People analytics: A human resource skill for the digital age in Financial Services

To upskill or not to upskill is no longer the question in financial services. This is a major highlight from PwC’s 23rd Annual Global CEO Survey and repeated in multiple future of work research publications globally. Closer home, we can identify with how technology has disrupted businesses. The more agile and adaptable a bank or insurance company, the higher the survival and success of that business. Human resource (HR) as a critical function in organisations will not be left behind by the digital disruption. Leading organizations know they need to disrupt or be disrupted. How can HR chart the course for change?

HR needs to be more pre-emptive regarding digital transformation as it plays an important role in shaping the organization’s digital identity. It is a challenge and a real complexity to plan future capabilities of a workforce in the digital economy; as is the ability to integrate the right people into a dynamic organizational context and help existing employees and leaders gain new digital competencies to be able to drive transformation. People Analytics, also known as HR analytics, will chart the way for HR digital transformation. These terms are all used to describe the practice of applying analysis processes to workforce data to understand workforce-related business issues. By using people analytics, people managers do not have to rely on gut feeling; instead, analytics will enable HR professionals to make data-driven decisions. Furthermore, analytics helps to test the effectiveness of various HR policies. For HR to truly become a strategic partner to the business, people managers should be able to influence both the thinking and assumptions of leaders and the direction of the organization. In order to do so, HR decisions should be founded on credible, factual and accurate data for improved operational and financial results. By using people analytics, organisations can cut through the noise and get a clear picture of what is working and what is not. It takes the guesswork out of your most important workforce decisions, ensuring that you better manage people's risk, match employees more smartly to jobs and are more efficient and cost-effective. Increasingly, HR departments are becoming people analytics departments. By embracing people analytics, organisations can leverage the power of data insights to improve recruiting, hiring, talent retention, training and development, team collaboration, performance management, and more. People Analytics helps managers and senior talent leaders unlock the power of data—increasing rigor, reducing bias, and improving performance.

That said, the journey to embracing data insights through people analytics is not an easy one. However, it is doable as long as the organisation has a HR vision to embrace and uses people analytics insights. The onus is primarily on the organisation's top leadership to endorse the use of people analytics. This then means a change in the organisational culture to one that encourages and uses data driven insights in the decision-making processes, more so in people matters.

Many well-known multinational companies already use HR people analytics. These organisations are leveraging the power of data-driven insights to:

• Improve collaboration across teams more so in multinational companies where global or regional team collaboration is critical;
• Improving hiring decisions, where skills are correctly matched with business needs;
• Enhancing employee engagement through various initiatives such as pulse surveys and employee engagement surveys and
• Improving reward and remuneration decisions by ensuring that rewards such as performance bonuses are driving the intended company goals and values.

The uptake and use of people analytics in Africa is still a work in progress, but it is clear that this is a space to watch as organisations seek to make more evidence-based decisions that are backed by credible data.