Are you having trouble getting your workforce analytics program off the ground?

Over the years as a consultant (both in an independent as well as a corporate setting), I’ve seen my fair share of organizations, large and small, attempt to build workforce analytics capabilities. While there have been a few successes; but more often than not, many such initiatives sizzle out quickly from a lack of momentum and quick, realizable results. Clearly there are many contributing factors, but they largely fall into the following categories:

• Thinking that fancy dashboards are the be all and end all to analytics

• Not being able to make workforce metrics relevant to the organization and answering the question of “So What?”

• Being unable to build confidence in the data and resulting analytics

Rather than taking the big bang silver bullet approach to workforce analytics (as many organizations do), it has been FYTs experience that successful workforce analytics endeavours usually take the form of a series of evolutionary improvements. This approach recognizes that organizations are at different stages of maturity and acceptance; and thus presents solutions relevant to their maturity while proving the concept and results along the way.

An organization’s maturity and acceptance for workforce analytics may be described along 2 dimensions:

• Technical capabilities – An organization’s investment in technology, proficiency in the technology, the type of employee data captured and the quality of the data can have an impact on the kinds of workforce metrics that are possible, the level of detail in the analyses and the quality and confidence of insights from the analyses

• Organizational maturity – This could range from an organization’s understanding of the workforce metrics and how it relates to outcomes; to whether the organization trusts the numbers and their implications; and finally if the organization is ready to make decisions based on the data

For more details on how to build a roadmap for workforce analytics for your organization, please contact FYT Consulting.