Canadian HR Reporter - Sample Issue

CANADIAN HR REPORTER November 27, 2017 NEWS 7 Building effective HR analytics Conference panel cites challenges of building business case, finding proper talent BY SARAH DOBSON PEOPLE analytics is a rapidly growing field in human resources, but because it's still relatively new turf, sourcing the right talent can be a challenge. ree panellists came together recently in Toronto to offer in- sights on how to form an effective HR analytics team. And one place to start is in building the business case for people analytics, and taking own- ership, they said, speaking at the People Analytics Canada confer- ence on Nov. 2. "e people analytics is a com- petitive advantage for a com- pany… you don't have the luxury not to build an internal team of the people analytics," said Alex Uborcev, director of integrated people management at RBC in Toronto. "If you don't start doing it now, you will be irrelevant in a few years, and the time is running very fast because that's how tough the competition is." One of the biggest challenges is balancing demand with resources, he said, and universities cannot produce enough data scientists. "Even if they do, it will just be data scientists with very narrow skills, and they need to have time to build broader capabilities." Globally, Xerox can't count the number of employees it has be- cause of the number of systems in play at any given time, accord- ing to Arun Kochhar, global HR insights and people analytics lead in Toronto. "e main challenge we faced was getting buy-in from senior leadership to start taking our numbers seriously, versus what finance was providing." This divide between finance and human resources has come up before, according to Kochhar. "e way that we address that is by, first of all, making it very clear what we're counting in terms of people, so we're not just counting fte (full-time equivalent), we're counting noses, actual physical heads, and then also making sure that the client base actually under- stands what it is we're doing and why our data is valuable. When you can present the case for why it's important to look at things through an organizational lens as opposed to a financial lens, you're far better off." In establishing an analytics function, Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, decided the skills of the HR community of about 150 people needed to be elevated, so it wasn't just about analytics but about the HR partners owning the data and analytics, said Linda Croll Howell, director of HR ana- lytics at the university. But HR was incredibly decen- tralized, she said. "We felt it was really important to provide them with basic tools because they were the ones who were closest to their business leaders and could really sell in what was important, because it's different from school to school." First steps Howell started with a basic set of dashboards that people could look at across the university and compare with their own college or unit, she said. "A couple of things happened with that: First of all, we learned all about dirty data… so there's great conversations going around that, about cleaning data up. But the other piece that we felt was most important was giving them the skills to be able to use these dashboards and go in and tell a story to their leadership." As a result, they recently rolled out an HR analytics academy for the HR community — and every class has been full, said Howell. "A very basic skill that everyone in HR should get is basic Excel, so no matter what you end up us- ing for dashboarding or whatever HRIS system you use, usually their reporting is sent out in a spread- sheet, so we felt it was a really important, basic thing to do. So we've introduced a basic Excel program and intermediate Excel program, and we've tied it into the HRIS system we use." It's also about giving HR the data to tell stories, so they were given worklets, she said. "Another thing that I'm doing is having them help me with a lot of pilot programs at their local col- lege, their unit, so they can actu- ally go through a process with me, hear how I explain the data and everything." When it comes to key deliver- able, Xerox is not tracking to- wards one shining star, according to Kochhar. "What we've done instead is build a road map, basically. It's not a five-year road map, it's a three-year road map. And the first step along the way is es- tablish the team, draw the swim lanes… so every HR business partner and every COE (centre of excellence) in HR understands exactly who their touchpoint is and who their person is to go get insights. And then, as we move along, partner with HRIS to make sure we're building out the plat- forms necessary to deliver value HR > pg. 20 Labour Reporter Canadian Canadian Labour Reporter is a weekly newsletter that is designed to provide labour professionals, lawyers and the industrial relations industry with valuable information and strategies on how to assess, monitor and approach labour collective bargaining agreements. This weekly newsletter provides summaries of recent collective agreement ratifications, labour arbitration digests, analysis of new and amended legislation and regulation, statistical tables on unemployment and inflation, as well as news and analysis of new and amended legislation and regulations. 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