What Does Investing In Your HR Buy-Side Of People Analytics Look Like?

6 steps teams could take to invest in buy-side people analytics

During my time as an HR business partner, I was fortunate to have excellent data science partners I could work with that were based out of a small HR data science group in Mumbai. We’d find times in my early mornings to talk on the phone (pre-Zoom takeover) and found a number of exciting overlaps in our interests. 

They were excited that someone was reaching out with a clear business use case (that also "spoke data") and I was thrilled that they knew how to run a survival analysis and could guide me to understand the results. Match made in heaven! We did some fascinating work together around understanding early career attrition patterns and getting insights on how to address the issues we were seeing. It’s one of my favorite projects in my career.
 

Because of that partnership, I regularly tell people I did some of my best work in People Analytics as an HRBP. As I tell that to People Analytics teams, I tend to get puzzled looks in response. There is a difficult and widespread narrative within People Analytics circles that HRBPs and our HR COE partners, in general, can get in the way of data-informed workforce decisions. 

I’ve seen People Analytics teams side-step the HR team to go direct to business and I regularly hear PA teams complain about their HRBP’s lack of data literacy. I'll admit, there are times where legacy HR mindsets can interrupt where we want to go as a PA field, but I often wonder what it was about my experiences in the HR function that was different. 

My training and approach to problem-solving are rooted in systems. Psychology often looks to individuals to understand behaviors and make changes within an organization, whereas Sociology looks to systems to understand and influence organizations. I think there’s a system framing we can explore that could help us make a breakthrough with our clients and I’ll borrow language from finance to help make the point. 

I propose that there isn’t one field of People Analytics, but actually a marketplace. When we look at the people analytics marketplace, we have sell-side people analytics and buy-side people analytics and as a PA team, HR leader, or company interested in workforce data, you’ve got to consider and invest in both.

The People Analytics Marketplace

Within any market, you have people providing goods or services (Sellers), and people buying goods or services (Buyers). You can consider these “sell-side” and “buy-side” of the market. A market “works” when sellers and buyers can trust that when they want to transact, the market will let them (within reason).

The people that hold these roles often have different incentives and goals, but ultimately they need the market to work for both sides to be successful. A marketplace with only sellers won’t last very long and a marketplace with only buyers leaves people frustrated. 

If we break People Analytics into this framing, we can say that there are the formal People Analytics teams on the sell-side and then our clients within the company on the buy-side. 

Sell-side People Analytic

On the sell-side, in People Analytics teams we generate workforce data, insights, reports, products, research, and consulting that the business can put to use. Sometimes, this is a quick request (reporting) or a custom request (insights/dashboards/research), or could be a push into the market of something new. Our clients don’t always know what to ask for, so the sell-side People Analytics teams can also generate new and interesting research based on what they believe their clients might want to buy. 

This sort of framing can help us right away to avoid some of the problems that People Analytics teams face (6 reasons People Analytics teams fail). If we consider a new People Analytics as a small startup that is delivering services or products to a marketplace, we wouldn’t introduce products without client engagement, client research, or an understanding of problems the business is facing. If you skip the client needs, you can expect your sales to fall flat. 

It also helps us avoid the trap of perfection. Clients are buying answers to questions, help with decisions, or data-informed systems to help them move the business forward and that can be done with sufficient data to allow the client to make a good bet. If we consider ourselves to be sell-side of the people analytics marketplace, then we don’t lose sight of the client in a search for perfect data.

This is also the space where 99% of People Analytics training and content is geared today. We talk about how to form teams, different methodologies for analysis, metrics we want to measure, and how to succeed in this space. To be fair too, this is the right content for a nascent function to focus on as most of us are just getting off the ground and a “how-to” manual goes a long way.

However, I’d also argue that nearly 10 years into this phase of People Analytics, the field and marketplace are maturing and with that maturing marketplace it’s time to invest in other areas. Namely understanding what it means to be successful on the buy-side of People Analytics and investing in that side of the marketplace.

