Let’s face it. There are too many professional books one can read in a lifespan. This list of People Analytics and HR-Tech books is not exceptional. I won’t be able to complete reading all of it, though I have these books on my Kindle, ready for browsing. I find here inspiration, blended with practical guidance and validation for my practices, mixed with new ideas and innovative tools, but most of all, an “open door” to a professional community, which I’m happy and honored to be a part of. So here is my People Analytics and HR-Tech reading list on Kindle (no paper books, as I like the trees), ordered chronologically from newest to oldest. Click titles for Kindle versions (Work in progress. First published: May 14th, 2018. Last update: March 30th, 2024. Total Kindle books mentioned: 79). If you are interested in additional free resources for data science and R programming, check the comment section of this post. And be careful! These books can change your career!

People Analytics – Build the Value Chain
Open Book (work in progress) by Littal Shemer Haim

The book is based on the Littalics.com blog posts from 2017 to 2022. It allows you to peek into the author’s thoughts and experience transitioning from an applied researcher to a People Analytics consultant and educator to HR. Enjoy Littal’s unique voice and take the time to contemplate, absorb ideas, and, hopefully, overcome barriers. You will find sixteen lessons in this book, organized into four milestones that, from the author’s experience, build the People Analytics value chain.

Strategic Workforce Planning: Best Practices and Emerging Directions

Marc Sokol, Beverly Tarulli (2024). “An overview of strategic workforce planning, covering best practices across organization types, geographies, and methodologies, and addressing new directions in the field. Contributors share case examples and experience-based insights, spanning the evolution of the field, best practices for analytics and consulting, maturity models, and when to organize around planning for future tasks vs planning for future roles. The Book also discusses changes in the workforce and workplace due to global disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of quickly evolving technologies, and re-examines the impact of strategic workforce planning on individual organizations and beyond.”

Data-Driven HR: How to Use AI, Analytics, and Data to Drive Performance *

Bernard Marr (2023). “AI is now an integral part of being data-driven. With this updated edition of Data-Driven HR, practitioners can unlock business potential and success through data and analytics. Covering topics such as recruitment, employee engagement, performance management, well-being, and training, HR practitioners can benefit from knowing how to be data-driven through data and AI. HR teams will learn to identify business goals, scrutinize useful data sources, and gain rich and diverse insights from their vast amounts of data. The book offers guidance on managing challenges that come with data and AI and how to responsibly and transparently use data to improve decision-making. It also includes predictive analytics and how to place warning systems into databases for any potential workforce issues.”
* The previous edition

The Fundamentals of People Analytics: With Applications in R *

Craig Starbuck (2023). “The book offers key concepts spanning the entire analytics lifecycle, along with step-by-step instructions for their applications to real-world problems, using ubiquitous and freely available open-source software, enabling to gain a deeper, data-informed understanding of organizational phenomena impacting the bottom line.”
* No Kindle version available, but free access to a PDF file.

Talent Assessment: Embracing Innovation and Mitigating Risk in the Digital Age

Tracy Kantrowitz, Douglas Reynolds, and John Scott (2023). “The intersection of new technologies, globalization, and market shifts among assessment providers has created dramatic opportunities for the field along with some significant challenges. Artificial intelligence (AI) and other technological advances have altered what is possible in talent acquisition. The book focuses on trends and innovations in talent assessment, framing practical solutions for managing the disruption in assessment while incorporating new insights and technologies into organizational assessment programs. It covers advances in the foundational science of assessment, technology-related innovations, updates to regulations, principles, and standards, and  assessment for development.”

Introduction to People Analytics: A Practical Guide to Data-driven HR *

Nadeem Khan and Dave Millner (2023). “How can HR practitioners with little or no experience in analytics feel confident in their ability to find, analyze, and use workforce data to make better business decisions? This book provides expert guidance on the key aspects of analytics, enabling all HR professionals to handle employee and organizational data. It features new material on applying data to respond to external disruption and how to develop a people analytics journey. With updated case studies and thought leadership examples from leading companies, this book demonstrates how people analytics can be leveraged to improve culture and employee engagement, increase performance, and reduce costs.”
* The previous edition

Data & Analytics for Instructional Designers

Megan Torrance (2023). “With the advance of new learning technologies and data specifications, instructional designers have access to more and richer data sources than ever before. With that comes the question of what to do with the data. The book delves into the foundational concepts that will enable instructional designers and L&D professionals to use data in their roles. It defines key data and analytics terms, data specifications, learning metrics, and statistical concepts. It then lays out a framework for using learning data to plan how to gather data and build scale and maturity in your data operations.”

Data, Methods, and Theory in the Organizational Sciences: A New Synthesis (SIOP)

Kevin R. Murphy (2022) “This edition of the SIOP series explores the organizational sciences’ long-term evolution and changing relationships between data, methods, and theory. In the last 50 years, theory has dominated research and scholarship in these fields. Yet, the emergence of big data and the increasing use of archival data sets and meta-analytic methods to test empirical hypotheses has upset this order. This volume examines the evolving relationship between data, methods, and theory. It suggests new ways of thinking about the role of each in the development and presentation of research in organizations. This is an essential resource for researchers, professionals, and educators looking to rethink their current approaches to research and who are interested in creating more useful and more interpretable research in the organizational sciences.”

Network Psychometrics with R: A Guide for Behavioral and Social Scientists

Adela-Maria Isvoranu, Sacha Epskamp, Lourens Waldorp, and Denny Borsboom (2022). “A systematic, innovative introduction to the field of network analysis that provides a comprehensive overview of and guide to both the theoretical foundations of network psychometrics as well as modeling techniques developed from this perspective. The book features an introduction to the statistical programming language R that guides readers on how to analyze network structures and their stability using R.”

Inclusalytics: How Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Leaders Use Data to Drive Their Work

Victoria Mattingly, Sertrice Grice, Allison Goldstein (2022) ” Whether due to pressure from internal and external stakeholders, competition for top talent, or a moral imperative, businesses increasingly acknowledge that DEI work needs to be done and done right. The book shares how modern businesses are using data to unlock DEI success. Employing a combination of case studies, practical examples, and step-by-step instructions, it guides DEI practitioners through developing a robust, data-centric approach to DEI. It provides instruction on gathering, analyzing, and reporting data to understand better the diversity, equity, and inclusion issues employees are experiencing and gain those workers’ trust. It demonstrates how companies can use the data to prioritize the issues they uncover, identify solutions, and evaluate whether the solutions they’ve chosen to spend time and money to implement are making a difference.”

