In Formula 1 championships, from 2 and half minutes to 1.9 seconds – the fundamentals of pit-stops have changed since the 60s. The number of people taking note and attending to the car hasn’t changed, but what has changed is the time taken to make the changes in the racing car. And this is one example on how technology has transformed the Formula 1 outcomes.  The agility that is shown by F1 needs to be in the organizations too when it comes to analysing data. In the TechHR16 session of Refresh Reboot HR, Shashwat Kumar, Partner at Aon Hewitt and Arun Dhaka, Country Sales Director, India & South Asia of Cornerstone OnDemand spoke about how data is changing the talent outcomes for organizations. 

The mechanisms of synchronization of data touches us in all aspects of what we do. Digitization has collapsed the cycle of innovation – and no company has the assurance of being the market leader in this everyday changing world. The digital disruptions are happening not by established structures, but by newer players who are challenging the status quo every single day. The hallmark of successful businesses is defined by the speed, agility and innovation. 

Because of this change in philosophy of the organization, the capabilities required from the talent are also changing. And hence HR is the most central part of this paradigm shift. The challenge for the HR leaders is that they need to translate all the disruptions in meaningful outcomes. And the topmost way to deal with it is not by improving engagement but developing a culture which will anchor the values of organizations.

And data can help in creating transparency and trust culture in the organization. Mining data can also help in developing experiences for employee aspirations. It helps in creating user experience which will resonate with the workforce demography. When it comes to people analytics, the problems with analytics is not tools or data but the ability to ask the right questions. What is it that you want to achieve? You get to the outcomes first. So how do you calculate the ROI in leadership programs? The impact on businesses is effectiveness of critical role holders post the program. So how you safeguard the critical role holders in short term, how they will perform better in the future, the robust leadership pipeline for them, will enable the organization to determine where to put emphasis on. And once you decode what the achievement/bigger picture should be like, you will know what to look at data.  

The challenge is also to convert this to the HR lifestyle. Traditional ways of storytelling based anecdotes should be done away with. When Cloud is as real as it can get, integrating platforms is the reality in the HR world and the idea is to learn from organizations who are getting it right in implementing technology. Organizations who have defined business objectives, who believe that talent and technology is not just an enabler but they view it as a part of their transformation journey are much ahead of everyone in the business.