足球电子竞技赛事信息

Using People Data to Inform Your Leadership Development Investments

The age of analytics is here. And for most industries, using data to inform business decisions is nothing new.

“For decades, companies have leveraged data to make decisions and to achieve desired business outcomes,” says Stephen Jeong, senior faculty in our Leadership Analytics practice .

But using people data in talent development and management is a more recent explosion. “HR has lagged behind other functional areas in leveraging people analytics to optimize how individuals and teams can achieve business goals,” Jeong says.

For example, people data could be used to measure the impact of leadership development programs. Organizations spend billions of dollars each year in development efforts, but generally do a poor job of tying their investments to their bottom line. This has led some executives to question whether it makes sense to invest in leadership development efforts at all.

“What’s ironic,” Jeong says, “is that most companies have an abundance of business data they could leverage to make better decisions on investments in leadership investment. Often, they’re just not sure how to connect the dots.”

So how can you feel confident that when your organization invests in human capital through leadership development programs, you’ll get measurable results that improve your bottom line?

The answer is a 3-pronged strategy that involves collecting data, analyzing it, and then taking action.

Moving People Analytics Beyond Employee Engagement Data

Employee engagement has dominated the talent management headlines for a good part of the last 2 decades. And many organizations actively collect leadership assessment data that can be directly linked to employee engagement.

But our experts say that it’s time to move beyond just measuring employee engagement. The most successful organizations look at that people data alongside their desired business outcomes. For example, they might measure how a management competency for setting clear goals and direction aligns with a team’s understanding of the corporate mission.

3 Types of Analytics Worth Measuring & Leveraging to Inform Development Decisions

At 足球电子竞技(济南)官方入口, we think about people analytics in 3 clusters:

People data about leaders within the organization .

This includes leaders’ beliefs, behaviors, and practices that affect their people, and, in turn, the business. Data from 360 or other assessments on individual leaders is essential to understanding and evaluating the impact of investments in talent.

People data about employee experience and engagement .

How do employees feel about their organization’s overall culture and senior leadership? Do employees feel that they have the tools and resources to do their jobs effectively? Do they feel safe taking calculated risks? What are their attitudes about their organization’s internal communications? These are questions related to how employees experience their organizations.

General data about desired business outcomes.

What do organizations consider to be their most important metrics? While specific metrics vary by industry, some outcomes, such as increasing revenues, operating income, and market share, while reducing turnover and other costs, are common. These key metrics should be examined alongside people data on leader actions and employee experiences.

Using People Analytics to Help Prioritize Employee Development Initiatives

When investing in leadership development, organizations often have a goal of improving specific leadership skills that are correlated with their employees’ engagement and productivity. As is often said, though, correlation is not causation, and doesn’t address the root cause of a behavior, so correlations can lead to erroneous insights because they don’t account for the complexity in data. For example, one leadership skill may impact multiple business outcomes in different ways.

Besides, employee engagement is not the endgame — improvement in a specific business metric is.

Using your people analytics strategically allows you to leverage the power of multiple data sets, sort through the complexities, and arrive at the prioritized behaviors that will lead to specific business outcomes.

Using People Data to Understand Root Causes

Suppose that your organization wants to increase sales by 15% this year. What does your people analytics data, specifically your leadership assessment data and employee engagement data, suggest that you should focus on to increase sales?

Jeong gives an example: “One approach is to correlate leadership behaviors with employee engagement data. Employee engagement surveys often ask workers whether their supervisor inspires them.” Questions like this are often reported as being positively correlated with employee engagement and productivity.

But if so, what is the recommended solution to improving engagement? Instruct all your sales supervisors to “be more inspirational”?

Probably not, Jeong explains, because that approach overlooks the root cause underlying the correlation. “In this case, it may actually be the supervisors’ level of empathy in the workplace or their communication skills that are actually a better predictor of worker engagement — and ultimately, productivity and sales.”

Without an examination of root causes, companies risk investing in development programs that focus on the wrong thing.

By using people analytics to pinpoint the behavioral drivers and developing specific development interventions to address them, organizations can de-risk decision-making and invest in their people with confidence.

Using People Analytics in Talent Management & Development

At 足球电子竞技(济南)官方入口, our analytics-driven solutions help guide organizations through this process. We partner with clients through the following 5 steps to help them use their people analytics to adopt development and retention strategies that deliver the biggest payoff.