Making People Counta real life case study of Workforce Analytics

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1 WHITEPAPER SERIES Making People Counta real life case study of Workforce Analytics Aleron Organisational Science

2 Making People Count - a real life case study of Workforce Analytics By Giovanni Everduin, Head of HR Strategy & Organisational Change at Tanfeeth and Peter Clark, Partner in Aleron Consulting This is a whitepaper about fast, disruptive change; a case study of applying the very latest HR thinking and innovations in a unique UAE business. Tanfeeth is a fast growing, Dubai based startup company of over two thousand people. In just under three years we ve built a company that provides a wide range of business services predominately to Emirates NBD our parent company and our largest customer at previously unmatched levels of quality and efficiency. How do we increase productivity and reduce costs? We innovate and find new, scientific approaches to challenge old ways of working. This process begins with a simple, consistent principle throughout the business; Tanfeeth is a scientific, data-driven organisation. I m a person, not a number So how can this principle be applied to HR? Isn t it true that it is impossible to apply a data-driven approach without reducing each employee to just a number in a system? We believe the opposite is true, and careful analysis of our data has actually enabled us to better serve each of our individual employees as well as help meet the goals of the business. To give you a simple illustration, HR without workforce analytics can only report on the headline statistics for example, attrition could be reported as 14% this month which might at face value be acceptable. However, to better understand the nature of attrition at Tanfeeth we segment our employees into groups who have similar attributes. At the click of a button, using our analytics tools, we have the ability to view hundreds of attrition rates for various groups of employees, which means we can immediately identify spikes and trends amongst important populations, like our UAE Nationals in junior grades. In other words, because our attrition rate is broken down into segments, we can find the pockets and attributes of high attrition that are hidden within a headline reported monthly statistic of 14%. Armed with this information we are in a better position to design strategies that will effectively mitigate attrition. In addition, we also correlate attrition against a variety of employee demographics and some key rewards and engagement metrics that we track. Through this we are able to understand the specific drivers behind attrition in the Tanfeeth context, which allows us to start building a model that can predict attrition and serve as an early warning system for our business. Working closely with our consulting partner Aleron, leveraging their holistic Emiratisation dataset and research, we can then move to understand in detail how many Emiratis are available in the different geographies and markets in which we operate. Using qualitative survey data from universities and government entities we then further zoom in to find Emiratis with the attributes we look for in Tanfeeth and learn what motivates them. This allows us to tailor make an Employee Value Proposition for each different segment of our Nationalisation program, as well as pinpoint specific Emirates and demographics with high density of relevant talent. By using data rather than perception we have learned that while the actual available workforce is much smaller than is commonly reported, significant pockets of high calibre talent exist in locations where we would not have typically looked. So we can see, great workforce analytics doesn t dehumanise employees, quite the opposite. It allows the HR team to clearly see what is happening, predict what will happen next and as a result better serve the needs of our employees and our business. 2

3 A Single Source of Truth There is an old saying about analytics which is both simple and true rubbish in, rubbish out. If the data isn t right, no matter what sophisticated tools are employed, the analysis will not be accurate. So knowing this, we started our workforce analytics journey by taking a close look at our HR data. Like many other organisations, our HR data sits within an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system. Unfortunately, that didn t mean it was accessible, correct or easy to interpret. Conflicts are common in databases and depending on when and how you gather information, you might find that your data is not in a good a shape. Tanfeeth invested considerable effort and enlisted expert advice from Aleron to triangulate and sense check our data. This enabled us to identify various weaknesses in the processes we use to enter and maintain data in our system. It s difficult to say what might drive data errors in other businesses but I will offer you this advice we found that many of the errors we identified were due to siloes within our data structure. Updates made in one part of our system often didn t flow across into other relevant databases and core elements of HR data were stored in multiple different systems. On top of this we found serious issues in both the validity and completeness of our data. All of this made it virtually impossible for us to get a holistic view of HR data, and prevented any real data analysis efforts. Once we decided to work with Aleron to validate, clean and consolidate all of our employee information into a single master database we were able to significantly improve our data s accuracy. We call this database our single source of HR truth and it s the backbone of our HR analytics capability. Analyse This An accurate database is the foundation upon which workforce analytics is built. The key to unlocking the benefits of this database is the tools you use to analyse it. We know that many organisations have teams of analysts who crunch numbers and produce excel based reports. Others rely on the analysis packages supplied by their ERP provider. We identified problems with both approaches. A process that relies on teams of analysts and uses excel is expensive, slow and can be inaccurate; humans are error prone and salary costs can quickly add up. On the other hand, off the shelf packages from ERP providers are often difficult to customise, hard to use and built by technologists who don t fully understand the needs of HR professionals. We are taking a different approach Tanfeeth is in the process of upgrading its analytics capabilities by implementing a software called Qlearsite that is built specifically for analysing and displaying HR data. It avoids the issues associated with the previously available approaches and gives us the ability to access and analyse all of our employee data in real-time. The possibilities and benefits of this approach are substantial. The direct benefits are obvious, better insights that will enable better decisions. What is also becoming clear is that there are many unexpected ancillary benefits. Predictive workforce analytics enables HR to add significantly more value and become truly strategic in unexpected ways. 3

4 Conclusion Google Ngram Viewer is a searchable online library that contains about 25% of all the books ever published in the English language. It allows users to search and see the frequency with which words appear in the published lexicon. You can go online yourself and try searching for the term HR. The result is incredible, almost nothing was written about our function before the 1950s but now there is an explosion of literature being produced every year. HR is a hot topic. Why? Because more and more businesses recognise that their employees are their most important assets and improved HR practices are essential to business performance. As a result, HR practices are changing rapidly all over the world. Workforce analytics and HR technologies are at the forefront of that change. It s just a question of who moves first and who gets left behind. 4

5 Aleron Organisational Science Aleron is a specialised HR strategy consultancy based in the United Arab Emirates. We created the concept of Organisational Science ; a data driven approach to HR and Talent Management decision making. We bring this approach to our client engagements by providing analytical tools, databases and other unique proprietary assets. Our clients are different in terms of size, industry and maturity but they all have a common goal ñ to be recognised as having a Strategic HR function. The HR Summit and Expo is the Middle East s largest show dedicated to HR professionals in the region. Running for more than a decade, the show has grown to become the ultimate platform to feature the latest innovation, strategies, insights and international best practices by the most influential and respected HR leaders and practitioners from around the globe. Visit for more information. The HR Observer is the region s first of its kind initiative aimed at becoming a platform for HR professionals to exchange insights freely both online and offline in efforts to help develop the profession in the Middle East. Visit to know more. 5