People Analytics: Data to Decisions

This book is an exploration of the people analytics possibility, bringing out both theoretical frameworks and detailed practical case studies from the author's experience in industry and business across both sides of the table, with an understanding of data science models and SMAC (Social, Mobile & Cloud) technologies underpinning it. It further explores and lays out a business case for why organizations need to invest behind this space and why HR functions and businesses need to embrace and adopt it. The book examines how people analytics makes a difference to business, describes stages of adoption and maturity models for its effective deployment in organizations and explores the journey from employee master data management and conversion to reporting and visualizations to dash-boarding and descriptive analytics, operational analytics to finally predictive modelling. The book provides insights on the impact of big data and social networks on HR and talent frameworks and the opportunity for HR to mine these networks with a view to culling out predictive insights for the business. It also describes in great detail the specific applications of people and talent analytics through case examples. The book discusses and makes the case for HR to be metric driven focused on business outcomes. It enumerates upon “lead” and “lag” indicators and the need to leverage relevant measurement systems. It provides an understanding of relevant statistical tools that could be deployed to mine key insights from the data to enable robust decision-making, and examines the power of “visual intelligence” and data representation that goes beyond traditional tools like Excel.

This book is for HR practitioners who seek to challenge the status quo. It does so by helping them leverage a data and evidence based approach; asking the right questions and building new capabilities with a view towards leading change and driving transformation both in their domain, the wider business and the larger organization. The book is also useful for HRM students to gain a deep understanding of “people analytics” as a critical sub-domain within HR.

“HR is not just about people but now also about Tech, Data and Analytics. Upgrading numerical/analytics skills in order to have greater impact on the business, is the new wave of HR, which Rahul helps address via his own rich experience.”
- Gurprriet Siingh, Managing Director, Russell Reynolds Associates, Mumbai, India.

“This book would help HR & Leadership Teams find a way of discarding perceptions and uncovering truth by embracing data patterns as opposed to just continuing with incremental changes to how it has always been. This is particularly so of successful organizations.”
- Vikas Gupta, Divisional Chief Executive Officer, Education and Stationery Products Business, ITC Limited, Gurugram, India.