People Strategy

CHAPTER 6Leveraging Data

For most teams, data is a vital tool to drive business decisions. Sales teams, engineering teams, marketing teams – all of them use data to set goals, measure success, and inform strategy. But historically, human resources teams have not had that. Decisions about hiring and firing, promotions and performance management plans, and a host of other issues that face HR professionals have too often relied on judgment calls rather than hard numbers.

To some extent, this is unavoidable. When your work centers around human beings and human behavior, there will always be some subjectivity involved. But without quantitative measures, decision-making processes can feel shaky and lack transparency. And that can make it difficult for HR departments to position themselves as strategic to company leaders.

A significant aspect of any People Strategy requires observable and observed data to drive your decisions. Judgment is undoubtedly important, but we should never rely only on our gut. As a CEO, I want all my department leads to be able to present proof for their strategic plans and proof of results. HR is no exception. It's easy to think of People Strategy as a feel-good approach to HR, aimed only at ensuring that employees are happy. But through data and analytics, People Strategy also drives business outcomes – sometimes in unexpected ways.

Take this story that Courtney Cherry Ellis, vice president of human resources at Anaplan, told me recently. In a previous ...