People analytics can be defined as the use of data about human behaviours, relationships and traits to make business decisions. It helps to replace decision-making based on anecdotal experience, hierarchy and risk-avoidance with higher-quality decisions based on data analysis, prediction, and experimental research. Furthermore, people analytics data was used to baseline the time spent on the process in every country, and to map the networks of the people involved.
Businesses now are facing unprecedented times during this global turmoil leading to a series of unfortunate circumstances associated with the economic, global and political issues that are challenging business operations and strategies. The assistance and application of people analytics may help assist through focusing organisations to move beyond their mission and reinvent themselves around the human focus.
Agile Work and Organisation Design
At this point in time, where people need to work from home, it has become very apparent that we have shifted to an agile way of working and now we need to rethink our organisational design. These methods have revolutionised IT and greatly increased success rates in technology quality and productivity. Today, businesses will need to go agile as they will have to look at the capability of their workforce as a strategic imperative towards delivering the business strategy. Even with the best-laid plans, things can change, such as failed assumptions, skill misalignment, incorrect resource forecasting, significant productivity changes and even organisational structure change. Agile organisations should collect all such people data and analytics to counter change using strategic workforce planning that reinforces the evolving business goals and strategies.
Managing Remote Work Culture
The traditional hierarchies and protocols will do more harm than good for organisations, as they hinder communication and decision-making. There is now a need for organisations to understand that the paradigm shift required to become agile is far more than understanding agility itself. The technological advancement today allows us to be able to implement this concept, however, HR will need to break the traditional hierarchies and move to a robust network system.
The new normal
The cause of global disruption due to COVID-19 has caused a major systems-level disruption that has ultimately led us towards a transformation in organisational work patterns. It is pointless to look at all these challenges unless organisations make tangible and quick responses to these disruptions at play. The new normal promises exciting challenges for the HR function, however, businesses must embrace and utilise the power of people data and operate in an agile and strategic way.