Blog: HR Need To Prioritise More Effectively If We Want To Utilise Data And Analytics

By Dave Milner, Course Director of ‘Impact Through People Analytics’

There has been a lot of talk about HR professionals and HRBPs, in particular, being a data and analytics translator.  That is a conduit between data scientists/people analytics specialists and executive/senior leader decision-makers. They are adept at understanding the business needs of an organisation and are data savvy enough to be able to distil trends, patterns, and insights in an easy-to-understand manner.  It certainly makes sense as they ‘own’ the relationship with senior leaders, but do they have the capability and capacity to do that?

For the period 2020 until August 2023, a wide range of HR workshops (mostly virtual) have been facilitated by me across the globe, focusing on helping and supporting HR and L&D practitioners, to become more strategic and data driven in their approach.  As a part of those workshops, a simple self-reported job analysis framework was used to identify how specifically HRBPs use their time. It focused on the:

• Activities they focused on.
• Time spent on those activities.
• Current level of performance in their role.

2,601 HRBPs shared their feedback over this period based upon seven key themes, that built upon similar research that was undertaken by the Talent Strategy Group regarding HRBP’s in 2019:

1. Solution provider (resolving local operational challenges)
2. Strategic partnering (focusing on strategic people interventions and future based initiatives)
3. Develop talent/employee experience practices (resolution and improvement of talent-based practices)
4. Reporting, data & analytics (focusing on data-based reporting and supporting the scoping of and execution of people/HR analytics-based projects)
5. Coaching (supporting leaders and managers to learn and resolve how to address people-based issues)
6. Risk, audit & compliance (fulfilment of governance-based demands)
7. Logistics and administration

The table below summarises the self-reported results in terms of focus and time spent; average working week for an HRBP is c51 hours.

HRBP BROAD ACTIVITIES	GLOBAL HRBP’S	HIGH PERFORMING HRBP’S	DEVELOPING HRBP’S
	% OF TIME SPENT N = 2601 HRBP’S	% OF TIME SPENT N = 378 HRBP’S	% OF TIME SPENT N = 385 HRBP’S
Solution Provider	39%	29%	40%
Strategic Partnering	18%	26%	11%
Developing Talent/EX Practices	15%	12%	20%
Compliance, Logistics and Admin.	13%	8%	16%
Reporting, Data and Analytics	9%	17%	7%
Coaching and Education of Others	6%	8%	6%

The key findings revolve around:

• HRBPs remain focused on resolving operational challenges (38% of their time); ‘operational puzzles’ as I refer to them.  It raises some key questions that need to be considered:
• Is this because the HRBP is operating in their comfort zone?
• Alternatively, are HRBPs becoming involved too easily in people challenges?  If leaders and managers are truly people managers, as has been talked about for some time now, should they not be operating without high levels of HRBP support in this operational area?
• Are HRBPs prioritising sufficiently to ensure that their time and resources are being used efficiently?
• This has a knock-on effect upon HRBPs ability to focus on more strategic activity (for example, alignment of key HR practices and projects to support the achievement of crucial business objectives) and find quality time to focus on data, analytics-based activity and insights or work with experts who have that statistical expertise.

Additionally, comparison between the self-reported 378 high performing HRBP’s, and those who reported themselves as having development needs, 385 HRBP’s, highlighted further differences:

• High performing HRBP’s spend less time and focus on operational puzzles (29%) versus the developmental HRBP’s who spend 40%;
• High performing HRBP’s spend 26% of their time on strategic interventions, future based challenges and people planning, versus the developmental HRBPs who spend 11% of their time in this area;
• High performing HRBP’s spend less time focusing on the efficiency and improvement of local talent practices, 12% versus 20% for the developmental HRBPs;
• Finally, high performing HRBP’s spend more time, 17% focusing on reporting, data and analytics-based activity (for example, the analysis of reports, scoping and support of people analytics activity, storytelling etc.) whereas the developmental HRBPs spend 7%.

The HRBP role is a complex and ‘in demand’ role.  Dave Ulrich has regularly reinforced the need for the HR/people function to focus on accelerating business results by ensuring that HR provides relevant data and information that guides and prioritises people-based investments to make sure that they deliver the greatest impact on stakeholder outcomes. This is where the overlap between data, analytics and being more strategic occurs; HRBP’s need to find ways to focus on what adds the greatest value to the organisation through the portfolio of talent practices.  It starts with us being far more critical about how we spend our time; we can’t learn without having scope and time to do this.

All behavioural change is not the same.  Some changes are simple, direct, and easy to understand but data and people analytics is not, and complex change is as much about the heart as it is the mind.  The opportunity to learn and develop your data-based analytics expertise is vital to the future of the function and HRBP’s need to make time to take their own learning seriously; if nothing else you need to significantly improve your data literacy as the leading people analytics organisations ensure that this becomes a reality.

If this resonates with your own development needs, then consider attending CRF’s ‘Impact Through People Analytics’ programme from 9-10 December where these challenges and many more will be facilitated through a wide range of case studies, examples, and tips for improvement.

Dave also recently wrote about why Data and People Analytics are Becoming an Important Focus for HRBPs