People Analytics Ebook

2nd Annual
CANADA
Challenges, Benefits and Best

Practices for Implementing
People Analytics
LEARN FROM:
Emma Horgan Terry Lashyn Anna Filice Mark Chernecki

Vice President HR and Director, People Intelligence Director, HR Systems & Director, HR Systems and
Leadership ATB Financial Operations Analytics
MAPLE LEAF FOODS CITY OF HAMILTON BLACKBERRY
John Steele Arun Kochhar Anthony Auriemmo

Senior Manager, Human Workforce Planning & Manager, People Analytics
Capital Analytics People Analytics Lead SLEEPY’S
BEST BUY AMD
www.PeopleAnalyticsCanada.com
In this e-Book you will find responses to the below 4
critical question from thought-leaders in HR Analytics,
from well known companies:
1. What are the top (at least 3) benefits of implementing HR/People Analytics for
an organization? Explain.
2. What are the key challenges and best practices while implementing HR
analytics in an organization?
3. What are the key employee metrics to drive employee engagement and
productivity?
4. What are some of the best practices while trying to “Gain Support” for People
Analytics?
Join these and other industry leaders who are passionate about
people analytics at the 2nd Annual People Analytics Canada Summit.
Acquire strategies and tactical insights on enhancing employee
engagement, improving performance and driving business outcome
with HR Analytics.
Event In Numbers
18+
People 8 Networking
Opportunities
4
Panel
Analytics
leaders
Discussions
10+
Case
5
Interactive
10+
Industries
Studies Sessions Represented
Follow and tweet @HRAnalyticsCA for exclusive Join the LinkedIn Group: People Analytics
updates and offers. Connect with leaders passionate Canada and chat with speakers + attendees
about #HRAnalyticsCA. before the summit starts.
2nd Annual People Analytics Canada
October 25th-26th 2016 | Shangri-La Hotel, Toronto
1. What are the top benefits of

implementing HR/People Analytics
for an organization? Explain.
• It provides the option to have self-service reporting for

those that need it
Terry Lashyn • It allows the company on a monthly basis to monitor
Director, People Intelligence where they are with respect to key metrics (compared to
ATB Financial
their goals or other departments)
• Companies can implement action plans faster and monitor
their results as to the effectiveness of these plans by
comparing the next month’s/Quarter results
HR departments have been using data to understand their

workforce and manage their talent for many years through
Anna Filice programs and systems like engagement surveys, exit inter-
Director, HR Systems & views and performance reviews. People Analytics provides a
Operations space to bring large data sets together to help drive decision
CITY OF HAMILTON
making. Done well, this can be one of the key drivers for
strategic program development, continuous improvement
and for demonstrating the value of an HR department to its
organization. This all results in more focussed and targeted
approaches towards common goals.
Benefits:
• Focus on insights, not data gathering
Arun Kochhar
• Understand trends and relationships in the organization
Workforce Planning &
People Analytics Lead • Quantitatively measure the success of HR programs in
AMD terms of ROI
Page 3

• Fact based decision making into where to spend time,

money and effort for the best business return / impact
Emma Horgan • Enables benchmarking to ensure properly competing /
Vice President HR and performing in the market place
Leadership
MAPLE LEAF FOODS • Provides ability to more proactively manage talent
• Enables more timely response to emerging issues and
trends requiring an intervention
• Speak in the same language as every other part of the
business – metrics!
The benefits of implementing People Analytics are driven

by the analytic team’s purpose, focus, and capabilities. ROI
John Steele for analytics capabilities tend to be very strong and some
Senior Manager, Human potential benefits include: identification and removal of fraud
Capital Analytics or waste, increased ROI for other programs, stronger employee
BEST BUY
engagement, better retention, and higher productivity. For an
HR executive, an often unsung benefit is having an objective
view of problems and solutions from a team that is vested in
the organization’s success, but not vested in a particular HR
program’s success.
Page 4