Buy-side People Analytics

On the buy-side we have clients who want to solve problems in the business and believe they can do so with workforce data. If the People Analytics team comes up with a flight-risk model for voluntary turnover, that’s great news, but it’s not valuable to the company until someone buys it. 

There could be a number of different buyers for a flight risk model depending on business needs. If the business needs to understand future hiring demands, flight risk could be used to estimate attrition over time. Maybe the CEO wants to make a new M&A announcement and then changes in flight risk measures over time could give feedback on how the company is reacting. One more could be a talent team trying to understand the risk of critical or top talent leaving the company (in aggregate hopefully).

All of these are great use cases, but they require someone to “buy” the flight risk analysis and put it into a process, system, or technology and then make decisions to change something in the business based on that knowledge. Sell-side People Analytics teams hand the insights/data/reports to a buyer and that buyer uses that insight/data/report to make decisions. 

The act of buying, implementing, and acting is where People Analytics goes from a nice to have to a must-have for the company. This is how an ROI is generated for People Analytics. However, many People Analytics investments today are only happening on the sell-side.

When we take this marketplace framing, it starts to make sense why some teams have trouble launching. As a seller, you could invest in product development to have the best products in the world, but if your buyer doesn’t know how to use your product, you’re not going to make many sales. We've all seen companies hire a People Analytics data scientist and just expect magic to happen from that hire, despite a lack of systems or buyer understanding of what that seller can accomplish alone.

The HR Supply Chain

Many People Analytics teams feel the pain of not having a strong buy-side partner in the marketplace and with that they try to side-step HR and go straight to the business. My strong recommendation is to fight that urge. HR serves an important part in your supply chain to deliver insights to the business and while there are times to go direct to business, you don’t want to go alone. 

Let’s talk about what HR does at the highest level. The way I see it, HR employees are the business executives who generate value for the company through expertise related to the workforce. (Likely a note for a different day, but just to put it out there, I see caring for employees and putting employees first as a core part of this value that HR executives deliver to the company). Just as Finance Executives generate value from expertise in financial systems, and Marketing Executives generate value from their understanding of consumer behavior, the HR Executives generate value from making decisions based on their knowledge of the workforce and workforce systems.

Without these functional specializations, we’d have a world with simple hierarchies of managers up to the CEO. Specializations allow us to scale, standardize, and evolve our businesses without needing to make every manager an expert in everything. Specialization is a requirement to scaling any company. Along the way, each of these specializations does its own specialization. Finance Planning & Analysis (FP&A) leaders might tap into accounting, tax, audit, or their own analytics teams to help make decisions. Likewise, the HRBP acts as a central node to pull in Talent Acquisitions, Employee Relations, HR Operations to help make business decisions. In an ideal world, the FP&A leaders and HRBP leaders sit with general managers on a leadership council to drive the business together, each relying on each other’s expertise to make sound decisions for the firm. 

And let’s not forget the value that HR adds to People Analytics teams. HR is the team responsible in many ways for employee voice, understanding the needs of the workforce, and protecting the workforce from harm. HRBPs should be the buyer of choice for People Analytics teams for the wisdom and subject matter expertise they can bring to the table — particularly around the ethical use of employee data. That's the team you want to scale your insights through to make sure People Analytics doesn't get ahead of itself from our data-orientation.

Releasing a flight risk model into the wild without proper protections could be deeply damaging to individuals and the company. You need proper care, protection, and thoughtfulness around use cases and approaches to making decisions around what is helpful, but usually imperfect predictions about individuals. HRBPs can provide the legal, ethical, and empathetic leadership needed to allow the insights from flight risk models to benefit the company.

I say all this, because, with a very People Analytics centric view of the world, you can consider the HRBP to be a “reseller” or part of the supply chain for People Analytics. If PA is refining raw oil (data), HR is turning that refined oil into useable plastics (programs/systems) for the business to consume. HR is a step along the way to scaling insights from PA. 

