Gain a seat at the C-suite with talent analytics
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"People who run ball clubs, they think in terms of buying players. Your goal shouldn't be to buy players, your goal should be to buy wins. And in order to buy wins, you need to buy runs," says the character Peter Brand in the movie "Moneyball".
With tightening budgets, human-resources departments are being squeezed to do more with less. The challenge to recruit better talent, get them up to speed and retrain them can be exhausting. It leaves us with very little time or energy to consider our core purpose – to support the organisation’s business strategy and direction.
To bring value to one’s organisation, we need clear objectives and measurable targets. And those targets should not be just any targets, but rather strategic targets that can make a difference (wins) to the organisation.
Measuring and reporting important HR numbers such as employee turnover rate, average time to fill, and employee engagement may or may not increase the organisation’s value. In most cases, though, it’s not enough.
These numbers, simply measured but not linked to business strategy, are nice to look at but don’t serve any real purpose.
The HR numbers that we measure must be linked to specific outcomes. Only then do we become relevant and gain a seat at the C-suite level – top senior positions with “chief” in the title. This practice is called people or talent analytics, and here’s how to achieve it.
1. Start with your leader’s business objective or burning platform. Align your HR strategy to ensure that business objectives are met. Once this is determined and signed off on, HR is pointing in the right direction.
2. Assign your HR resources to track and monitor measurable, useful targets on a regular basis. This will allow you to make course corrections if things don’t go as planned.
3. Report them. Make sure it’s sexy. Don’t bore your top executives with all the tables and data on one spreadsheet during a presentation. Don’t get me wrong, you still need numbers, but use them to support your points rather than as the main points themselves.
Your presentations should tell a story and capture the attention of your senior leaders.
Keep all useful numbers on hand to answer all possible questions. Practise like mad before delivering your presentation.
4. Expensive tools are unnecessary. Sorry to disappoint, but those costly tools alone won’t provide you with HR numbers that make an impact. You need data, all right, but more important, you need people who understand business and have strong analytic skills.
These steps will take you out of the trend-zone and put you well on your way towards producing relevant HR numbers that earn you a place at the C-suite.
Suvit Chansrichawala is managing director and founder of Serendipity & Co.