• Better decision making. In today’s business environment you

need data to support your decisions and strategy. This is true in
all business units and especially HR. For the amount of money
Mark Chernecki
that organizations invest in their people, the cost of labor alone
Director, HR Systems and
Analytics is reason enough to ensure that the decisions you are making are
BLACKBERRY based on sound data. HR is data rich and those who embrace
and utilize it will find that they can better direct their time and
investment into the aspects of HR that will truly make an impact.
Too often I see HR professionals make reactive decisions off of
pre-conceived notions or experiences. People analytics has the
power to remove some of the bias that we see in day to day
decision making. This does not mean we stop relying on our
own knowledge, expertise and innovative ideas, but we all have
to accept that we have a certain degree of bias. Using people
analytics in partnership with innovative ideas and best practices
can ensure sound, impactful decision making throughout HR.
• Developing a comprehensive view of your workforce and

talent. Using people analytics is like drawing a map. How do
you know where you are or where are you are going if you don’t
have a map? It’s about understanding your workforce. Where
is your top talent? What drives them and where do you find
more? People analytics can help draw this map for you. People
analytics creates tools to enable HR staff and business leaders
navigate through a complex, competitive and multi-generational
workforce.
• It’s disruptive. People analytics can help reveal aspects and

trends within the workforce that we don’t necessarily see or hear
about day to day. It causes us to rethink how we approach a
problem or even identify what the true nature of that problem is.
It can make leaders and HR partners uncomfortable because it
challenges their preconceived ideas of what is going on and how
to address it.
• Establishes credibility with senior leadership. To achieve buy-in

from your senior leaders on the value of HR programs and the
changes and initiatives you wish to undertake it should always be
presented to senior leadership with data behind it. Not only do
you want to use data to show why change needs to happen, but
you want to use data to show that your changes are truly making
impact.
Page 5

Three benefits of implementing People Analytics in your

organization are an improved understanding of who makes up your
organization, the ability to make data driven decisions, and the
Anthony Auriemmo
ability to use analytics to predict outcomes and drive change.
Manager, People Analytics
SLEEPY’S
The first benefit refers to the ability to see and understand the
descriptive data regarding your organization’s people. The
descriptors are the simplest aspect of People Analytics but they
are the foundation. Understanding that there is high turnover
in a specific department or a lack of diversity in your higher pay
bands are important descriptors that should lead your organization
towards action.
Now that your People Analytics team has provided the descriptive
data that has shown you action is needed, there will no doubt be
many possible ways to tackle the problems. This is where your
second benefit comes in. A People Analytics function will be able
to comb through your employee data and collect additional data
if needed to inform your organization as to the most effective
way to resolve the problem. Understanding the problem is great
but without the People Analytics function, organizations are left
playing guess and check to resolve the problem. This can be costly
and time consuming. Having the People Analytics function will
help your organization deliver a targeted and effective approach to
problem solving.
Lastly, by having a People Analytics function, you can also mitigate

these problems in the future via predictive analytics. For example,
in the case of high turnover in a department, a People Analytics
function could use predictive statistics to capture and explain
the reasons that led to high turnover and can offer a prediction
as to the turnover risk in the future based on these newly found
predictors. With this knowledge, HR practitioners can take action
to mitigate the turnover risk or begin to pipeline replacement
candidates. A People Analytics function is the best way to use
your organization’s data to your advantage in HR. With all the
challenges surrounding HR practices in modern business, People
Analytics is the bright path forward to understanding and solving
new and challenging problems.
Page 6
2. What are the key challenges and

