In advance of his presentation at People Analytics World 2018 in April, Jordan Pettman shares a few thoughts on his experiences and predictions in HR Analytics...
Recognised as a leader in the field, Jordan has worked in People Analytics for around a decade, as both a consultant working with leading organisations all over the world, and now in-house at Nestlé.
Across a career in consulting, and now leading the global function at Nestlé, Jordan leads in end-to-end strategic workforce planning programs, has developed Centres of Expertise to roll out workforce planning and analytics as new functions inside organisations and in workforce analytics, to conduct data analysis and presentation as well as ongoing education of analytics resources to identify and exploit trends in workforce metrics that lead to positive business outcomes.
For how long has your work involved analytics, either directly or in project leadership?
10 years.
For how long have you worked in the HR domain?
15 years.
How well do you feel People Analytics is progressing?
Better now than ever before. With the advent of newer, faster technologies and the pressure of AI and cognitive capabilities, people analytics leaders have been forced to drive change and increased capabilities just to have table stakes in business discussions.
What is frustrating, as a people analytics leader, is less HR's capability and willingness to build capability in the space, and more the influence that HR has to secure the resources it requires to maintain the rate of evolution it needs to stay relevant.
What have been the greatest challenges that you've faced within People Analytics?
In my current role, moving a global organisation along multiple roadmap paths, simultaneously, including the data basics, at the same time as needing to meet business expectations to provide analytics solutions to predict and prescribe HR activity.
It was definitely a case of arriving at the party a little bit late, and needing to rapidly catch up on all fronts, whilst avoiding a tragic case of one tequila 2 tequila 3 tequila floor! Applying speed everywhere without losing momentum or credibility has been very challenging
What are your predictions for 2018 and beyond? Where are things heading?
I think that the further down the path of digital and analytically driven HR we get, the further we will understand that HR is a product that a business "sells" to its people. Application of people analytics in businesses will be a key driver of this, using the information at our fingertips to strategically deliver a personalised experience of HR to each of our employees.
I think that means that the use of explainable predictive analytics and AI to learn the patterns of experiences desired by the workforce will become ever more common.