Trendy buzzword or HR's future?

Digital transformation is undeniably transforming HR’s role. According to findings by LinkedIn, there has been a 70% increase in professionals who solely focus on analytics in HR across Asia Pacific.

HR professionals that make the effort to invest in exploring trending tech like data and analytics may thus find themselves in better control of leading the change in organisations.

For these leaders, data and analytics are not mere buzzwords in HR. They are aware that when applied correctly, data can help HR overturn attrition rates, improve employee engagement and attract the right talent.

At DBS bank for instance, the HR team have worked hard to invest in technology, processes and people specialised in analytics over the years. Through sheer effort, they managed to reap rewards including improved retention rates.

Lee Yan Hong, managing director and head of group human resources at DBS Bank, shared her team’s experiences with a captive audience at LinkedIn’s recent ‘The Era of Talent Intelligence’ event.

“When we started talking about data analytics, it was in 2013 or 2014. At that time there was not a lot of people doing it. We approached a couple of consultants – they were either not doing it or would charge us very high prices that we just couldn’t afford,” Lee said.

“What the team did was we approached an ex-colleague who was doing data analytics and we asked what it’s about and how can we use it in HR.”

At the time DBS was facing over 31% attrition rate for the firm’s relationship managers and salespeople. They soon found out that predictive analysis can help bring that figure down to a mere 6%.

Pushing through resistance
When DBS’s HR team started on their analytics journey, dealing with mountains of data was one challenge, but what felt more formidable was the resistance from top managers.

“It was really painful to collect the data – it was not only in HR; we had to also collect data from the sales department,” Lee said.

“We then created a profile of a successful salesperson with that data. Initially my managers said ‘I have 30 years’ experience, why is your predictive index so powerful? Don’t you trust my experience in interviewing?’

“They were quite resistant to using the index but when we did this model and showed them that all the employees that did not pass the profile had 100% turnover – from then on everybody just used the model. So that’s how we changed behaviour.”

Through predictive analytics, DBS identified problem areas, such as the lack of coaches to help untrained salespeople and overly demanding sales quotas and was able to revamp the system.

Attrition rates were sliced significantly after implementation of new training and incentive programs based on the data.

“The bank cannot change if we continue to have clunky [systems]. HR is a department, whether we like it or not, where people associate with very manual processes, so it is in everybody’s interest that we adjust our processes and automate,” she added.

Turning data into insights
Following Lee’s sharing session, Stephanie Nash, chief people officer at RedMart and Ashish Ashdir, group head, global talent acquisition at AirAsia bounced ideas about data and insights at a panel discussion.

“When I think specifically about the HR function, there are some skills that we need to foster and develop among ourselves. That’s around being comfortable with being around data sets and taking on multiple data sets to drive insights,” Nash said when asked about essential skills for the future.

Nash explained that she feels lucky to have been in tech-progressive companies such as Microsoft and presently at RedMart, a mature Singapore start-up that boasts an online supermarket platform.

At RedMart they use data and insights to determine critical focus areas when forming their employee value proposition (EVP).

“All those different data sources enable the team to know what about our value proposition continues to be valued and we need to continue to foster, as well as what is it that we’re missing and we need to be doing differently,” Nash explained.

“It really helps us to prioritise the initiatives that we have and that we’re focusing on the right stuff that allows us to attract, engage and retain our teams.”

As for Ashdir, he shared that talent acquisition is a very “objective” function that “rides on data and analytics”.

Ashdir’s comment is not surprising as according to LinkedIn’s The Rise of Analytics in HR report, talent acquisition is one of the top few focus areas for talent analytics in Southeast Asia.

“I think it’s almost an expectation today that recruiters are tech-savvy, digital internet recruiters, familiar with sourcing on social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter,” he said.

“With all the technology coming in there are tools and training methodologies including social talent. In my past company we had about 50% of our recruiters trained on social talent – they were certified internet recruiters.

“In today’s day and age it’s almost an expectation that recruiters are familiar with platforms and know how to actively build, engage and manage top talent.”

Ashdir succinctly wrapped up the day of valuable insights at LinkedIn’s event by reminding the audience of HR leaders this: “If you’re not going to be disruptive, you’re going to be disrupted.”