Dr. Brett Wells, Director of People Analytics, speaks with Al Adamsen, founder of PAFOW, about building capabilities and the future road ahead in People Analytics. To ongoing learning, creativity, and compassion for the human experience!
Key takeaways from the podcast:
1. There is no single correct way to build a people analytics capability - what works for Apple is different than Microsoft, is different from Google. The only wrong choice is inaction - to not do people analytics at all.
2. Many make the mistake of betting the farm - going after the moonshot. But remember the inaugural moonshot - there were many missions and some catastrophic failures before actually landing on the moon. Instead, make smaller bets to gain traction, demonstrate value, and build relationships across the business.
3. Because of the large costs and ramp of time of building a team, a short-term POC approach is to partner with areas that are more advanced in analytics (e.g., finance, operations).
4. People analytics biggest challenge is convincing people NOT to trust their intuition and judgment. As such, do not design you dashboards/nudge systems to tell managers what to do; instead show them with if/then decision-making.