Talent Tectonics: Navigating Global Workforce Shifts, Building Resilient Organizations and Reimagining the Employee Experience

Steven Hunt (2022) ” Shifting demographics combined with the digitalization of all aspects of life are transforming the nature of work. This forces companies to rethink how they design jobs and recruit, develop, and engage employees. This book explains how technology is changing the purpose of work and why creating effective employee experiences is critical to building organizations that can thrive in a world of accelerating change and growing skill shortages. The book explores how business strategy, organizational psychology, and work technology interact to create nimble companies.”

Talent Intelligence: Use Business and People Data to Drive Organizational Performance

Toby Culshaw (2022). “Improved access to people and business data has created huge opportunities for the HR function. However, simply having access to this data is not enough. HR professionals need to know how to analyze the data, what questions to ask, and where and how the insights from the data can add the most value. The book offers a practical guide that explains everything HR professionals need to know to achieve this. It also explains how and why talent intelligence differs from workforce planning, sourcing research, and standard predictive HR analytics. It also shows how to assess where talent intelligence can have the biggest impact and how to demonstrate the results to all stakeholders”.

Organizational Planning and Analysis: Building the Capability to Secure Business Performance

Rupert Morrison (2022). “The book offers a data-driven approach to workforce planning. It allows HR professionals, OD practitioners, and business leaders to monitor an organization’s activities and analyze business data to adjust plans to ensure the business succeeds regularly. This book covers building this function, the difference between strategic and operational workforce planning and managing demand and supply, matching people to new or changing roles, and developing robust succession planning. It also covers how to work with HR operations, including recruitment, L&D, reward, and performance management, and how human capital analytics allow a business to improve the return on investment for each employee”.

Humanizing Human Capital: Invest in Your People for Optimal Business Returns

Solange Charas, Stela Lupushor (2022). “The key to thriving through disruption is understanding and practicing human capital strategies that will drive enterprise performance and value-creation. The authors shift decision-making about people from a gut sense to an evidence-based approach. The book reveals a step-by-step method to apply analytics approaches to human capital while anticipating inevitable changes in the workforce landscape. This will enable human capital professionals to generate positive outcomes for all stakeholders and allow management to make decisions that work for the entire enterprise. This book compares “traditional” with the “future-forward” approach to human capital management, case studies, real-world situations, and 20 business principles”.

Handbook of Graphs and Networks in People Analytics: With Examples in R and Python

Keith McNulty (2022). “The book covers the theory and practical implementation of graph methods in R and Python for the analysis of people and organizational networks. Starting with an overview of the origins of graph theory and its current applications in the social sciences, the book proceeds to give in-depth technical instruction on how to construct and store graphs from data, how to visualize those graphs compellingly, and how to convert common data structures into graph-friendly form”.

Artificial Intelligence for HR: Use AI to Support and Develop a Successful Workforce *

Ben Eubanks (2022) “Artificial intelligence is changing the world of work. This book discusses how HR professionals can understand the variety of opportunities AI has created for the HR function and how best to implement these in their organization. From using natural language processing to ensure job adverts are free from bias and gendered language to implementing chatbots to enhance the employee experience, artificial intelligence can add value throughout the work of HR professionals. The book demonstrates leveraging this potential and using AI to improve efficiency and develop a talented and productive workforce. Outlining the current technology landscape and the latest AI developments, this book ensures that HR professionals fully understand what AI is and what it means for HR.”
* The previous edition

Humans at Work: The Art and Practice of Creating the Hybrid Workplace

Anna Tavis, Stela Lupushor (2022). “Technology, data analytics, and artificial intelligence already impact how people work and engage with organizations. A dispersed workforce, greater transparency, social change, generational shift, and value chain disruptions are driving new behaviors and expectations from the workplace. Together, these trends are shaping a new era of distributed and digitally enabled networks of workers where the work comes to workers instead of the workers going to work. The authors advocate for adopting human-centric practices as a critical and necessary part of adapting work and workplaces to the future of work and provide examples of how innovative companies are building workplace infrastructure and reshaping norms, serving new markets, and adopting new technologies”.

The Future of Recruitment: Using the New Science of Talent Analytics to Get Your Hiring Right

Franziska Leutner, Reece Akhtar, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic (2022). “The book helps professionals, researchers, employers, and everybody interested in the world of work to understand the past, present, and future of recruitment. The authors describe the modern technologies and ideas that are changing recruitment, many driven by artificial intelligence. Evaluating ethical issues and highlighting how technology might be used to make recruitment and progression at work meritocratic, the book reflects on longstanding issues in recruitment and its role in building today’s unequal world of work”.

Introduction to HR Technologies: Understand How to Use Technology to Improve Performance and Processes

Stacey Harris (2021). “Technology can have huge benefits for the HR function: saving time by streamlining processes, boosting engagement by enabling analysis of people data or improving employee development by allowing staff to access the content they need on different platforms, wherever and whenever they need it. However, with more apps, software, and platforms than ever before, the volume and variety of available technologies can be overwhelming. The book offers a clear, accessible, and jargon-free guide for HR professionals to understand how to use technologies to add tangible business value. It covers all the core areas of HR including recruitment, performance management, learning and development (L&D), and reward. There is also discussion of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and the Internet of Things (IoT) and what they mean for HR”.

Introducing HR Analytics with Machine Learning: Empowering Practitioners, Psychologists, and Organizations

Christopher M. Rosett and Austin Hagerty (2021). “For today’s organizational psychologists to successfully work with their partners, they must go beyond behavioral science into the realms of computing and business acumen. Similarly, today’s data scientists must appreciate the unique aspects of behavioral data and the circumstances surrounding HR data and HR systems. Finally, traditional HR professionals must become familiar with research methods, statistics, and data systems to collaborate with these new specialized partners and teams. The book introduces these areas and guides on building the connectivity across domains required to establish well-rounded skills for individuals and best practices for organizations when applying advanced analytics to workforce data. It will also introduce machine learning and where it fits within the larger HR Analytics framework”.

Handbook of Regression Modeling in People Analytics: With Examples in R and Python

Keith McNulty (2021). “Despite the recent rapid growth in machine learning and predictive analytics, many of the statistical questions that are faced by researchers and practitioners still involve explaining why something is happening. Regression analysis is the best ‘Swiss army knife’ we have for answering these kinds of questions. This book is a learning resource on inferential statistics and regression analysis. It teaches how to do a wide range of statistical analyses in both R and in Python, ranging from simple hypothesis testing to advanced multivariate modeling. It is primarily focused on examples related to the analysis of people and talent, and includes a step-by-step guide and easily reproducible examples and code so that the methods can be put into practice immediately”.