best practices while implementing
HR analytics in an organization?
Challenges:
• To get the projected users to use the system versus what
Terry Lashyn they have used in the past
Director, People Intelligence
• To have the users accept the results when potentially there
ATB Financial
may have been entries missed – making the metrics look
wrong but the metrics are reporting on what is there and
not what should be there
Best Practices:
• Ensure you have representation from the Business Areas
and their support
• Understand your rollout strategy (number of users,
security levels etc)
• Ensure you promote and reward usage
• Ensure there is a solid understanding of the metrics and
their calculation
Challenges:
• The balance between opinions and facts - getting people
Anna Filice to use the data to drive program design and development
Director, HR Systems &
rather than select data to support an already developed
Operations
CITY OF HAMILTON concept or program. Often, program owners are so
committed to a concept or belief that the data poses more
of a change management issue than a technical challenge.
Best Practices:
• Encourage the integration of metrics into each new initiative
and make room for it on your departments work plan and
strategic plan. Demonstrate what success looks like by
identifying and agreeing to success measures up front.
Page 7

The greatest challenge in implementing HR analytics is

spending the majority of the team’s time on the highest
John Steele value-add activities and the least amount of the team’s
Senior Manager, Human time on supporting activities (e.g., obtaining, cleaning,
Capital Analytics and combining data). When starting in the analytics
BEST BUY
space, it is important to align with partners and clients on
operational definitions and data concerns (e.g., deficiency
and contamination) before analyzing data and crafting
stories. For client interactions, it is best to index on
actionable insights and data-driven decisions. Do not
burden clients with what went into the creation of those
insights. A mistake new contributors in the analytics
space make is talking about how difficult the study was to
conduct, the unsupported hypotheses, how sophisticated
their techniques are, and the interesting, but none value-add
findings. In order to be in a position to convey actionable
insights, it is a best practice to build relationships and
business acumen so that the approach will seem logical and
the findings will feel relevant.
Challenges:
• cost and implementation of enabling technology, shifting
Emma Horgan mindset of HR professionals who don’t currently use
Vice President HR and analytics, shifting paradigm of other areas of business
Leadership
regarding HR’s role
MAPLE LEAF FOODS
Best Practices while implementing:
• Focus on the why and the value, and celebrate successes
Page 8

Key Challenges:
• Building knowledge and skill sets within traditional HR
Mark Chernecki roles to enable the team to manage and use people
Director, HR Systems and analytics effectively
Analytics
BLACKBERRY • Aligning with Finance
• Managing technology and integrating disparate data
• Managing data volume and garbage data
Best Practices:
• Establish your own HR analytics COE as an independent
team within HR. Ensure it reports directly to the head of
HR and services the needs of senior leadership.
• Establish a brand. Use consistent templates and methods
of delivery. This helps build trust in the data and those
providing it.
• Make analytics easily accessible to all stakeholders. Ensure
data is real-time and not stale.
• Establish one source of truth for your data.
• Locate your HR quants. Find the people who can work
with data and systems but also understand HR strategy
and themes.
• Have your HR Analytics consultant partner closely with
other HR COE’s and the business so they are imbedded
and can contribute to the discussion.
• Change management ->Without a change management

plan, any HR analytics implementation is doomed to fail
Arun Kochhar • Standard < -- > Flexible Approaches -> Standardize as
Workforce Planning & much as possible, but leave room for customization and
People Analytics Lead
organizational uniqueness
AMD
• Be business driven
Page 9

Challenges:
With any new initiative within HR, there are challenges to
Anthony Auriemmo implementing a People Analytics function. The biggest
Manager, People Analytics challenge I have come across is the differential abilities of
SLEEPY’S
people to effectively consume data. While it is my belief
that data driven HR is the way forward, not everyone is
qualified to analyze data. It can be dangerous to allow
stakeholders and decision makers to analyze data on their
own without the assistance of a qualified data scientist.
There are many biases that can distort the perspective lens
in which an unqualified consumer of data views descriptive
data. One example is confirmation bias; this is when the
stakeholder combs the data for evidence in support of their
opinion. While this may not be intentional, it is detrimental
to the effectiveness of the People Analytics function
because instead of having a qualified data scientist comb
through the data for an understanding of truth, data can
be twisted to support a pre-determined opinion or decision
that may not be the best option for the organization.
Best Practices:
As a best practice, organizations should be sure to invite a
representative from the People Analytics group to explain
the results of the data analysis and provide an explanation
of the meaning as well as some recommendations for action.
Having a member of the People Analytics team at the
proverbial table will allow for stakeholders to be educated
on the meaning of the data and prevent the unintentional
misuse of data. The People Analytics function should work
to educate stakeholders on how to understand and interpret
data, but also ensure that they understand that the analysis
is best left to the professionals. This can be difficult but it is
key to avoid the misinterpretation of the data provided by
the People Analytics team.
Page 10
3. What are the key employee

