14 Sept, 2022
The pandemic has been a catalyst for rapid growth. And with that growth comes bigger and heavier demands on HR departments: recruiting top talent, retaining high-performers, acting on turnover signals and becoming more digitally savvy. Falling behind just isn’t an option. As an HR practitioner, how can you get the ear of your leadership and get them to make the kinds of investments you need to meet their demands?
Meet Candace
2019 was Candace’s big year. She was finally promoted to Head of HR at her accounting and payroll consulting company, and she was determined to transform the way things were done.
With just 25 people, the agency was tightly bonded, with a work hard, play hard culture. Regular monthly team limes on the Avenue, daily catered lunches and a gym on the building’s top floor offset late night pitch sessions and 13-hour filming days.
We all know what happened in 2020. Candace’s company was rocked by the pandemic, but luckily the team remained intact. Business quadrupled and every team was burning the midnight oil. The transition to working from home was intense for everyone. Overnight, Candace found herself working around the clock to support every team as they came to grips with a shocking new reality.
As lockdowns and restrictions dragged on, Candace began to see cracks in formerly close teams. First, on-camera appearances began decreasing. Snippy comments in meetings became more common. Her team began fielding more and more “he said-she said” complaints. And then the sick days began piling up. What was happening?
Leadership pressed Candace for answers. Was it burnout? Stress? Was the Great Resignation headed their way? Unable to pinpoint why the company seemed to be on the verge of imploding, Candace turned to the numbers.
Enter Data
HR Analytics uses statistical insights to inform recruiting, talent management, and employee engagement decisions and even support daily HR administrative functions.
To get to the bottom of the fractures, Candace made collecting data her first mission. She designed a short “temperature check” survey and sent it to randomly selected individuals over the course of a couple weeks to measure employee attitudes. The results led to her next step: arranging private town hall meetings with separate teams to understand where specific grievances were coming from. She also began analysing exchanges on the company’s internal chat platform to measure dimensions like tone of voice, mood, and emotions to understand the team’s general sentiment.
Knowing that her leadership favoured facts over feelings, Candace created dashboards that succinctly visualised the data she collected to present to her executives.
The Outcome
Working from home was a magic bullet for the company’s productivity – even as more clients signed on, no team’s output ever wavered. But this came at a heavy price. Morale was low. The agency’s “work hard, play hard” culture had narrowed down to just work, and the mood was reaching an inflection point that would be hard to pull back from.
The questions came in waves after waves:
“Candace, what do our employee satisfaction numbers look like?”
“Candace, can you predict our retention and turnover rates?”
“Candace, what do you need to turn this thing around?”
Relying on the data, Candace persuaded the executive team to invest in powerful HR software that automated much of what she had been doing on her own. Going further, she launched a rewards and incentives programme that reenergised the company and nominated employees to a social committee that was tasked with bringing back the “play” to their office culture. .
You can do this, too
If you’re anything like Candace, and ready to use data to support your own HR team, let us help you chart your path. Register your team now for our HR Power Pack! Available exclusively for teams of 3 persons or more, this tightly packed bundle is designed to introduce busy practitioners to data fundamentals, including persuading with data, data driven decision making, people analytics and more! Click here to sign up.