The Science of Dream Teams: How Talent Optimization Can Drive Engagement, Productivity, and Happiness

Mike Zani (2021). “The book details a data-driven approach to talent optimization that makes hiring, motivating, and managing people more efficient and effective. It employs sophisticated assessments, tools, and software that enable leaders to: measure the traits and characteristics that predict success in a role or fit on a team, build finely tuned project teams and well-balanced leadership teams, boost employee productivity, engagement, retention—and happiness, unlock the hidden potential of individual workers and your organization as a whole”.

Excellence in People Analytics: How to Use Workforce Data to Create Business Value

Jonathan Ferrar, David Green (2021). “Effectively and ethically leveraging people data to deliver real business value is what sets the best HR leaders and teams apart. The book provides practical guidance on how to create sustainable business value with people analytics and develop a data-driven culture in HR. It allows HR professionals and business executives to translate their data into tangible actions to improve business performance while navigating the rapidly evolving world of work. Following a nine dimensions model, the book demonstrates how to use people data to increase profits, improve staff retention and workplace productivity as well as develop individual employee experience”.

HR Analytics Essentials You Always Wanted To Know

Michael Walsh (2021). “The book covers the following topics: Define what HR Analytics can do for an organization, Determine the best HR analytics role, Assess the readiness of organizations for undergoing a study using HR analytics, Apply HR Analytics in various HR disciplines, including recruiting and staffing, labor negotiations, incentives, and training, Use Excel to efficiently manage data for your HR analytics. The book walks readers through the many benefits of using analytics to make better people decisions. As it shows, HR Analytics is both an art and a science that can help organizations make informed decisions that benefit all stakeholders, including employees”.

Agile Workforce Planning: How to Align People with Organizational Strategy for Improved Performance

Adam Gibson (2021). “As business priorities change and focus shifts to address arising issues, HR professionals need to be able to reorganize talent swiftly and plan for future needs to enable the business to succeed. The book covers how to use agile workforce planning to forecast organizational demand for people, resources, and skills, and how to analyze and fill the gap between supply and demand. This is a practical guide for HR and organization development practitioners needing to align their staff, skills, and resources with evolving company goals. It also covers how to identify the skills needed in the workforce, where these skills are already available and when they’re missing, how to decide whether to buy, borrow or build them. It explains how to collect data to calculate and predict staff churn as well as how to use qualitative and quantitative demand modeling to forecast for future needs and provides strategies to address these including lateral internal recruitment”.

Digitalised Talent Management: Navigating the Human-Technology Interface

Sharna Wiblen (Editor) (2021). “The book focuses on the use of information technologies in talent management. It affords theoretically, methodologically, and empirically informed insights that are especially salient given the need for executives and organizations to balance the role of humans and technology while ensuring competitiveness in an interconnected and increasingly digital world. It contributes to the industry conversations about the role of technological innovations in enabling organizations to transition towards digital ways of organizing talent and the implications for different stakeholders. The book adds value by assembling subject matter experts currently siloed within traditional research domains while highlighting the complexity of managing talent”.

People Operations: Automate HR, Design a Great Employee Experience and Unleash Your Workforce

Jay Fulcher, Tracy Cote, Kevin Marasco (2021) “In this book, you’ll receive an end-to-end guide to Digitizing legacy HR functions, Using robots for the busywork you hate, Employing software to design and improve your employee experience, Assembling and empowering your “people team”, and Utilizing the included plans and templates to guide each stage of your business transformation.”

HR Analytics: Quantifying the Intangible: Linking People, processes, and analytics

Anshul Saxena (2021) “The book introduces the emerging discipline of ‘Human Resource Analytics’. The target audience is the students who have taken up bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in the field of management or enthusiasts who have even a wee-bit understanding of HR and are interested in diving deeper into the subject. The readers will develop insights into the topics like primary metrics, KPIs, and processes involved in different HR subdomains like recruitment and employee engagement.”

The ROI of Human Capital: Measuring the Economic Value of Employee Performance *

Jac Fitz-enz (2020) “The lifeblood of any business enterprise is its people. Yet it wasn’t until the publication of this groundbreaking book that there was a reliable way to quantify the contributions of people to corporate profit. Updated with new metrics, the book shows executives and HR professionals how to gauge human costs and productivity at three critical levels: organizational (contributions to corporate goals), functional (impact on process improvement), and human resources management (value added by five basic HR department activities). The book also includes topics such as corporate outsourcing, developments in behavioral science, and advances in trending and forecasting that have dramatically changed the way organizations measure the bottom line effect of employee performance.”
* The previous edition

Employee Surveys and Sensing: Challenges and Opportunities

William H. Macey, Alexis A. Fink (2020) “The design and execution of employee survey has evolved over the past decade. Technological advances and new interest in talent analytics have combined to create an exciting space with a good deal of innovation along methodological lines. Providing a solid grounding in the basic issues of content development, interpreting results, and driving action, the book addresses cutting-edge topics in the area of survey analytics, including applications of computational linguistics and artificial intelligence. Significant emphasis is given to ethical issues for ensuring the protection of data and the privacy of survey respondents”.

Solving the Productivity Puzzle: How to Engage, Motivate and Develop Employees to Improve Individual and Business Performance

Tim Ringo (2020). “The book is a practical guide for all people management professionals to address the challenge of stagnating people productivity. It covers how to embed learning and development activities to ensure that employees feel equipped with the skills they need to meet their goals, motivate a workforce made up of six generations with competing priorities, develop an effective workforce planning strategy to make sure the right people are in the right place at the right time, with the right motivation in the organization to build a company culture that allows people to thrive. It also includes expert guidance on how to implement change to opportunity in the workforce, track and measure productivity, and leverage new technologies to support employees.”

Digital HR Strategy: Achieving Sustainable Transformation in the Digital Age

Soumyasanto Sen (2020). “A crucial reading for HR practitioners and leaders about organization adaptation to changing and increasingly competitive environment. The book features case studies and covers the importance of cultural change and creating a human-centric employee experience, leveraging value propositions, and harnessing data insights and analytics to improve performance. It also explores frameworks, strategies, and opportunities for wellbeing initiatives, upskilling and reskilling workforces to respond to and establish a culture of collaboration and innovation”.

Measurement Demystified: Creating Your L&D Measurement, Analytics, and Reporting Strategy

David L. Vance, Peggy Parskey (2020) “The book breaks new ground with a framework to simplify the discussion of measurement, analytics and reporting as it relates to L&D and talent development practitioners. it helps practitioners select and use the right measures for the right reasons; select, create, and use the right types of reports; and create a comprehensive measurement and reporting strategy.”

