analytics will help as an essential tool in adjusting and adapting to the fast-changing skill requirements in the next years.
Advice for HR Professionals
One tip that I would give to my peers or aspiring professionals in our field is to seek senior-level sponsorship. Having strong support from leaders at the highest levels, like our CHRO, can help advance initiatives. This sponsorship not only supports our roadmap and vision but also helps get traction across different business areas. Also, it's important to adopt a business-centric approach.
In the last year, we've learned the importance of aligning our efforts with core business objectives. By using people's data to anticipate challenges and drive high performance, we can provide measurable value to the organization. Lastly, as we explore the realm of AI and insights, staying ethically grounded is vital. We must prioritize strong controls to protect data and uphold our values and ethics. In summary, focus on getting senior support, aligning with business goals and keeping ethical practices to achieve success in our field.
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