Our framework for driving value

Create more value with your People Analytics efforts

April 05, 2023

Has your organisation already unleashed the power of People Analytics?

There’s no doubting the power and potential of People Analytics, from helping to boost your talent appeal to sharpening your understanding of future workforce needs. Effective People Analytics can transform your business and boost the strategic impact and status of HR within your organisation. But many organisations aren’t realising the full value from their investment. It’s telling that executives taking part in the PwC HR Tech Survey 2022 see HR insights and data analytics as the biggest challenge facing HR today. Why are they falling short? And how can you make sure that People Analytics delivers? This is the question we set out to answer in this whitepaper. The whitepaper provides a framework for increasing the value of your People Analytics built around a series of real-life case studies.

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"The greater the business benefit from People Analytics, the better your chance of securing a seat at the table of strategic decision making."

A systematic approach is key

We have been working with a range of clients in different industries worldwide, accompanying them through different stages of their People Analytics journeys. Our experience underlines the importance of a systematic approach to strategy and implementation aimed at matching your ambitions and capabilities with business demands.

Building upon our lessons learnt from a series of real-life case studies, we developed a comprehensive framework for increasing the value obtained from people analytics. The layers of our framework reflect that the ultimate People Analytics value drivers are:

high-impact use cases delivering actionable insights to relevant workforce challenges (the inner ‘insights’ layer);
a high-performing People Analytics function and technological set-up that can deliver on your ambition (the outer ‘function’ layer).

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At the core of your People Analytics efforts, and hence our framework, are the individual use cases you are building. Evaluation and prioritisation criteria, like business relevance and adoption rate, should guide you in selecting the use cases to develop (further), and help you monitor the impact of your use cases which are already introduced. An effective use case portfolio management is therefore a crucial element, and ensures that you focus your resources on pursuing the most impactful use cases.

This outer layer underpins all your future People Analytics operations. It encompasses all the aspects that you should address to increase the impact of your People Analytics solutions. A successful People Analytics function is characterised by five main driving forces:

Business alignment: Forging close links with business teams and gearing People Analytics outputs to the information needed to drive effective business decision making.
Team: Clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of your People Analytics team, supporting them in delivering actionable insights from data, while communicating them clearly and convincingly.
Data: Creating a scalable human resource information technology (HRIT) data landscape. This will feed relevant, consistent and high quality data into the analytics and insights used in decision making. All of this is supported by stringent data security and ethics policies.
Culture: Embedding a data-driven culture and growth mindset in the wider organisation to embrace the actionable insights provided by People Analytics.
Technology: Bringing together appropriate tooling (built or bought) and processes that are fit for purpose and efficiently deployed.

"It is critical to translate data-driven results into explainable and practically actionable insights so decision makers can make 'responsible' decisions based on them."

Linda VosSenior Manager People Analytics at PwC Switzerland and PwC EMEA People Analytics Driver

What is the next step on your People Analytics journey?

It can be difficult to decide where to start as you look to become a more data-driven HR department. As most companies, you probably already have a number of use cases in place. To bring your People Analytics to the next level, should you take a step back and first focus on a more strategic approach with respect to the ‘function’ layer and sort out challenges related to, for example, data and business alignment? Or, alternatively, should you focus on increasing the number of use cases in the ‘insights’ layer?

What we see working best for most clients in terms of creating value with People Analytics is to do both: continue to increase the value of (existing or new) People Analytics use cases (‘show, don’t tell’) while working on the strategic blueprint of the target state of your People Analytics function (‘dream big, start small’).

Dream big, start small.

The foundation for taking your next step with People Analytics is a clear grasp of where you want to be, where you are now, the gaps that need to be bridged and a roadmap for getting there. Achieving your ambitions does not happen overnight. It is important to focus on each step outlined and incorporate the various elements of the framework as your strategy is rolled out and gathers acceptance across the business. Dream big, start small.

Show, don't tell.

The next steps with People Analytics is identifying your biggest workforce challenge. In our experience, the best place to look for your next steps with People Analytics is by identifying your biggest workforce challenge. You can then set up a single project to resolve that problem, whether that is by creating more insight into root causes and KPIs, by removing bottlenecks in critical HR system processes through automation or by building a predictive model and evaluating different intervention scenarios. This allows you to demonstrate the impact of your People Analytics from day one and to gain traction across the organisation. Show, don’t tell.