Evidence-Based Recruiting: How to Build a Company of Star Performers Through Systematic and Repeatable Hiring Practices

Atta Tarki (2020) “Defending your business from the competition through regulations, differentiated technologies, brand recognition, and other methods is no longer a sustainable competitive advantage. This book guides you through the process of designing and implementing a data-driven hiring strategy that will secure your business for the foreseeable future. Revealing how today’s top innovators, it shows how you can do the same by implementing systematic and repeatable processes that lead to better, more consistent hiring outcomes. You’ll learn how to: envision an evidence-based approach to hiring, distinguish useful data from the data you don’t need, use the best technologies to achieve your recruitment goals, build an effective talent-acquisition team, improve on-the-job success predictions, design well-defined and objective measures to improve hiring outcomes, avoid the most common hiring pitfalls.”

Learning Analytics: Learning Analytics: Using Talent Data to Improve Business Outcomes

Cristina Hall, John R Mattox, Peggy Parskey (2020). ” Effective evaluation and measurement of learning and development initiatives are critical to maximize the impact of training, identify gaps for improvement and ensure that efforts are aligned to the business needs. The book outlines how analytical approaches can respond to these challenges, the types and benefits of technological solutions, and how to ask the right questions of organizational data in order to build a learning organization that boosts performance and competitive advantage.”

Fundamentals of HR Analytics: A Manual on Becoming HR Analytical

Fermin Diez (2019). “The future of the Human Resource Management profession is inextricably linked to understanding data analytics. The book provides practical, hands-on approaches to connect data to HR policies and practices to help influence overall business performance. It makes understanding and engaging with data analytics possible for professionals at all levels. Leveraging key statistical and financial concepts, including ROI and people productivity, and commonly available tools, it explores key skills and tasks in an accessible and illuminating way, including data-analytic thinking, data management, data collection, clean-up, and warehousing, building descriptive and predictive models, applying HR analytics skills and tools to workforce planning, recruitment, training, and turnover analysis”.

Investing in People: Financial Impact of Human Resource Initiatives

John W. Boudreau, Wayne F. Cascio, Alexis A. Fink (2019). “The future of work, talent, and employment are changing at an unprecedented pace, and organizational decisions about investment in people are under increasing scrutiny. Leaders’ decisions about human resources are crucial in an uncertain and interconnected world, yet decisions about people remain among the least systematic and evidence-based compared to resources such as money and technology. The book draws upon state-of-the-art practice and research across disciplines, including psychology, economics, accounting, and finance to provide HR professionals and leaders with proven guidelines for evaluating key HR initiatives. It is based on a comprehensive framework that clarifies and supports strategic linkages between investments in human capital and important outcomes that senior leaders most care about, such as talent acquisition, engagement, learning, customer service, and higher financial returns”.

Predictive HR Analytics: Mastering the HR Metric *

Martin Edwards and Kirsten Edwards (2019). “Organizational people-related data is an invaluable source of information from which to identify patterns to make effective business decisions. HR practitioners often lack statistical and analytical know-how. The book provides a clear, accessible framework for understanding People Analytics. It includes examples such as employee engagement, performance, and turnover. It shows how to use the results to develop effective evidence-based HR strategies. This 2nd edition has been updated to include machine learning, biased algorithms, data protection, GDPR considerations, and a new example using survival analyses. A new appendix shows main R coding and online resources consisting of SPSS and Excel data sets”.
* The previous edition

People Analytics & Text Mining with R

Mong Shen Ng (2019). “This book teaches you R (open-source programming language), People Analytics, Text Mining and Sentiment Analysis. It is written for people with no knowledge of R, with step-by-step print-screen instructions. The book covers the full People Analytics scope (Benefits, Compensation, Culture, Diversity & Inclusion, Engagement, Leadership, Learning & Development, Personality Traits, Performance Management, Recruitment, Sales Incentives) with numerous real-world examples, and shows how R can help”.

People Analytics for Dummies

Mike West (2019). “This book shows you how to collect data, analyze that data, and then apply your findings to create a happier and more engaged workforce: Start a people analytics project, work with qualitative data, collect data via communications, find the right tools, and approach for analyzing data”.

Human Capital Management Standards: A Complete Guide

Wilson Wong, Valerie Anderson, Heather Bond (2019) “A comprehensive guide to the BSI and ISO frameworks for people management, providing internationally agreed definitions and best practice guidance. The book covers everything from organizational governance, workforce planning, diversity & inclusion to learning and development. It explores the critical areas of people management throughout the employment life cycle, from initial hire to the time people move on from the organization. There is also coverage of additional business standards, such as those related to occupational health and safety, and the implications of implementing standards in a globalized and interconnected organizational context. The book also includes essential coverage of the standards assessment process and tips and advice on achieving successful accreditation.”

Human Resource Management: People, Data, and Analytics

Talya Bauer, Berrin Erdogan, David E. Caughlin, and Donald M. Truxillo (2018). “The authors introduce the fundamentals of talent management with integrated coverage of data analytics and how they can be used to inform and support decisions about people in an organization. Features tied to SHRM competencies and data exercises give readers hands-on opportunities to practice the analytical and decision-making skills they need to excel in today’s job market. Engaging examples illustrate key HRM concepts and theories, which brings many traditional HRM topics concepts to life”.

People Analytics. Data and Text Analytics for Human Resources

Eduardo Valencia (2018). “We have more information at our disposal about tastes, opinions, and certain behaviors that could be very useful in making decisions about performance, salaries, turnover rate, leaves of absence, etc. Accordingly, People Analytics processes that information through analysis tools that allow you to look at talent management decisions in a new way. People Analytics is based on data analysis as opposed to traditional methods of relationships or personal experiences. People Analytics offers a unique opportunity for human capital professionals to position themselves as strategic senior management partners, using analytically proven techniques to hire and retain employees who drive higher value in companies”.

The Practical Guide to HR Analytics: Using Data to Inform, Transform, and Empower HR Decisions

Rachael Johnson-Murray, Lindsay McFarlane, Valerie Streets, Shonna Waters (2018). “The need for HR professionals to understand and apply data analytics is greater than ever. Today’s successful HR professionals must ask insightful questions, understand key terms, and intelligently apply data, but may lack a clear understanding of the many forms, types, applications, interpretations, and capabilities of HR analytics. HR Analytics provides a practical approach to using data to solve real HR challenges in organizations and demystifies analytics with clear guidelines and recommendations for making the business case, starting an HR analytics function, avoiding common pitfalls, presenting data through visualization and storytelling, and much more”.

