Canadian HR Reporter

www.hrreporter.com 9 "It's beholden to the HR function to understand what the economic drivers are and, at the same time, it's important for company leaders to not keep HR at the sideline." Rafael Gomez, University of Toronto professionals realize that vision or opportunity to become more strategic," he says. "HR professionals are really still focused on more the executionary areas." But there's definitely a skill piece involved to drive those conversations within the organization, he says. "There is some work to be done in terms of how do you best interpret and how do you triangulate on the most important kind of people metrics, ensure that it's accurate, and then drive those discussions to have a people-first strategy?" But HR can't solve it alone — it also needs to work with the business owner and data scientist, says Field. "At its core, HR and the business leader need to partner together to say, 'What is the people problem I'm solving?' And then HR can work closely with the data science team to say, 'How do we use data to solve this problem?' with HR really being the translator, taking those insights from the data scientist and working with the business leader to say, 'What does this mean for the business?'" As data becomes more available, HR needs to quickly automate those internal analyses, the descriptive analytics of retention, hiring rates, promotion rates, and then say, 'What else? What next? And what is the data that that we need to bring to bear?'" she says. thinking about it in traditional silos of HR operations, HR analytics, talent management." People data in spotlight While 94 per cent of business leaders have access to some form of people data from HR, 60 per cent are not using HR data to drive any kind of decision making and 68 per cent are not heavily reliant on HR data, finds the Sage survey. A further 56 per cent are not using any people data to help inform culture and experience decisions. As further indication of the disconnect, 90 per cent of the C-suite would find new hire failure rate data useful, yet only 14 per cent say HR is providing this data. Similarly, 86 per cent of the C-suite say employee net promoter scores would be invaluable — but only 13 per cent get this information. And for employee engagement, 93 per cent of the C-suite would find it helpful, but only 25 per cent are being given access to it by HR. A further 62 per cent of HR leaders said they're not able to use the data to spot trends and make business-related predictions, according to the Sage report HR in the Moment: Impact through Insights. The opportunity is with having the right technology stack and having the right information, says Ryujin. " That really could help the HR But HR should not let a desire for perfect data get in the way of progress, says Field. "What we often say is 80 per cent of the data exists; that's good enough. And then also, go to where the need is greatest, pick the use cases for HR — it might be around diversity, equity and inclusion; it might be around reskilling; it might be around increasing performance — [then] go to where the business need is the greatest and use that as an opportunity to create a proof point. Create an experiment for HR to show the value of data and how they can help the business get to a better answer faster, powered by data." Many people are enamored with any answer that's provided by technology or a mathematical model, says Rafael. " They're relying a lot on canned AI programs that just look at data, find correlations and then tell you what's coalescing together," he says. "There isn't that deep knowledge of how organizations work, how they function… the bedrock principles of good, well-functioning organizations. Those haven' t changed and don' t require AI." It's about empowering people, giving them a purpose for which to work for, and giving them some autonomy, he says. "If you have that foundation, then sure, you can tinker and say, 'Let's try this.' And then we can collect data and see if it works. Or 'Let's do it in this part of our organization, let's not do it in this other,' and then check before and after. Do these sort of control trials, which really determine the efficacy of any policy. Then you can start doing that technical stuff. But if it isn't built on that foundation, it's not going to get you very far." CHRR

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