HR Technology

NexTech Southeast Asia HR Summit 2021, ETHRWorld


<p>Exclusive panel discussion on 'Managing people through data-driven insights'</p>
Exclusive panel discussion on ‘Managing people through data-driven insights’

Why do people leave? What behaviours drive higher customer and employee satisfaction? How can organisations prevent attrition and attract the right talent? And most importantly, how can we leverage analytics to reduce bias, improve performance and give people a reason to strive in this expeditiously moving new world of work?

People analytics is not a new concept and even so, it has long been alienated in the HR world, probably due to the technocratic nature of work or lack of proper skills and talent. The reluctance to adopt, a fragmented HRTech landscape, and lack of people-driven mindsets have been some other factors keeping organisations from unleashing their true potential. The past two years, however, have dramatically transformed the way we strategise, manage and retain talent, focus on employee experience and reduce biases to propel evidence-based people decisions. While some organisations are still in the nascent stages of building their people analytics capabilities, there is little argument that advanced analytics is here to stay, building the workplace and workforce of tomorrow.

To delve deeper into how data-driven insights impact businesses on a larger scale, ETHRWorld International hosted an exclusive panel discussion on “Managing people through data-driven insights” at NexTech Southeast Asia HR Summit 2021– the largest virtual HR conference of the year in Southeast Asia. Bringing both expert perspectives and real-world experiences, our esteemed global panelists for this session were: Foo Chek Wee, Head of Human Capital and Office Administration at The Straits Trading Company Limited, Singapore; Gaurava Sahi, Expert Associate Partner – Organization Practice at McKinsey & Company, Malaysia; Jared Blunk, Talent Insights Strategy & Analytics Partner – Global Talent Acquisition at General Motors, United States and CheeTung Leong, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, EngageRocket, Singapore who also moderated this distinguished panel.


Talking points from an exclusive panel discussion on ‘Managing people through data-driven insights’

  • How to leverage the power of people analytics to reduce biases and enhance performance
  • What is the key to strategic data integration?
  • Transforming the future of work, workforce, and workplace with data-driven insights
  • Fighting the global talent war with people analytics
  • Scrutinising the recruitment paradigm with people analytics
  • Supercharging analytics into HR processes

Here are a few excerpts from the session:

How can people analytics reduce bias and enhance performance in an organisation?

Sharing his brilliant insights on how people analytics can help organisations increase rigor, reduce bias and enhance performance, Gaurava Sahi said “Data can be used in people processes to de-bias and actually serve as the harbinger of business impact into the HR process. It allows you to connect business data and people data to come up with informed HR decisions, taking into account where the business is headed. That is why it allows you to work in the ambit that is set by the business to get those priorities out so it serves as a bridge between business and people priorities and allows both of them to function together. It is the primary genesis of people analytics and what’s more important is the analytics part. It is fundamentally the same as supply chain analytics or any different kind of analytics, this is just using people and business data together to come up with insights and that’s what we’ve seen work best with a lot of clients.

Adding to Gaurava’s thoughts, Jared shared that it’s the people who bring the bias and not data and sometimes people analysing the data with their own biases could become one of your biggest pitfalls. Data is there to weed out the unconscious bias, it gives you the facts and information that you can use to develop and design your own strategies in order to achieve the set business objectives, he added.

How can we leverage the power of people analytics in small businesses?

Illustrating an example of a fairly young company that Chek Wee used to work with, he explained how startup companies struggle to equip young, first-time managers with the right managerial skills and talent with limited resources and support. To help the company resolve such managerial concerns at that time, the leader implemented a very basic exercise called ‘Rate my manager’. Now, to reduce employee biases towards this exercise during appraisal months or other unpleasant situations, the managerial performance was analysed based on a minimal viable behaviour with three basic questions: Is my manager communicating clearly on my target? Is my manager meeting me regularly to provide feedback and support? Is my manager conducting effective team meetings? These three behavioural questions form the basis for analytics and help HR professionals extend adequate support and feedback to the managers while also setting their expectations right, he added.

Plumbing before poetry: Strategic data integration

Highlighting a hypothesis-driven data integration approach, Jared shared that it is not only about the data that we should rely on. Sometimes there’s too much data that we lose sight of the problem and data is supposed to align us together and ensure that we measure the right things. So, we need to look at how a certain data set goes back to our original problem so that we can use the data for effective problem solving by identifying the problems and develop solutions to address those problems.