metrics to drive employee
engagement and productivity?
I think this is different in every organization and culture, and

may also vary by divisions within an organization depending
Anna Filice on the makeup of ones workforce. HR can collect data
Director, HR Systems & through various strategies (surveys, production systems,
Operations time and attendance and HRIS systems etc) and use the
CITY OF HAMILTON
insights from that data to develop action plans to address
“problem” areas such as retention, absenteeism, grievance
activity, and seasonal patterns of behaviour (for example)
which could all impact productivity and engagement
dependent on the environment. Having said that, looking
at the many elements of employee demographics, turnover
and absenteeism can provide a great deal of insight about
your workforce.
Training completions, addressing and correcting problems

the first-time, timely performance feedback, employee
John Steele experience action planning, and labor allocation are key
Senior Manager, Human indicators. Instead of relying on the same key metrics for all
Capital Analytics employee groups, consider an adaptable approach based on
BEST BUY
diagnostic chains and the ability to customize the metrics
based on local-level issues and performance.
• Engagement results along with the drivers should be

analyzed
Terry Lashyn
ATB Financial
Page 11

• Indicators of engagement & productivity:

• Engagement survey scores
Emma Horgan
• Scores from engagement surveys that cover “enablement”
Vice President HR and
Leadership factors
MAPLE LEAF FOODS • Attrition rates and exit interview themes
• Internal promotion rates
Keep it simple. Take a look at turnover rates and your

employee surveys to get a sense of engagement within
Mark Chernecki your workforce. If your turnover rates are high, there is a
Director, HR Systems and strong chance your workforce is not engaged and the loss of
Analytics knowledge, skills and abilities will drive productivity down.
BLACKBERRY Understand your time to fill and open reqs as well. Open
positions mean strain on your current workers and potential
loss of revenue if the open positions are critical and/or
revenue generating. Your ability to fill key talent gaps will
go a long way in employee engagement and productivity.
• Attrition rates -> an indicator of potential “hotspots” in the

organization
Arun Kochhar • Pulse/Engagement Surveys -> linked back to #1,
Workforce Planning & proactively measuring engagement in an organization can
People Analytics Lead
uncover problems before they manifest themselves
AMD
Page 12

Employee engagement is multifaceted and is highly dependent
on the type of individuals that your organization aims to hire and
retain. Highly creative jobs are going to have different engagement
Anthony Auriemmo
drivers than physical laborers. That being said, I find that employee
Manager, People Analytics
SLEEPY’S engagement as anecdotally described by many HR practitioners
is really 3 separate facets, work engagement, organizational
commitment and job satisfaction. Work engagement is mostly tied
to the job itself and less to the organization and is really reflective
of the energy and effort a person puts into the job and how easily
they can get absorbed in their work. Organizational commitment
is how committed an employee is to stay with an organization and
for what reason they intend to stay. Job satisfaction is about if
they like their job, are happy with pay and benefits, feel positively
about their supervisor, etc. To drive employee engagement, you
first must understand what aspects of it need attention. This is
why surveying employees is so critical. With an effective People
Analytics function, you can survey employees and identify
deficiencies in these areas of employee engagement and then
target the low engagement population to better understand
how to improve the aspects of engagement that they scored low
on. Simply running a canned survey from a vendor each year
and then introducing some type of perk is not going to have the
targeted efficiency that you can obtain from a strong People
Analytics group. If engagement is down due to low organizational
commitment, then it is likely the organization needs to work on
building trust. If engagement is low due to job satisfaction, why
are employees dissatisfied? How can we fix that? These are
questions that the People Analytics team can solve using data.
Driving productivity is also highly dependent on the type of worker