Digital HR: A Guide to Technology-Enabled Human Resources

Deborah Waddill (2018). “In times when HR leaders implement innovative technologies, such as Watson, AI, predictive modeling, and real-time analytics are being, this book can help. It offers the practical insights, real-world case studies, tips and tools, recommendations, and additional resources, to guide HR practitioners through each of the major technologies and to address vital strategic and implementation issues, that eventually enhance, enable, revitalize, and empower Human Resources”.

Human Resource Excellence: An Assessment of Strategies and Trends

Edward E. Lawler and John W. Boudreau (2018). “the book delivers new findings of what makes HR successful and how it can add value to today’s organizations. Tracing changes in a global sample of firms, it provides an international benchmark against which to measure a company’s HR practice. HR is most powerful when it plays a strategic role, makes use of information technology, and has tangible metrics and analytics. The authors offer insights about HR’s changing role in strategy, big data, social and knowledge networks, and the gig economy”.

Adaptive Space: How GM and Other Companies are Positively Disrupting Themselves and Transforming into Agile Organizations

Michael Arena (2018). “In this book, Michael Arena, an organizational networks expert who helped enable GM’s legendary turnaround, explains how to transform a company through the concept of adaptive space: enabling creativity, innovation, and novel ideas to flow freely among teams, across departments, and throughout the company. Using GM case study and other highly adaptive organizations, Arena provides a model to follow.”

Evidence-Based Management: How to Use Evidence to Make Better Organizational Decisions

Eric Barends, Denise M. Rousseau (2018) “The book has evolved with the goal of improving the quality of decision-making by using critically evaluated evidence from multiple sources – organizational data, professional expertise, stakeholder values and scientific literature. It sets out and explains the specific skills needed to gather, understand and use evidence to make better-informed organizational decisions.”

Strategic Workforce Planning: Developing Optimized Talent Strategies for Future Growth

Ross Sparkman (2018). “A playbook for workforce planning from beginning to end. It enables HR professionals to answer core business questions including how do I analyze future hiring demand? How do I assess what skills will be required in the future? How should I prioritize investments like training and development? How do I assess the supply of talent around the world? How do I identify the business drivers that impact workforce demand? It also covers the impact of artificial intelligence (AI), automation and machine learning on the global workforce and how to deal with these implications.”

Strategic Workforce Planning: Guidance & Back-Up Plans

Tracey Smith (2018). “The book aims to proactively plan to put the right people, in the right place, at the right time at the right cost in order to mitigate workforce risk. Written by the former head of global strategic workforce planning for FedEx Express, this basic introduction guides the reader through the planning framework and presents practical tools and approaches for successful implementation. It also discusses some of the major challenges of implementation facing leaders today”.

Doing HR Analytics – A Practitioner’s Handbook With R Examples

Lyndon Sundmark (2017). “The book seeks to cut through the jargon and hype that currently accompanies the current state of this field. It provides foundational definitions and concepts, a suggested ‘known’ analytics framework, and practical illustrative examples of how to use analytics to address HR issues. It gets you to think informationally about ‘all’ of HR and offers examples that ‘scratch the surface’ of what is possible.”

The Power of People: How Successful Organizations Use Workforce Analytics to Improve Business Performance

Nigel Guenole, Jonathan Ferrar and Sheri Feinzig (2017). “Drawing on incisive case studies and vignettes, three experts help you bring purpose and clarity to any workforce analytics project, with robust research design and analysis to get reliable insights. They reveal where to start, where to find stakeholder support, and how to earn “quick wins” to build upon.”

The Data-Driven Leader: A Powerful Approach to Delivering Measurable Business Impact through People Analytics

Jenny Dearborn and David Swanson (2017). “How to transform the HR function and overall organizational effectiveness by using data to make decisions grounded in facts vs. opinions, identify causes behind your company’s thorniest problems and move toward a winning, future-focused business strategy. Realistic and actionable, this book tells the story of a successful sales executive who, after leading an analytics-driven turnaround (in Data-Driven, this book’s predecessor), faces a new turnaround challenge as chief human resources officer.”

Competing on Analytics: Updated, with a New Introduction: The New Science of Winning

Thomas Davenport and Jeanne Harris (2017). “The roadmap for becoming an analytical competitor, this book shows how to create new strategies for organizations based on sophisticated analytics, introduces a five-stage model of analytical competition, and describes typical behaviors, capabilities, and challenges of each stage. It equally emphasizes human and technological resources, and contains examples from different industries and business functions”.

The Talent Delusion: Why Data, Not Intuition, Is the Key to Unlocking Human Potential

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic (2017). “Bridging the gap between the psychological science of talent and common real-world talent practices, this book aims to educate HR practitioners and leaders on how to measure, predict and manage talent. It provides a data-driven solution to the common problems around employee selection, development, and engagement; how to define and evaluate talent; how to detect and inhibit toxic employee behaviors; and how to identify and harness leadership potential.”

Next Generation Performance Management: The Triumph of Science Over Myth and Superstition

Alan L. Colquitt (2017). “Business leaders and HR professionals focus on practices instead of the fundamental purpose of performance management. Standard economic and psychological theories for motivation and behavior fail to account for the increasingly complex nature of organizations and their environments today. This book confronts the traditional dogma, paradigms, and practices and holds them up to the bright light of scientific scrutiny. It encourages HR professionals and business leaders to abandon them and it offers up a more appropriate alternative paradigms to guide them and practical solutions that are better supported by scientific research.”

Quantifiably Better: Delivering Human Resource (HR) Analytics from Start to Finish

Steve VanWieren (2017) “The book provides a path to follow in search of answers to questions about turnover rate, leadership issues, engagement, and company culture. It offers help if you are just getting started with your HR analytics initiative or if you are looking for ways to expand your existing HR analytics practice.”

People Analytics in the Era of Big Data: Changing the Way You Attract, Acquire, Develop, and Retain Talent

Jean Paul Isson and Jesse S. Harriott (2016). “This book presents a practical framework for real-world talent analytics, backed by groundbreaking examples of workforce analytics in action across the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Leverage predictive analytics throughout the hiring process, Utilize analytics techniques for more effective workforce management, Learn how people analytics benefits organizations of all sizes in various industries, Integrate analytics into HR practices seamlessly and thoroughly.”

Winning on HR Analytics: Leveraging Data for Competitive Advantage

Ramesh Soundararajan and Kuldeep Singh (2016). “HR analytics is pivotal in identifying, measuring, and articulating the objectives and outcomes of different programs. Consider predicting which high performers were at risk of leaving six months before they walked out the door or triage incoming resumes overnight to predict employee success and tenure before you hire. It is possible with sophisticated technology and analytics, as demonstrated by companies such as Google, Walmart, and American Express.”

