Graphs and charts are easy. Captivating and engaging your internal business stakeholders with HR metrics is not.
Throughout my career, I’ve been fortunate enough to have been part of many, many workforce analytics and planning projects. While just about all of them have been ultimately successful, I’ve seen some struggles along the way. It’s tough sledding out there sometimes. I’ve also been proud to see many clients, current and past, be triumphant in their workforce analytics and planning endeavors.
I’ve developed a budding case of carpal tunnel from building PowerPoints and project plans and helping companies go from zero to analytics hero. However, just about everything I’ve learned about analytics can be boiled down to four core principles. If you keep these top of mind throughout your initiative, you’ll win far more than you’ll lose.
By no coincidence, these are also my company’s four core values. However, for this blog series, I’ll be relating them to the practitioner side. I’ll also be looking back at past projects and how each core value came into play, both in not-so-successful and very successful ventures.
Accuracy
Today, I’m starting with one that might seem a bit obvious. Accuracy. It’s not the sexiest and oftentimes being 100% accurate can be tedious. But it’s probably the most important value. If you’re not reporting accurate numbers, you’re certainly not helping the business. In fact, you might be hurting it.
A “not so great” example:
The sitting VPHR of a large manufacturing company had built workforce analytics reports by hand that he had put in front of a large group of stakeholders. The reaction was not positive. We were called in to “fix” the situation. I was very impressed with what he had built. Visually stunning, focused, and they delivered true strategic value.
We sat down with the “troublemaker” stakeholder and it quickly became apparent why he took issue with the reports. On the very first page there was a single number; average age for his business unit. It was wrong, by quite a bit. To the VPHR’s credit, it stemmed from a data issue. But the reason didn’t matter. The stakeholder saw the report, knew the number was wrong, and it was over. He was off of the bandwagon. Despite dozens of other metrics in the report being powerful and 100% accurate, the VPHR now had an uphill battle because the business didn’t trust the data coming out of the project.
One mistake out of hundreds of metrics, and the project was in trouble.
At the end of the day, the BU leader was right. If you can’t trust ALL of the numbers being reported, you shouldn’t trust any. We ultimately got the project back on a positive track, but it was an uphill battle. For months after, every time the VPHR presented a new metric, he had to “prove out” the accuracy and regain trust. This is an uphill battle that can be avoided.
A great example:
We were starting a very light reporting project for a company that had zero analytics or planning functions. It was a build-out from scratch. We knew we had to start with some simple but impactful metrics that mattered. What we ended up with was a one-page report that touched on turnover, quality of hire, and internal movement/career pathing. We proudly marched into the COO’s office with our first set of reports. The reaction we got was a bit unexpected. The COO’s first words were “this is not right”. We were reporting that they lost more employees in critical job roles to internal movement than they did to exit turnover, and he was 100% convinced that this was wrong.
Much like the above project, we went back to the well. We pulled more data and ended up reviewing it with the COO, almost line-by-line, to show him how we got the numbers. Once we finally convinced him we were correct, the mood shifted dramatically. We had shown him something that went against his intuition. It was a brand new discovery that added tremendous value to him. He was able to make impactful business decisions based on this data. We now had internal support to extend the project. Getting resources was no longer a struggle. We were on our way.
Tiny things make a big difference.
The two projects above were not dramatically different. In fact what the VPHR in the “not so great” example built was far more advanced than our two-page report in the “great” example. The difference is that when bad data gets reported, you won’t garner the trust from your stakeholders that you need to build and keep momentum going. Without trust, you won’t get resources. Without resources, you’re a one-person army. In business, you never want to be that.
Always be accurate. Even if takes five times as long to complete. You’ll build trust, gratitude, and you’ll become a trusted business partner. That’s where we want to be.
Check back in with the Novel Intelligence blog for post #2 in this series: Relevance.
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