During times of disruption, which certainly includes today, HR data is crucial in navigating organizations through change and ensuring future profitability. Execs and business leaders at large organizations can struggle to both holistically understand where their business stands today in terms of resources; how to resource for future scenarios; and how decisions they make today will impact their workforce in the future.
The New Future of Work: Your Workforce Will Define Your Future
Consider this pressing use case. From Salesforce and Twitter to Citibank and TIAA, companies are formulating post-vaccine work schemes that span the range from back to the office, hybrid work and 100% work-from-anywhere. For large organizations that want to go hybrid, there are nearly unlimited possibilities for how they can do that.
Should all employees come into the office part-time?
Should marketing come on Monday and Thursday and sales on Tuesday and Friday?
Do interns need to be in every day?
For many companies, the process of deciding has become over-simplified. It’s not only when people come in that matters. It’s what work/tasks can be performed remotely, versus in-person, that should determine where a role can be located and whether it can be performed at home. Once a determination has been made, companies can then match this with employee preference. It’s no good if a finance manager wants to work five days from home, when 40% of the tasks the role entails requiring in-person collaboration.
Once where people work is determined, companies also need to measure the impact of this decision. For example, a recent survey from Microsoft found that those who are successful at remote work tended to be Millennials or Gen-X, male, information workers, who are further along in their careers. However, Gen-Z, women, frontline workers and those new to their careers struggled. Nearly one in five workers said their employers “don’t care” about their work-life balance and over half feel overworked at home.
The office is also usually where professionals develop relationships early in their career; and gain access to more senior employees for coaching, mentoring and support opportunities. Some employees may miss out on “water cooler” conversations with managers and maybe even promotions as a result. They should look at trends in whether attrition increased; whether there was lower retention among women; or if morale took a hit. All of which will lead to lower productivity in the long-term.
Another example in how HR data is defining the workplace of the future is in predicting what the workforce of tomorrow should look like: what skills and roles will be needed as the business changes and evolves.
For example, according to PwC, the skills employees are most focused on building have been influenced by lessons learned from the pandemic. Twenty-two percent said “creativity and innovation” will be most important in their career path and 21% said new leadership skills, such as inclusive leadership.
Organizations must assess the supply of their workforce’s skills and anticipate how those skills will be demanded in the future to support initiatives like new products.
Last year, research we conducted with CEBR found that companies that use HR data to conduct organizational planning and analysis (analyzing the workforce and preparing it for future staffing needs) have a positive net effect on the success and growth of the business; specifically a 2x increase in productivity growth. For the U.S. economy, that’s potentially, $92.2 billion.
HR Should Focus More On Talent Experience To Engage And Retain Employees
Smart leaders ask questions and make decisions off of HR data. Some “ideas” like permanent remote may be great in theory, but terrible in reality. What works for every company will be different, but what won’t change is that HR data has a growing role to play in defining the future of the organization.
[To share your insights, please write to us at sghosh@martechseries.com]