HR Analytics and Innovations in Workforce Planning

Tony Miller (2016). “Process approach to interviewing provides greater structure and has the potential for significantly reducing bias. The book demonstrates how to deter and filter poor performers and benefit from structured, prewritten score-able questions. The evidence shows that many HR functions have failed to understand the long-term financial consequences of poor performance or realize that talented people do much more work than other employees. This book gives a detailed guide to the nine-step process with work examples.”

Strategic Analytics: Advancing Strategy Execution and Organizational Effectiveness

Alec Levenson (2015). “Business people who devise the strategies and the human resources people who get employees to implement them use completely different analytics. Business analytics can determine if operational priorities aren’t being achieved but can’t explain why. HR analytics reveal potentially effective policy and process improvements but can’t identify which would have the greatest strategic impact. This book shows how to use an integrated approach to bring these two pieces together.”

Optimize Your Greatest Asset – Your People: How to Apply Analytics to Big Data to Improve Your Human Capital Investments

Gene Pease (2015). “The author offers a framework for optimizing human capital investments through predictive analysis. You’ll learn how to transition from anecdotes and surveys to more advanced measurement techniques and combine the data from multiple systems into a unified plan of action that improves business results. The book includes practical examples and case studies to show how these techniques are applied in real-world settings, and executives and thought leaders weigh in on how advanced analytics are informing better business decisions every day.”

Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

Laszlo Bock (2015). “A compelling manifesto with the potential to change how we work and live, Laszlo Bock, Ex. Google’s Senior Vice President of People Operations offers both a philosophy of the new world of work and a blueprint for attracting the most spectacular talent and ensuring the brightest and best prosper.”

Making Human Capital Analytics Work: Measuring the ROI of Human Capital Processes and Outcomes

Jack Phillips and Patricia Pulliam Phillips (2015). “The tools and techniques you need to use analytics to show top decision-makers the value of HR in your organization. Focusing on three types of analytics, descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive, the book shows how you can apply analytics by Developing relationships between variables, Predicting the success of HR programs, Determining the cost of intangibles that are otherwise difficult to value, Showing the business value of particular HR programs, Calculating and forecasting the ROI of various HR projects and programs.”

Predictive Analytics for Human Resources

Jac Fitz-Enz and John Mattox (2014). “The book explains the basics of every business: the vision, the brand, and the culture, and shows how predictive analytics supports them. The authors put the focus on the fundamentals of predictability and include a framework of logical questions to help set up an analytic program or project, then follow up by offering a clear explanation of statistical applications.”

Predicting Success: Evidence-Based Strategies to Hire the Right People and Build the Best Team

David Lahey (2014). “A practical guide for using analytics to finding the perfect member for a team and avoiding bad culture fits, mismatched skillsets, entitled workers, and other hiring missteps that drain the team of productivity and morale. The book provides guidance toward implementing tools to build the best teams and achieve best outcomes.”

Employee Surveys That Work: Improving Design, Use, and Organizational Impact

Alec Levenson (2014). “Poorly designed employee surveys frustrate participants, analysts, and executives and can end up doing more harm than good. The book offers sensible, practical ways to make surveys more useful and accurate and provides specific advice for ensuring that the purpose and desired outcomes of surveys are clear, the questions are designed to provide the most relevant and accurate data, and the results are actionable. It also covers the best benchmarking practices, the benefits of multivariate modeling for analyzing results, the linking of survey data with performance data, the best ways to measure employee engagement, and the pros and cons of respondent anonymity.”

Developing Human Capital: Using Analytics to Plan and Optimize Your Learning and Development Investments

Gene Pease, Barbara Beresford, and Lew Walker (2014). “To make the most of your workers, nothing beats quantitative performance and investment measurement. To keep your business moving forward, effective management of human capital is crucial. It generates plenty of data, and deep analysis of this data helps you provide feedback and make adjustments to capitalize on the combined knowledge, skills, and creativity of your workers. The book provides a guidebook for collecting, organizing, and analyzing the data surrounding human capital so you can make the most of your employees’ potential.”

People Analytics: How Social Sensing Technology Will Transform Business and What It Tells Us about the Future of Work

Ben Waber (2013). “Sensors and analytics can give you an unprecedented understanding of how your people work and collaborate, and actionable insights for building a more effective, productive, and positive organization. The book covers cutting-edge case studies, e.g., changing the way call center employees spent their breaks to increase performance by 25% while significantly reducing stress, tweaking the balance of in-person and electronic communication to enhance the value of both and many more.”

The Talent Equation: Big Data Lessons for Navigating the Skills Gap and Building a Competitive Workforce

Matt Ferguson, Lorin M. Hitt, Prasanna Tambe (2013) “At every stage of the employee life cycle, a data-driven approach to HR can help companies make smarter decisions about their most important asset: their people. Companies face looming skill shortages, retention concerns, and questions regarding the most effective composition of their workforce. The book offers hiring professionals and business leaders a roadmap to attract and retain top talent. It covers a study of more than 2,700 employers and 33 million resumes to find the relationship between market performance, education attainment, and employee tenure. It explores the ROI of increased education levels and retention rates, the benefits of continuous recruitment and talent pipelines technology market, how workforce analytics tools are changing talent acquisition, and the importance of reducing long-term unemployment through training and reskilling.”

Applying Advanced Analytics to HR Management Decisions: Methods for Selection, Developing Incentives and Improving Collaboration

James C. Sesil (2013) “The author identifies widespread flaws in today’s HR decision-making processes and reveals how advanced analytics can help organizations make far more robust decisions about employee selection, performance management, strategy alignment, collaboration, and more. In this book, he shows how to integrate Business Intelligence, ERP, Strategy Maps, Talent Management Suites, and advanced analytics — and use them together to make far better decisions. The reader will learn how to measure and improve the value of HCM decision-making in workforce/succession planning, talent acquisition, career development, corporate learning, and beyond”.

Human Capital Analytics: How to Harness the Potential of Your Organization’s Greatest Asset

Gene Pease, Boyce Byerly, Jac Fitz-enz (2012) “Human capital analytics is the application of sophisticated data mining and business analytics techniques to human resources data. The book provides an in-depth look at the science of human capital analytics, giving practical examples from case studies of companies applying analytics to their people decisions and providing a framework for using predictive analytics to optimize human capital investments. The challenge of human resources analytics is to identify what data should be captured and how to use the data to model and predict capabilities so the organization gets an optimal return on investment on its human capital. The goal is to provide an organization with insights for effectively managing employees so that business goals can be reached quickly and efficiently”.