Adding the need to focus on the business problems first, Guarava shared “What we’ve seen works best is that this is the business problem we have and we have to figure out what data is needed, whether it needs to be integrated or analysed in silos and come up with insights that can actually improve business performance. So, if it is a problem backward, your analytics is going to be effective and if you’re just looking at data to see what analysis we can do, more after than than not, your analysis won’t be effective and solutions will not get implemented. So don’t worry too much about the data, worry about figuring out what is the problem that you are trying to resolve, and then see what kind of data is required. More often than not, you will find that you already have it in place.”

On an aligned note, Chek Wee added that business leaders after a while don’t get too excited about how colorful the data charts are, so having a problem-solving approach is much more effective and practical. The leader emphasised the need to shift focus from distracting charts and screen presentations to using data as a simple problem-solving tool.

After hearing some excellent insights on how data should be integrated and seen by leaders across the globe, Chee Tung reminisced an article written by Professor Adam Grant wherein he mentioned that sometimes we hope to arrive at a counterintuitive message from the data but actually a lot of times the data confirms a lot of gut feeling and we shouldn’t dismiss the kind of data that comes that way.

Transforming the future of work, workforce, and workplace with data-driven insights

Sharing how people analytics can be used by companies and clients worldwide to address the pandemic-induced challenges and future proof their respective lines of businesses, Guarava shared that one of the premier applications of people analytics is getting the workforce ready for the future.

“It’s like 10 years of change compressed into one and a half years so people analytics and data-driven insights are turbocharging the organisation’s ability to look at skill transitions to understand how to upskill/reskill, what are the key pathways that certain jobs can take etc. So we believe that this particular application of people analytics is going to be a game-changer in the coming years as organisations fundamentally transform the three W’s- Work, workforce, and workplace. So as that transition takes place, this application of people analytics will be a front end in helping organisations navigate that.” he added.

Deliberating upon several different pandemic-induced challenges in the new world of work, Jared discussed how we can use people analytics to address supply or labor shortages, talent shortages to drive business effectiveness and cost efficiencies. He added how it can further be used to reduce turnover and revise ROIs on the business front, especially when things get tighter. For instance, we know that we are in the middle of a talent war right now so people analytics can be used to devise better business strategies. The pandemic has definitely shown us how fast we can work. Learning from a fail fast and fail forward approach at General Motors, Jared mentioned how people analytics provides metrics to judge how far the organisation has come forward.

Fighting the global talent war with people analytics

Chek Wee in this ‘war for talent’ discussion exemplified some of the best initiatives taken by the Singapore government such as helping young graduates secure job positions with the SGUnited Traineeship programme. The government is making substantial efforts to provide a lot of subsidies for hiring and providing young graduates in traineeship programmes. He added how with the help of this one initiative, his company managed to secure nine trainees on the nine months training programme. Talking about the next challenge, which is to compete with thousands of companies who are trying just as hard to hire fresh talent he said they used online assessment tools to look for cognitive skills which helped streamline the application process and increase the talent pool.

“By using online assessment tools, we did not only reduce the time to talk to these people, but we also reduced the biases and increase the probability of getting higher quality candidates, not just based on the educational background but by what they can bring to the table.” he added

Scrutinising the recruitment paradigm with people analytics

Commenting on the changing hiring dynamics, Guarava mentioned that the fundamental factors that attract people to companies have dramatically changed, so the use of data is allowing executives to understand how to build a new, powerful EVP from the ground up in order to get the right talent. Underscoring the importance of mental wellbeing in an organisation today, he stated that it has now become one of the primary reasons for employee turnover. Talking about performance management, he added that it has significantly shifted to ensuring that managerial capability is built.

Chek Wee, on the other hand, highlighted the need to also leverage external data insights in small companies to convince your leadership that something needs to be done.

On an added note, Jared shared that new strategies don’t necessarily have to come from internal data but also from external sources since we’re competing so fiercely with each other.

Supercharging analytics into HR processes

Guarava, on how to supercharge analytics into HR processes commented that it’s more about how to embed data-driven culture across the HR function since business leaders are used to making data-based decisions.

On an added note, Jared shared that one does not need to be a data professional to incorporate such strategies, what you should really start with is having a framework in terms of what problems are we facing and how can this data help. Some additional factors to consider are the source of the data which could be internal or external, the amount of data that will be useful, and the accuracy of data.

Beautifully moderated by Chee Tung, the leader concluded the panel on a wonderful note by summarising the key highlights of the discussion for the audience. Right from discussing the pandemic and future of work around people analytics, the war of talent, and the great resignation to finally strategising how to get started and embed this culture of data-driven insights within HR processes, it’s been a super exciting panel, he added.

  • Published On Oct 11, 2021 at 06:00 AM IST

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