Here’s a statistic that might make you cringe: 50% of organizations we talk to are still emailing spreadsheets and PDFs to communicate payroll data—some of the most sensitive information a company possesses. Inefficient data systems like this are disconnected, siloed, and, quite frankly, they leave money on the table. Using these types of outdated approaches can make life difficult enough for domestic companies, but they make it nearly impossible for an organization to operate internationally.
In order to excel in the global talent market, organizations must have strong knowledge as well as the ability to structure and analyze that data in a uniform way across the company. We call this data proficiency, and it’s the second component of our Global Fluency framework that serves as a backbone for companies expanding internationally.
We teamed up with HRLeaders and some of the sharpest minds in HR for a series of panel discussions about the components of Global Fluency. In the second in the series, “How to use HR data and people analytics to drive organizational competitiveness”, our panelists discussed some simple, immediate actions that you can take to improve your company’s data proficiency and develop structures that make data available and understandable, no matter where it comes from.
Check out a few highlights below and view the full video here.
Steve Bianchi, Chief People and Operating Officer at Beamery
For me, the system is beyond just integrating tools. It's much more that holistic view of process—so how things get done, the organization, the location, the data itself, the applications and tools that you might use, but also that platform point, the technology on which that all resides and understanding the relationships there. And then from there it's really understanding how we make these things talk to one another in that normalization point. And I can't emphasize enough the importance of normalization.
Gustavo Canton, Global Analytics Leader at Starbucks
In terms of the people: how do you make sure you can use analytics or data to assess the state of the culture and figure out what are the areas of the playbook in terms of alignment with the new processes [and] the new ways of working? How do we communicate? How do we make sure they feel included as part of the new organization? All of those things I feel are very important and we have a role to play in that space because we are the ones who can provide the tools and the data to help with that integration, from the people side and also obviously from the technology side.
Hallie Bregman, Global Head of People Analytics at PTC
Culture is not something you can observe objectively; it is felt. There's dimensions you can start to measure, but it's not a visible, tangible, definite fact. So how can you use analytics to help shape that, define that, and understand that? Whether it's qualitative feedback or collecting surveys, it's starting to put together some of the story so you can even see what the difference is because culture is really a story that you tell yourself and your employee base. It's not something that you can just measure.
