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  BLOG 07-10-2020

The Future of HR is Data-Driven

At our meetup in September we introduced you to Fatameh Amiri, our expert of the evening for HR. Fatemeh is founder of the start-up ComeMit, an HR Analytics platform. We interviewed her on the topic "Future of HR" to get an insight into the trends for 2020. In this blog article she tells you why companies should focus on data-driven HR in the future.

The idea of Fatemeh’s start-up ComeMit

Our start-up ComeMit is about ‘Engaging and retaining employees with the power of data and analytics.’ It is a People Analytics platform with innovative survey tools. We gather anonymous employee’s feedback, connect them with business data, find the hidden problems at the workplace and recommend managers how to improve their employee experience to increase their productivity and lifetime value.

Our AI-based analytics and real-time solution recommendations support managers and HRs to act on the workplace issues before it is too late. While Gallup has reported 85% of employees are not engaged at work, that means they don't really feel belonged and valued at the company and will leave it as soon as they find a better job.

On the other hand, finding and replacing talents costs companies more than 30,000 euros and takes more than 6 months.

So, before it is too late, we want to accompany managers to resolve the disengagement issues and retain talents instead of spending too much time and money to find new ones.

The Future of HR is people centric analytics

In some situations, when we describe our people analytics solution to the HR managers, they respond that HR is about having real human interaction with people, not using analytics instead. Because they generally believe that data analytics is about gathering data from people and providing charts and reports to the managers. But using analytics in HR is about creating mutual value for companies and at the same time for employees. People analytics is a great method to maximize the effects of human capital on critical business objectives. And if we can equip our HR managers and decision-makers with accurate data, they will be able to make better people decisions and as a result, employees will see the value of this process in their daily job. That’s why I totally believe that the future of HR is about using analytics to make better decisions related to the people, better recruitment, better engagement strategies and of course better employees' journey in general. That's the meaning of people-centric analytics for us.

Moving from tradition to modern HR practices

Moving from traditional methods that we got used to towards modern methods that are not familiar for us, seems to be a big change. But actually, it is not that complicated.

Continuous improvement is an old business topic that is more important today than it was in the past. Business owners want to improve their business processes, their people skills and their end products to become competitive in the market. So they need to update their old HR assumptions and try to be more fact-driven decision-makers too.

In the past, HR-managers made decisions with what they had learned from their experiences and what other similar companies did in the same situations. Modern HR is moving from those old assumptions towards real data, information and insights in the organization.

Data-driven HR – advantages and disadvantages

What managers have to decide is whether they think the company can make better people-related decisions continuing with the old assumptions and methods or whether trying to make things better with real data and facts.

The truth is, both decisions come with some pros and cons. They can choose to use or ignore data, but they can’t avoid making decisions at the end. The part they can control is how well they equip themselves to make better long-term promising decisions in their business.

Becoming a data-driven HR decision-maker requires time to gather data, clean data and of course enough amount of accurate data. Poor data quality can lead to less reliability. People's data are good references for finding the real source of the problems and also the possible solutions at the company. But, sometimes people don't trust to share their data and real feedback at work and that's also another challenge in this area.

But if companies want to save their costs and time, using third party solutions in this area can solve the problem while people will trust more and share more and that will improve the situation.

3 reasons why companies should put more weight on data-driven HR management:

  1. As an HR-manager, you should always consider your company's culture as an Iceberg. What you hear and see from your team is only a limited part of what happens mainly among them. Collecting the relevant data around employees' problems before searching for the solution and starting to analyze all the possible ways to find the most promising solution is the key to the success.
  2.  We can't manage what we don't measure and we can't measure what we don't see! Data helps companies see things that otherwise are difficult to see. Without it, they can't manage people perfectly and they shouldn't expect them to create the highest value for the business.
  3. HR managers who can use data analytics to make, evaluate, and modify all their people related decisions to the advantage of the company become more valued members of the company’s leadership team and of course a trusted business partner there.

Fatemeh’s advice for founders and people who are interested in starting their own business:

When I started to work on my start-up, everyone advised me to get a full-time job instead. Of course, it was a wiser and more secure decision, because the salary of a data scientist in Germany was much higher than what I could make by founding my start-up in the first few years. But in different stages of our life, we should consider what is the priority for us at the moment. So if you really want to start, always remember that on the way, you might feel frustrated, awkward and stuck, but don't become disappointed. It’s your own adventure, if it was easy everyone would do that. If you have a big vision and dream, believe in your capabilities, go for it and continue with the best version of yourself.

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Thank you for your insights, Fatemeh! You are welcome to leave a comment and share this article with your community.