People Analytics For Dummies

Chapter 18

Ten People Analytics Pitfalls

IN THIS CHAPTER

Recognizing the most common mistakes

Avoiding the biggest messes

Proceeding on your journey while mitigating risk

Over my career in people analytics, I certainly have made my share of mistakes. You don’t have to learn everything the hard way, though. In this chapter, I share ten of the most common (and most serious) pitfalls I have seen people analytics efforts succumb to over the years. I hope that by reading these, you can prepare yourself and your teammates to steer clear of trouble.

Pitfall 1: Changing People is Hard

People analytics can change the entire nature of human resources — and nothing gets people stirred up quite like change. Regardless of the scope of people analytics you are implementing, it’s likely that you’ll encounter some level of difficulty if you are trying change the way people think, the way people make decisions, and the way people do what the they do.

Quite often I hear about resistance to change. More often I encounter ambivalence rather than resistance. Ambivalence, however, can be worse than resistance because everyone may outwardly cheer you on and yet not provide the support you need to be ...