It is time for Human Resources to own the numbers. After all, the words ‘Human’ and ‘Resources’ are used together for a reason. Human Resources is not just about leading the humans. It is also about the powerful management and leadership of resources associated with what the humans bring to the success of the organization.
Our role, as effective Human Resource leaders, is to ensure that we are constant in bringing forth both the human and the resource elements to the strategic management table. One of the most powerful resource tools at our fingertips is Workforce Analytics. Using the analytics tool effectively is key to ensuring both functional Human Resources and operational strategic success.
When we fail to bring both parts of the human and resources equation forward, we fail at our jobs as Human Resources leaders. Failure is pretty easy as noted by Mark Barry, a successful Human Resources leader in the United States. Mr. Barry offers us a step-by-step approach to how HR Analytics should be used as the resource tool, from the perspective of learning from one’s mistakes.
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What we learn from our mistakes, is how to change the outcome from failure to one of success by using HR Analytics effectively. Of the seven Human Resources lessons learned from this article, there are two in particular that bear closer scrutiny.
First, where does HR Analytics report? If the function of Human Resources is not responsible for the ownership of resources through understanding the people numbers, implementing the metrics, evaluating the measures, and leading everything that is data driven and comes from the organizational workforce for purposes of decision making, then the Human Resources function is not accountable for any of it. If the Human Resources function is not responsible nor accountable for analytical resources, then that resource part of the Human Resources equation is lost.
When the power of analytical resources goes to others in the organization, Human Resources will have given up the fundamental strength that comes with workforce planning and development, which must be vested within the Human Resources function.
This leads to the second lesson, Human Resources needs to position itself strategically. Again, if the Human Resources function is able to leverage the knowledge that comes from owning the resource of analytics, we can influence decision-making based on the powerful combination of putting the humans together with the resources to drive organizational success.
Discussion Questions:
- If analytics are not vested in the Human Resource function, where would they reside in an organizational structure? What impact will this have on Human Resources?
- What are the benefits of having organizational analytics available through the Human Resources function?
- Identify three Human Resources activities that can be measured and link directly to effective organizational performance.
- Identify three strategic decisions that HR can influence by bringing forward both a human (workforce) and resource (analytical) based plan or proposal to the corporate table.