People Analytics & HRIS

Structuring HR data

Before talking about Big Data, or even People Analytics, it is important to consider the quality, security and access to HR data within and outside the function. Incomplete, or worse, false data leads nowhere in terms of analysis. Just as data that is lost in the back of servers, or is difficult to access, does not meet the recurring HR data needs of other functions (e.g. strategy, finance, purchasing, controlling). As the owner of this data, the HR function must seize this issue of structuring and making it available

Choosing the right HRIS

The choice of an appropriate HRIS is crucial. From exhaustive specifications that attempt to capture the specificities of all HR processes to a summary of a few use cases that are particularly critical for the company, there is a wide range of possibilities for selecting the right tool. Opting for pragmatism and simplicity is often a key success factor.

Adapting your company culture

Once the HRIS has been chosen, change management and, more generally, taking the cultural factor into account are two key factors for successful implementation. And from the moment the system is being configured, the integration of the teams in the reflection process is a key success factor for the future adoption of the new tool. Adoption is the foundation on which the future data culture of the HR function will be built.

Testing for better measurement

In parallel to this fundamental work, launching the first People Analytics PoCs allows to give meaning, to create adhesion and to avoid the teams’ breathlessness. The best way to prioritize PoCs is to identify a business problem that can be studied and partially solved by People Analytics: high absenteeism or turnover, lack of collaboration, measuring the performance of a new work rhythm…

Gradually, as the company becomes more mature about HR data issues, PoCs can be deployed on a larger scale and new algorithms integrated into the HRIS (e.g. calculation of the probability of all employees leaving).