By | Alessandro Linari | People Analytics & Strategy
Three and half years ago I joined Vodafone to create the People Analytics function. My focus during this period has been proving the value that analytics brings to HR, building the analytics and dashboarding infrastructure, and scaling the team.
Below, I share my thoughts on how organisations can start their People Analytics journey in an incremental way and with minimal budget. This is not a solution that suits everybody – all organisations are different – and should be considered by HR teams who have the ambition to become data-driven, but, for strategic or financial reasons, are not able to make a large investment upfront (proving the value of a new team is hard, if the team does not exist yet).
This is based both on my current and past experiences and on discussions I had, through the years, with the many HR and People Analytics professionals I was lucky to meet and who I would like to thank. I hope you find this read interesting.
INTRODUCTION
Organisations that are new to analytics perceive the benefits of data-driven decision making, but lack the experience on how to build and grow a team. In addition to that, a People Analytics team requires a complex set of skills that go from software development to advanced analytics, from HR to business partnering and consulting. Acquiring all these skills in a short period of time is difficult and requires a large investment, whose return is uncertain and far ahead in the future.
In this situation, an incremental approach will work better because the investment can be distributed over a longer period of time and can be made conditional to meeting agreed milestones:
