In taking on a new role in People Analytics, unsuspecting leaders often find themselves navigating much more than a new work environment. Though they were recruited to deliver workforce insights and instill a data-driven mindset into HR, they quickly encounter difficulties upstream in what we call the people data supply chain, revealing unexpected obstacles in their path to access the tools and data they need that reach across HR functions.
Within weeks new people analytics leaders almost always find themselves working closer than they expected with data engineering, technology, HR operations, and senior leaders to achieve a singular goal: clean, strategic, and impactful workforce data that can be used to generate insights that drive business results.
For those embarking on a People Analytics career, this path may seem overwhelming, but it is the foundation of high-impact analytics work.
It can help to know that this is the gig; you're not alone. It comes with the territory. To that end, the image above depicts the 30,000-foot view of this uncharted path. Dive deeper into the experience below or listen to the author’s keynote speech of the journey of people analytics leaders at People Analytics World in London.
We’re going to be following a fictional People Analytics leader who just joined a large tech company. The company has heard about People Analytics for some time and finally decided to dip their toes into the water. This new leader is tasked with building out their People Analytics function and capabilities for the first time. It usually goes something like this:
The new People Analytics leader begins by taking inventory of available data, identifying extraction points, convincing stakeholders of the need for access, and understanding the company's unique measures and metrics. These steps are crucial because People Analytics requires more than just raw data; it requires architected analytical models to perform meaningful analysis. Unfortunately, like many companies before the “analytics revolution,” the organization hadn’t prioritized their data and is now unprepared, lacking readily available information for People Analytics.
The leader quickly realizes the necessity of being scrappy and working with what can be begged, borrowed, and improvised. This is nothing new for People Analytics leaders, as they have shown they can produce significant value with very little access to data. But soon there will be questions about data acquisition and quality.
Our People Analytics leader soon hits a wall with the available data and realizes that the issue isn’t with the data itself, but with system configurations and report generation. Despite the team's investment in advanced HR systems like Workday, SuccessFactors, and Greenhouse, obtaining reliable, actionable insights continues to be a struggle. This drives the leader to delve into HR data analyst roles and responsibilities, such as troubleshooting system issues, reconfiguring setups, and working closely with IT, diverting even more focus from the primary role.
This is challenging enough for a People Analytics leader but, surprisingly, HR technologists and IT teams can also be unprepared for these issues. They’re used to focusing on implementing scalable HR systems and enhancing the workforce experience, not on ensuring data is ready for advanced analytics. Once the technology goes live, their role typically ends. This leaves gaps in addressing downstream data challenges that end up on our leader’s plate.
To be fair, People Analytics is relatively new to many technologists. But more recently, the unfortunate reality of significant, multiple reworkings of technology has helped this role move into partnership with People Analytics leaders early on. It’s becoming more common for People Analytics teams to be involved in HRIS or new HR technology implementations.
So our People Analytics leader eventually realizes their technologist role is not over. It turns out these modern HR technologies are incredibly configurable and rarely – if ever – set up only one way (at the enterprise level). Enterprise-grade HR tools are built to customize to the unique and varied needs of large companies. This configurability leads to massive variation in how a technology system can be implemented and most HR tech teams don’t get the final say in configuration. Upstream partners dictate what the technology needs to accomplish in order to align with the business process.
Since our downstream People Analytics leader is still having data challenges, it’s necessary once again to reach upstream, this time to HR Operations.
Now this leader encounters a fundamental rule of tech implementations: Without standardized processes, documented operational methods, and established guardrails for repeatable processes, this comprehensive undertaking doesn’t stand a chance. The data flowing from random operations will be of poor quality, and even with analysis, it won’t be able to connect to operational needs and goals.
Take, for example, an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that relies heavily on standardized processes. If a recruiter, anxious to close a candidate, works around standard process flows, interaction paths, or outreach cadences, the ATS can’t accurately reflect activities or produce clean data for People Analytics.
Even the best recruiting tools require subject matter expert process maps, such as “which stage comes first” or “how to handle evergreen requisitions.” Solutions that promise to revolutionize and streamline HR or automate and simplify HR functions don’t address the fact that they still have to do requirements gathering and process standardization. This critical link between operations and technology implementations is often overlooked but is essential for success. New tools can’t fix operational flaws; they cannot replace the need for strong operational documentation, change management, and implementation support.
Armed with this knowledge, the leader now steps into the role of operations leader to address these challenges they never expected as part of the People Analytics job description. Extensive collaboration with HR operations teams to standardize processes, understand business logic, and create checklists for consistent data entry begins. These efforts lead to configuration and data architecture work for the People Analytics team downstream, but it’s worth it to get clean and usable data for People Analytics.
Despite these improvements, a new issue surfaces: the lack of a clear workforce strategy. The organization can't standardize its way out of a problem or build a path, program, or process if they don’t know where they’re going. They are at a crossroads. Without a strategic framework to guide these processes, the improvements made in operations are likely to be short-lived and disconnected from broader business objectives.
By this stage, the journey of our People Analytics leader has revealed that without a workforce strategy, data standardization alone is insufficient. A documented strategy is needed to provide a structured framework for how HR resources its programs, processes, and technology to achieve business goals.
Strategy is a guiding light for People Analytics, enabling the leader and team to assess the effectiveness of their work across HR.
The most mature People Analytics teams influence, support, and direct workforce strategy. While the CHRO maintains ownership of setting the strategy, our leader collaborates closely to orchestrate business needs, assess current HR capabilities, and prioritize requests across the function. Leaders skilled in strategic execution and project management are essential for HR success and bring significant value to their people analytics career.
This alignment allows them to automate, scale, and accelerate operations through excellent technology implementations and finally, with the right operations and technology in place, they finally gain access to clean data that is crucially tied to the business strategy.
With this clean and aligned data in hand, our leader can return to the core aspects of their people analytics job description. This journey has revealed more than the need for clean data. It has surfaced the people data supply chain.
We shall not cease from exploration.
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
- T.S. Eliot
In fact, we’ve identified an emerging new role in this function that is transforming HR.
To learn more about optimizing the people data supply chain and recognizing the critical role of Workforce Systems Leaders, download Richard Rosenow’s From Data to Strategy: The New Role of Workforce Systems Leaders in Transforming HR.