as well as the root causes of low productivity. Increasing the pick
rate within a warehouse is going to be a very different undertaking
that driving productivity within the finance department. Collecting
and understanding the organization’s data as well as having
knowledge of the research in this space can help inform the ways
to drive productivity across different employee populations. While
engagement can be a driver of productivity, it is not the only
driver. Pay practices along with rewards and recognition can have
a huge impact on productivity. In addition, an understanding
of the research on work motivation can be a huge help in
driving productivity. There are many different theories on work
motivation that can be applied in an organizational setting to drive
productivity. The People Analytics function will be able to measure
productivity and use data to inform decisions surrounding what
actions can be taken to increase it.
Page 13
4. What are some of the best

practices while trying to
“Gain Support” for
People Analytics?
• Have business leaders / team members that are advocates

• Numbers / Metrics are extracted only from the People
Terry Lashyn Analytic system where possible
• Have a “contest” to promote usage (Winner gets a great
ATB Financial
Gift Certificate)
Communicate and capitalize off of early adopters who have

bought into the concept of data driven decision making and
Anna Filice have experienced success with it.
Director, HR Systems &
Operations Encourage Leaders to look at data at the beginning of an
CITY OF HAMILTON initiative, making it part of the planning process to ensure
one can measure the success and demonstrate the value of
a fully implemented program.
Identify success measures up front as a strategy to ensure

all stakeholders are working towards a common objective,
and tie those success measures to the problem that is being
solved by the initiative.
Encourage ongoing review of measures to enable

sustainability of programs and to encourage continuous
improvement.
• Simply - make the business case!
Emma Horgan
Vice President HR and
Leadership
MAPLE LEAF FOODS
Page 14

People Analytics?
Generally, the desire for people analytics has to come

from your senior leaders. It can be extremely challenging
Mark Chernecki otherwise. You have to establish their trust in your
Director, HR Systems and numbers which often means never make a mistake or show
Analytics inconsistencies in your numbers. If you aren’t 100% confident
BLACKBERRY in your numbers or don’t 100% understand them, then don’t
share them until you are. Start simple and get the basics
right. As that trust with leaders is developed, you can get
more complex. Another key aspect in gaining support is
ensuring your HR analytics staff know the business and
know the challenges leaders and employees are facing. This
allows them to proactively produce analytics and speak with
knowledge and confidence about the analytics in relation to
the challenges. The analytics you are producing have to be
relatable to the issues the leaders are facing. The only way to
do this is to understand your business.
Often times, someone will try to start an analytics capability

by showing some external study, stating the need to keep
John Steele up with the industry, and requesting a large financial
Senior Manager, Human environment with a long time expected before the business
Capital Analytics gets a return. I suggest the opposite, and building with
BEST BUY
the enduring principle of simplicity and urgency to help
leaders make better data-driven people decisions. Trust
can be built through simple tasks such as teaching Excel
skills like lookups and pivot tables or developing scripts
for data clean-up and reporting. Further support can be
garnered by developing exception reporting. Starting small
and staying focused on one problem for one department
can lead to referrals that quickly build enterprise-wide
demand. People analytics won’t be supported unless the
capability makes the intimidating technical components
accessible by offering data-driven recommendations that
are straightforward and actionable.
Page 15