Positioned: Strategic Workforce Planning That Gets the Right Person in the Right Job

Dan Ward, Rob Tripp (2012) “The book captures the best workforce planning practices from leading organizations such as Boeing, HP, the US Intelligence Community, and others in the private and public sectors to help businesses address the constant challenge of having the right people available when needed in order to maximize creativity, efficiency, and productivity. By examining the evolution of workforce analytics and the roles of human resources professionals, and by incorporating input on best practices from expert people strategists, the authors provide insight into how organizations can adjust to turnover seamlessly and do so in a way that produces even better results.”

Calculating Success: How the New Workplace Analytics Will Revitalize Your Organization

Carl Hoffmann, Eric Lesser, Tim Ringo (2011). “Most companies today have access to reams of data: marketing, supply chain, finance, as well as critical data about their workforce. Yet research shows that leaders at these companies lack the confidence to effectively integrate and use this data to compete effectively in the marketplace. While executives know the results they need to achieve, they often fail to analyze the impact of their decisions on the firm, its processes, and its people. The book shows how to can take an analytical approach to both anticipate and address the changes required by a company’s competitive environment and drive superior performance: Analyze the work that needs to be done and know how to structure it; Provide the right types of people to do it; Motivate them to engage in that work; Explore innovative ways to get the work done.”

Transformative HR: How Great Companies Use Evidence-Based Change for Sustainable Advantage

John W. Boudreau and Ravin Jesuthasan (2011). “Proven HR strategies that can have a real impact on organizational success. This book demonstrates how some of the world’s most admired and prominent organizations are redefining HR leadership by using evidence-based change to inform human capital decisions that optimize efficiency, effectiveness and strategic impact. The authors present the five foundational principles to the new HR decision science: Logic-driven analytics, segmentation, risk leverage, synergy and integration and optimization.”

Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture: Based on the Competing Values Framework

Kim S. Cameron and Robert E. Quinn (2011). “This book provides a means of understanding and changing organizational culture in order to make organizations more effective. It provides validated instruments for diagnosing organizational culture and management competency; a theoretical framework for understanding organizational culture; and a systematic strategy and methodology for changing organizational culture and personal behavior.”

The New HR Analytics: Predicting the EconomicValue of Your Company’s Human Capital Investments

Jac FITZ-ENZ (2010). “This book reveals how human resources professionals can apply expense-based knowledge to make the most strategic staffing decisions for their companies, and how to measure and evaluate past and current returns and apply the information to make predictions about the future value of human capital investments: Evaluate and prioritize the skills needed to sustain performance; build an agile workforce through flexible Capability Planning; determine how the organization can stimulate and reward behaviors that matter; apply a proven succession planning strategy that leverages employee engagement and drives top-line revenue growth; recognize risks and formulate responses that avoid surprises.”

Retooling HR: Using Proven Business Tools to Make Better Decisions About Talent

John W. Boudreau (2010) “The book shows how HR leaders can adapt powerful analytical tools already used by other functions to the unique challenges of talent management. Drawing on his research and examples from companies including Google, Disney, IBM, and Microsoft, the author explains six proven business tools leaders already use. And he shows how HR can apply these tools to talent management”.

The Workforce Scorecard: Managing Human Capital To Execute Strategy

Mark A. Huselid, Brian E. Becker, and Richard W. Beatty (2005). “In a marketplace fueled by intangible assets, anything less than optimal workforce success can threaten a firm’s survival. Yet, in most organizations, employee performance is both poorly managed and underutilized. To maximize the power of their workforce, organizations must meet three challenges: view their workforce in terms of contribution rather than cost; replace benchmarking metrics with measures that differentiate levels of strategic impact; and make line managers and HR professionals jointly responsible for executing workforce initiatives. The authors show how to create a Workforce Scorecard that identifies and measures the behaviors, competencies, mindset, and culture required for workforce success and reveals how each dimension impacts the bottom line.”

Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture: Based on the Competing Values Framework

Brian E. Becker, David Ulrich, and Mark A. Huselid (2001). “The book introduces a measurement system that showcases how HR impacts business performance and describes a seven-step process for embedding HR systems within the firm’s overall strategy and measuring its activities in terms that line managers and CEOs will find compelling. Analyzing how each element of the HR system can be designed to enhance firm performance and maximize the overall quality of human capital, the book heralds the emergence of HR as a strategic powerhouse in today’s organizations.”

The post People Analytics and HR-Tech Reading List appeared first on Littal Shemer Haim.

(Updated: July 1st 2022, 9 interviews, 10 reviews) I love many aspects of my work, and consider myself fortunate to have my career path as a People Analytics mentor and educator. But there is one thing I am most grateful for: The people I meet at work – both clients and colleagues. As I always say in my classes and lectures, you must be eternal students in our industry, so you better choose wisely who you learn from. Each person in the following interviews and reviews that I published in my blog recently offered me a valuable lesson. I’m honored to share it all again, with the entire People Analytics community, which hopefully will keep its open-source culture.

Each of my clients enriches my perspective

1.

I find the onboarding of People Analytics Leaders, and especially those who are the first to take that role in their organization, fascinating and worth following. So how do you enter a People Analytics Leader role, when you are the one who establishes it? I was privileged to further explore this process at one of my old clients – Amdocs. Although organizational researches that fall within the category of People Analytics have been conducted in Amdocs long before, this global company, which operates in over 50 locations, has a new People Analytics Leader – Gal Mozes.

Read interview

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2.

Taking the first steps on the journey to data-driven HR is always difficult. The barriers may include a variety of issues, including data integrity, knowledge gaps, and an excessive amount of HR-Tech solutions. Furthermore, a small or medium business may lack the appropriate volume of data, the resources for shiny Analytics tools, and the right talent to lead initiatives and projects. Nevertheless, with the right guidance and mentoring in People Analytics, and with the right attitude and will power, HR leaders in SMBs can successfully overcome those barriers, and use People Analytics practices to impact their business. I was honored and fortunate to take part in some success stories of HR leaders in SMBs. One of the most inspiring is Michal Shoval, who leads the HR department in GIA

Read interview

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Each of my colleagues has plenty to offer

3.

Another cycle of the introductory course, The People Analytics Journey, is about to end. This training program is unique because it covers the fundamentals of the domain and demonstrates them with real career stories and experiences of HR and People Analytics leaders. Thus, the course contributes to a new professional community in Isreal. The last session of the course will be a special one. We’ll discuss the future of People Analytics as a profession, and the importance of new skills, e.g., procurement processes and ethical considerations. Our guest will be Yael Epstein, former HR analyst at Microsoft, who will talk about the role of technology in People Analytics, base on her experience. Here is the interview I had with Yael before the learning session.