What would happen if every HR COE skipped their functional partners and went straight to the business? It would be madness for those general managers to make sense of the world with the volume of different partners (Comp, TA, L&D, Talent, DEI), but it would also require every HR COE to create their own supply chains with consultants, multiplying the number of partners each team needs by the number of leadership councils. There’s both efficiency and optimization by having the HRBP lead business interactions as a single buyer for insights that the COEs are selling. 

What Does Strong Buy-Side People Analytics Look Like?

What does investing in your HR buy-side of People Analytics look like? Well, it looks like an informed, thoughtful, and engaged buyer. Here are some steps teams could take to invest in buy-side People Analytics.

Education — Step 1 is making sure your buyers know what your products are and how to use them. There are a number of training firms and consultancies now gearing up to train and education HRBPs and COEs on how to use insights from People Analytics functions (Insight222, Bersin Academy, and AIHR to name a few). This is almost as important if not more important than your first People Analytics hire and should be treated as such when building an investment thesis to start a People Analytics team. Bring your HR team along the journey.

Self-service — Allow and encourage buy-side teams to explore, understand, and generate self-service insights where possible. This doesn't mean throwing them into raw data, but rather creating intuitive products for access, but also creating teams within People Analytics who are focused on enabling self-service through training. This should also include tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3 help desk styled support. Having a helping hand when you get stuck is critical to the success of self-service. Converting a reporting team into an education organization is a critical step to enabling buyers.

Embed People Analytics people — The talent market for People Analytics is getting large enough that you can and should embed and shuffle People Analytics people into your HRBP, DEI, L&D, and Compensation teams. Take the data scientist turned People Analytics researcher and bring them up to speed on what it means to be an HRBP. By embedding SME talent from the sell-side into your buy-side teams you can create network effects to upskill your organization. 

Rotations — Rotate your HRBPs into consulting roles or even more technical positions within People Analytics teams. Create academies where they can learn SQL and basic reporting and have them do stretch assignments in tier 1 or tier 2 support. This stretch will build networks and connections to enable the marketplace. As I've noted before, this rotation through People Analytics is looking more and more like a step on the path to CHRO. Your HR employees will be asking for this.

Accountability — This one is for CHROs: hold HRBPs and COE leaders accountable for understanding their data. Ask hard questions, expect more, and give some small pushes to your teams. Set the bar high and the team will deliver. I've seen multiple times how a strong encouragement from the CHROS will engage buyers in the marketplace and encourage the interplay between buy-side and sell-side. Data-informed buyers start at the top.

Analytics Business Partners (ABP) — To spend an extra minute on this one, the ABP role that sits on many People Analytics teams is essentially a marketplace broker. Investing in Analytics Business Partners can go a long way to supporting your buyers. ABPs are in a position where they can connect sell-side to buy-side to help create value in the People Analytics marketplace. By embedding ABPs into your HR teams (as opposed to business units alignment) you can scale their efforts across the number of HRBPs and COE leaders that they support (1 ABP -> 20 HRBPS -> 500 leaders). 

In summary, to get where we want to go within People Analytics, we need to invest in and support our buyers. HR is not the blocker, but an important client and investing in the marketplace will go a long way to being able to accomplish our goals as People Analytics organizations.

I'd also love to hear if this framing lands for you, but also your stories of buy-side People Analytics. I think we need more case studies in our People Analytics community of strong HR leaders, HRBPs, or COE leaders that drive value from the buy-side of the space. If you have a strong buy-side partner, please encourage them to share their stories with me or others on LinkedIn.

And thank you reader for making it to the end! Please stay in touch and add comments, resources, and questions in the comments.

Richard Rosenow is the Director, People Analytics at Nike. He joined Nike from Uber where he led the TA Analytics organization and a deployment of Visier (self-service reporting and analytics) to HR and business executives across Uber. Richard brings lessons learned from his roles on leading People Analytics teams at Facebook and GE, an appreciation for core HR from his time as an HRBP at Citibank, and a mission-driven attitude from the start of his career working for the YMCA. Connect Richard Rosenow