People Analytics?
Gaining support for People Analytics within an organization

can be a major challenge. One way that I have found to be
Anthony Auriemmo effective is offering data surrounding the return on invest-
Manager, People Analytics ment that the organization would see if they acted on a data
SLEEPY’S driven recommendation from the People Analytics team.
This can go a long way with stakeholders who understand
profit and loss but aren’t of the analytical mindset. In ad-
dition, the ability to explain data and advanced statistics to
stakeholders is absolutely critical in order to gain and build
support for the People Analytics function. A data scientist
cannot simply ramble through statistics jargon and then
make a recommendation and expect it to be embraced.
They need to take time and carefully walk the audience
through each step, how the statistics work, what the analysis
means and how it led to a recommendation. By getting
stakeholders to understand why the data led the People
Analytics team to their recommendation, it will be easier for
them to understand the why the recommendation makes
sense and how valuable the People Analytics function is.
• Find a champion in the business

• Pick an executive sponsor that the business knows and
Arun Kochhar respects
Workforce Planning &
People Analytics Lead • HRBPs are your link to the heartbeat of the company –
AMD listen and listen well!
Page 16
HEAR FROM
THOUGHT-LEADERS IN
HR ANALYTICS AT THE
“ Secure HR’s role as a strategic business partner

by implementing analytics!”
Take Away 10 Practical Solutions to Better Tackle:

1. Strategy: Make HR a strategic business partner
2. Getting started in analytics: Get the information you need
3. Data sharing: Break down silos and collaborate
4. Building an analytics team: Find the right people
5. Employee engagement: Drive engagement efforts with data
6. Organizational support: Create a culture of data-driven decision making
7. Scaling up projects: Build your people analytics programs
8. Workforce challenges: Meet strategic goals with data-driven evidence
9. Predictive analytics: Move from descriptive to predictive analytics
10. Creating strategic information: Turn data into actionable information
DOWNLOAD BROCHURE

People Analytics Ebook

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

People Analytics Ebook

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

2nd Annual

Challenges, Benefits and Best

Emma Horgan Terry Lashyn Anna Filice Mark Chernecki

John Steele Arun Kochhar Anthony Auriemmo

1. What are the top benefits of

• It provides the option to have self-service reporting for

HR departments have been using data to understand their

1. What are the top benefits of

• Fact based decision making into where to spend time,

The benefits of implementing People Analytics are driven

1. What are the top benefits of

• Better decision making. In today’s business environment you

• Developing a comprehensive view of your workforce and

• It’s disruptive. People analytics can help reveal aspects and

• Establishes credibility with senior leadership. To achieve buy-in

1. What are the top benefits of

Three benefits of implementing People Analytics in your

Lastly, by having a People Analytics function, you can also mitigate

2. What are the key challenges and

2. What are the key challenges and

The greatest challenge in implementing HR analytics is

2. What are the key challenges and

• Change management ->Without a change management

2. What are the key challenges and

3. What are the key employee

I think this is different in every organization and culture, and

Training completions, addressing and correcting problems

• Engagement results along with the drivers should be

3. What are the key employee

• Indicators of engagement & productivity:

Keep it simple. Take a look at turnover rates and your

• Attrition rates -> an indicator of potential “hotspots” in the

3. What are the key employee

Driving productivity is also highly dependent on the type of worker

4. What are some of the best

• Have business leaders / team members that are advocates

Communicate and capitalize off of early adopters who have

Identify success measures up front as a strategy to ensure

Encourage ongoing review of measures to enable

• Simply - make the business case!

4. What are some of the best

Generally, the desire for people analytics has to come

Often times, someone will try to start an analytics capability

4. What are some of the best

Gaining support for People Analytics within an organization

• Find a champion in the business

“ Secure HR’s role as a strategic business partner

Take Away 10 Practical Solutions to Better Tackle:

2. Getting started in analytics: Get the information you need

3. Data sharing: Break down silos and collaborate

4. Building an analytics team: Find the right people

5. Employee engagement: Drive engagement efforts with data

6. Organizational support: Create a culture of data-driven decision making

7. Scaling up projects: Build your people analytics programs

8. Workforce challenges: Meet strategic goals with data-driven evidence

9. Predictive analytics: Move from descriptive to predictive analytics

10. Creating strategic information: Turn data into actionable information

You might also like