Talking about millennials is the hip thing to do right now. Mostly it’s old folks like myself yelling at clouds about how they’ll be the doom of us all. While I certainly couldn’t name one song by Skrillex or Calvin Harris (are they still in?), I do have tremendous respect for one of the traits that defines them. All of the research shows that they, more than generations prior, value finding meaning and helping the greater good in their work.
I think this worldview is a wonderful aspect of our young friends. Here’s the thing: you don’t have to be in marketing at the newest green, gluten-free startup creating iPhone apps, in a city with a nickname that starts with “silicon”, to create positive change on this giant blue and green sphere we all share as home.
The folks working the plant line that molds safety glasses are helping to keep other blue collar workers safe. The salesperson in medical technology is pushing a product that will save lives. The city planner is out there trying to design roads to get us home to our children more quickly and safely. Those of us that live in a “Silicon somewhere” traffic hell certainly understand the intrinsic value of that.
Most of us don’t work in an office like this.
Which brings me to one of the most interesting questions I’ve been asked. Very recently a friend asked me “why do you like analytics and numbers so much?” It was a passing question to which I gave a passing answer. As the days went on, however, the question kept popping up in the back of my mind. Since I got into workforce analytics and planning roughly a decade ago, I’ve known that I have a passion for it. But I’ve never really spent any time thinking about the reasons why. Until now.
And here’s what I came up with:
Workforce Analytics and Planning Helps People
When distilled to it’s purest form, HR analytics and planning focus on a few things. Eliminating gaps and talent shortages. Finding root causes for turnover and reducing it. Improving performance. Improving employee engagement. These all create positive change for people, and here’s why:
- Improving day-to-day life: One thing we’re being asked to look at more and more lately is the impact of engagement programs. Companies want to know what works and what doesn’t. They want to understand how to create a better workplace for their employees. We spend more time with our co-workers than our families, so an improved and more engaging workplace has significant impact on people’s well-being. Good analytics helps companies do that. Of course it helps the company too, as retention does, but that doesn’t diminish the positive impact on the people.
- Improving people’s financial well-being: Another fairly leading-edge practice is internal talent mobility, pipelining, and career pathing. Companies want employees to have the ability to advance their career or make a lateral move into something that works better for them, and they’re using analytics to understand those pathways. It helps retention and performance, and it opens up career paths to the employee that might not have been there before. This is a great trend, for both the company and the employee.
- Improving safety: Workforce planning is primarily about avoiding talent gaps and of course the old “right skills right place right time” mantra. Study after study has shown the impact of being appropriately staffed/skilled. Employee burnout is reduced. Safety incidents go down. Quality goes up. Employees are safer in their jobs. The people using their products are getting a safer and higher quality item.
- Creating jobs: Almost without fail, workforce planning shows that being more appropriately staffed is a better, safer, and more profitable option than running shortstaffed and overworking people. Here’s one demonstration of that. Companies that do good analytics and planning understand this and understand the value of people, thus creating jobs. It also creates better work-life balance for those previously expected to work 60 hour weeks to make up for personnel shortages.
In fact, most business decisions that negatively impact the regular Joe are due to poor workforce planning:
- The tech company that lays off 10% of its workforce and hires half of them back six months later.
- The hospital that won’t give a top performing nurse a $1/hour increase to market rate because their comp structure limits it, despite the fact that losing a nurse costs $70,000 in hard cost, not to mention much higher soft costs related to quality of care and patient safety.
A company doing good workforce planning would have realized the error in both of those decisions ahead of time.
There’s a lot of “us vs. them” out there in the world today, but proper analytics, almost without fail, end up creating outcomes that benefit both the company and the living, breathing people who work there. Rarely in business can you create such a win/win.
THIS is why workforce analytics and planning practitioners will stay up until 2am to finish a critical project. This is why we’ll look at numbers and charts until we’re bleary-eyed. It’s been a week or so since I was asked “why do you like analytics and numbers so much?” but now I’ve got the answer. This is why we do what we do.
I’ll leave you with one of the most powerful examples of analytics and planning improving the world that I’ve seen in my career.
I was one of the leads on a healthcare project that looked at workforce data from 40+ major hospitals and compared it to HCAHPS quality and safety scores. Huge, taxing undertaking. We showed that proper workforce planning, retention, and staffing have a direct correlation to patient safety and quality of care. Workforce planning can literally save lives.
That’s real-world impact. And we don’t even need a ping-pong table or a Starbucks in reception to make it happen. We just need some data, some technology, and perhaps another pot of the bland break-room coffee.