The Secret to Introducing Predictive Analytics to Empower Human Resources

Predictive analytics is currently one of the hottest buzz words amongst business leaders, with many companies listing it as their top priority for 2015. One man who already has extensive experience supporting the introduction of both HR transformation and predictive analytics is Srikanth Chandrashekhar, Director APAC HR Operations at Bombardier. He suggests that whilst many business leaders are excited by the prospect of predictive analytics, many do not understand the broader transformation that is required within the company to support the introduction of this new technology. SSON got in touch to find out more. SSON: Could you tell us about your experience introducing predictive analytics into multi-national companies? Chandrashekhar: I started in the HR transformation team at Honeywell, but I was also involved in reporting and analytics. There we had a complete end-to-end 5 year program around HR transformation and it was that experience which gave the basis of introducing similar projects at EMC and then Bombardier. Although the maturity of the HR transformation process was different at each company, one similarity was that I always needed to start by educating people about the difference between reporting verses analytics, because people often think they are one in the same. SSON: For the benefit of our readers, what is the difference between reporting and analytics? Chandrashekhar: A report describing employee attrition may consist of the number of people who left on a voluntary or involuntary basis. This can help a company understand that in any given time period, who left the company, how many people left and what was the reason. Now when we talk about analytics, we can get down to analysis such as, how many people between the tenure of 0 – 3 years, 3 – 6 and 6 – 9 left the company. We can identify whether we see any trends, not only for this year but over the past 5 years. Then with this information we can start spotting the indicators that cause us to lose our high potential employees. For example, we can investigate whether there is a correlation between termination and compensation, or between performance and leave. For example, is it true that a high performer will take less leave and are low performers bound to take more? Analytics uses a far more comprehensive set of data points than simple reporting and it’s this type of analysis that can really support HR decision making and ultimately add value to the business. SSON: How did you use analytics whilst Honeywell and EMC? Chandrashekhar: One key benefit was that we were able to manage our population in a more effective way than ever before. For example, every time we had a requirement to hire employees, the company used to advertise the vacancy and hire the best person available. But now let’s imagine we’re hiring someone on a project basis only. We found that typically nobody would think about what the new hire would end up doing after the project ended. So we started to get managers answering questions upfront, like whether they were hiring for the long term or just a short term project. If it was just for a single project, we could automatically bring up contractor or consultant fees and make a comparison of hiring a fulltime person in that particular country. As a result of this, our managers sometimes found that hiring someone through one of our existing vendors on a contractual basis, would be 70% of the cost we would have had to pay in compensation and benefits to a fulltime employee. Now that’s just one small example of what we did through analytics, but there was a lot of data points that went into the background to bring up those comparisons and dashboards for our managers. Consequently, our hiring managers were able to make a much more comprehensive decision around their recruitment needs. SSON: What is the secret behind getting to that stage? Chandrashekhar: It involves a complete transformation in peoples’ behaviour. In my experience, although you may want to take the leap and introduce analytics, more often than not the company as a whole is not mentally ready to get into it because they see HR as a completely different function than as how you see it. So behaviour wise I think that’s where you need to start before making a big investment. In doing this, you need to start by explaining: How we are transforming the HR function. What this means to the managers within the business. And what we expect the rest of the company to start understanding about HR decisions. This really does mean beginning at the very grassroots level, but it’s the responsibility of the HR function to introduce this change and make it happen. SSON: Why is starting from such a basic level so important? Chandrashekar: It’s all about getting the support and buy-in from the wider business. Part of the reason behind this is that although the idea of HR becoming a strategic business partner has been around for a while now, some people still don’t know what that really means. They still imagine a business partner signing off on promotional letters, still getting involved with transactional details. Then when it comes to HR shared services, some people imagine 50 – 100 hundred workers churning out spreadsheets. But from my perspective, the view of a HR operations team or a shared services team should not be focused on the people within it, but rather the technology underpinning it. For example, if you have a mature organisation that looks at leveraging technology, you can invest in analytics to make many of the transactional decisions for you automatically. Or alternatively, analytics could give you the necessary information to help you make more informed decisions yourself. Unless the wider business appreciates the role of the HR function, you’re going to suffer significant push back for your HR transformation initiatives. So that’s why I think HR has to start by clearing out these misconceptions of what a HR business partner is, what a HR operations team actually does and what that involves. Get this straightened out and you will have a much better chance of getting that all important buy-in for your HR transformation and analytics projects. [inlinead]

The Secret to Introducing Predictive Analytics to Empower Human Resources

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