Jâlie Cohen is the chief human resources officer for Radiology Partners.
Imagine, for a moment, that you’re an HR leader assessing performance data at your company. There’s a manager whose performance metrics indicate an exceptional track record, and their department consistently exceeds goals. You start thinking about promoting the manager.
But when you speak to that manager’s direct reports, the metrics start to unravel. You learn that the manager is leading people through fear, pressuring team members to work faster and longer. Those employees are helping the department exceed its goals, but they’re feeling anxious, burned out and undervalued. The manager’s performance metrics don’t tell the full story. They show you that the leader is delivering results, but they don’t show how the leader is achieving the results.
This is just one example that shows how, without context, people analytics data can be misleading. If HR leaders only assess the numbers when reviewing people analytics data, they risk making misguided decisions.
A Balanced Approach Is Key
Unfortunately, I’ve observed that at some organizations, HR leaders and others in people management tend to analyze data without context and, in turn, make misguided decisions that can be detrimental to their teams.
However, HR leaders and others in people management should not put aside data in favor of context. Both are important; a balanced approach is key. As the earlier hypothetical example showed, data without context fails to capture the entire story. But context without data has the same pitfall. Say there’s a manager at your company with glowing reviews by direct reports who goes above and beyond in making everyone feel heard and valued. Of course, that’s important. You’re considering promoting this manager based on that information. The data, though, reveals that the manager has a poor track record in meeting deadlines and delivering sustainable outcomes; therefore, their department is not meeting its goals.
In both scenarios, as the HR leader, if you didn’t examine both the context and numbers alongside each other, you risked making a decision that would have harmed your company by promoting a toxic manager or promoting an underperforming one.
How To Incorporate Context When Reviewing People Analytics Data
HR leaders and others in people management can take several steps to incorporate context when reviewing people analytics data.
For one, they should prioritize asking questions when they look at numbers, instead of taking those numbers at face value and making assumptions. Consider an HR leader who sees that the company’s engagement scores have dropped over the past year. Rather than automatically thinking that it’s a sign that employees are simply not as committed, the HR leader should dig deeper, asking questions such as:
• “Have there been recent changes to policies or workloads that could explain the shift?”
• “Are certain teams seeing lower engagement scores than others—and if so, have those teams undergone any changes the others haven’t?”
• “Are there external factors, such as increased competition and economic pressure, that could be causing managers to make decisions that affect team performance and morale?”
Leaders should also regularly gather qualitative insights from team members. For example, at my organization, we conduct interviews to find out why candidates declined job offers. This allows us to understand what matters to candidates and how we can adjust in real time to the realities of the market. If I just looked at the data and saw that candidates were rejecting the offers, I would never fully understand why or what we needed to do to land candidates. Other ways that leaders can gather qualitative insights include holding exit interviews, sending employees anonymous surveys and having one-on-one meetings with team members (including skip-level meetings). That qualitative data can help leaders better understand quantitative data. For example, a company’s management team might notice that the turnover rate has drastically increased and, upon examining notes from exit interviews, conclude that people are leaving because of limited career growth opportunities rather than compensation issues or market conditions.
Additionally, it’s important for leaders to prioritize keeping a pulse on external factors, such as the economy and the competitive landscape. For example, leaders could put aside time twice a month to research external factors that could impact, or are already impacting, the company’s workforce. That way, when people analytics data comes in, the company’s leaders are aware of the outside forces that could be shaping the numbers they’re seeing.
To keep internal factors (such as leadership transitions) and external factors (such as market shifts) top of mind, HR leaders can build and use dashboards that capture key contextual factors, such as leadership transitions and market shifts. That way, they and leaders across the company can quickly glean the context behind the numbers they’re looking at. My team and I are working on implementing these “context dashboards” in our new human resources information system (HRIS). How would a context dashboard work in practice? It could pull in quantitative data, such as engagement scores and turnover rates, and layer contextual factors, such as leadership changes and external events, on top.
The Role That AI Can Play
AI can also play a role in helping HR and other company leaders uncover and understand the context behind people analytics data.
AI shouldn’t be used to replace human emotional intelligence; rather, it should be treated as a supplement to it. For instance, an executive could use an AI tool to review the list of questions they have prepared for a skip-level meeting and get pointers on what to change, add or remove. An HR leader could use an AI solution to review anonymized transcripts from exit interviews, find trends and then compare those trends against the company’s turnover rate. Management could leverage prompts to brainstorm potential solutions to engagement survey feedback and build action plans with supporting metrics.
Ultimately, People Truly Power Organizations
People truly power organizations; technology and metrics are the tools that help leaders make well-informed decisions.
When it comes to people analytics insights, HR leaders and others in people management should use balanced approaches that account for the data and the human story behind the data. It’s by examining data alongside context that they can gain deep insights, providing a better understanding of situations and enabling them to make nuanced, effective decisions.
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