Read interview

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4.

How would you define a professional expert in the field of data-driven HR? Certainly, there are many definitions of the People Analytics domain, that may include skills, practices, and responsibilities. However, today for a change, I’d like to suggest a different angle: a professional expert is someone you would always want to learn from and be inspired by. I had the honor to host my colleague from Amsterdam, that definitely fits this definition: Hendrik Feddersen, an expert in HR business processes and analytics.

Read interview

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5.

My personal endeavor to educate HR leaders by exposing them to data science fundamentals is continuing. Fortunately, a valuable part of my tailwind comes from my global community of experts who dedicate their career to help executives and managers, especially in the domain of HR, to become more data-driven. I was privileged to interview lately one of my data heroes, Tracey Smith, about her experiences and efforts. I was happy to find out that her opinions resonate with my own.

Read interview

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6.

Among many questions, the issue of career growth stands out. While organizations struggle with the instability of the workforce, research already points to the fact that internal mobility may be the cure to raising rates of employee attrition. But how exactly can HR practitioners address such a huge challenge? What would be their first steps? I was privileged to talk with a prominent professional, both in the field of People Analytics and Learning and Organization Development, Orit Cohen (Schwarz), who is leading the People Analytics function at HP, and learned from her perspective and experience, how organizations could move forward with this important topic.

Read interview

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Global events validate local steps

7-10.

October 2019, it has been only a year since my last visit to Unleash, but in terms of the workforce revolution that we’re witnessing and experiencing, this time span is an eternity. So much has been changed, as clearly stated by thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and many of my colleagues in the field of People Analytics and HR-Tech, who gathered again for two days of networking and learning, and this time – in Paris!
I covered my key takeaways from sessions and demos, and organized by the aforementioned themes: 1st blog was focused on broader topics of future of work; the 2nd blog covered new technologies for career paths; the 3rd was grounded on People Analytics practices; the 4th summarised insights about the digital transformation of HR. In all four themes, I tried to listen mostly to new speakers, or a least new to me. Therefore my key takeaways include many new and interesting players in our professional community.

Read review #1
Read review #2
Read review #3
Read review #4

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11.

April 2019, I crossed the ocean to meet colleagues and clients in the Big Apple. A highlight of my journey to Manhattan was HackingHR, a professional community event where I met and was inspired by influencers and thought leaders in HR and Tech. HackingHRis a global forum for collaboration, networking, and discussion about HR, technology, and the workplace of the future. Founded by Enrique Rubio, the community explores the way HR and tech interact to impact the future of work — when, where, and how we work, who we work with, and what skills the organizational leaders of tomorrow will need.

Read review

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12.

October 2018, I packed my vision and questions about the future of work and flew all the way to Unleash Amsterdam, to learn from the world’s influencers, thought leaders, and entrepreneurs, and to meet again many of my professional community fellows in the field of People Analytics and HR-Tech, who gathered from all over the world, for two days of intellectual adventure, inspiring experience, and entertainment.

Read review

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13.

We witnessed the change in HR leaders’ mindset, here in Tel Aviv, in regards to HR data and business insights. The People Analytics learning session, conducted by the Israeli Association of Human Resources in July 2018, was just a part of this vibe. The growing interest in People Analytics brought 150 HR leaders to gather and learn from the experience we gained in this. I was honored to be the keynote speaker and to partner in curating the event contents.

Read review

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14.

People Analytics World was a leading European annual conference on HR Analytics, Workforce Planning, and Employee Insight, in which I was privileged to attend in April 2018. I traveled to London with huge expectations, to learn more about the contribution of People Analysts, which are now becoming an essential part of HR groups across all industries. The growing importance of data-driven HR was well reflected in the conference’s attendees, both speakers, exhibitors, and delegates. My experience in the event exceeded my expectations.

Read review

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15.

IBM Cognitive café 2017 in Tel Aviv, was a great opportunity to meet and hear data leaders of some Israeli companies. I listened to them very carefully, knowing that their experience is most valuable for any journey in the field of People Analytics and data-driven HR. This should not be new for any business leader, but Daniel Melka, CEO IBM Israel, nicely reviewed the mega-trends of the digital era, when he talked about “organizations which re-invent themselves to deal with the ever-changing business environment, and tied their success to insights derived from data”.

Read review

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Data heroines are everywhere

16.

At the end of 2017, I was selected by HR-Tech-Nation to be among top bloggers to follow. It was a great honor to be mentioned in a list of excellent writers, which are my source of inspiration and learning. One of them, William Tincup, commented that next time he would like to see more women on the list. Well… I decided to take his note as a personal challenge and salute 365 women, one for each day in a year. There is only one IWD (International Women Day), but for me, every day is a woman’s day. My list of women worth watching, however, encompasses not only HR Tech leaders but also Data heroes and People Analytics exceptional practitioners. My selection order is completely associative, i.e., there is no ranking here. Each of the following women is truly inspiring!

Read review

Being A Data Scientist in The HR Department

A successful data science function in the HR department requires balancing the analytics maturity of the business and HR leaders with the data scientist's skills. It is essential and fascinating to explore how data science and HR needs are knitted.

ABCs of People Analyst’s success

The culture of the People Analytics community is remarkably open. While datasets, analytics, and insights are restricted, experiences, resources, and advice are generously shared. It inspired me to list the ABCs of success: autodidact habits, business understanding, and coding skills.

Professional Journey and Daily Work of A People Analysts

Aspired People Analysts often ask about competencies, challenges, tasks, and tools in this profession. I was privileged to discuss these topics with a colleague in one of the most desired roles.

Leveraging workforce data as it was a state security project

An interview about People Analytics with a Lieutenant Colonel in the Israeli Military intelligence - A rare chance to explore practices in the most secure organizations, and to discuss experience with AI, business insights and ethics.

The role of technology in the evolution of People Analytics

An interview with a former HR analyst at Microsoft, discussing the role of technology in People Analytics and data Ethics: challenges, success stories, and advice - one of many perspectives we had in "The People Analytics Journey" course.

Actionable insights for the right people at the right time

Professional experts are people you would always want to learn from and be inspired by them. I have the honor to host a colleague who fits this definition, and I'm happy to refer to his open-source contribution.

HR Challenges in A Data-Driven World

A valuable part of my tailwind comes from my global community of experts who dedicate their careers to helping executives and managers, especially in the domain of HR, to become more data-driven. Here's an interview with one of my data heroes. Her opinions resonate with my own.

People Analytics Leader – Survive Your Onboarding!

Most case studies that we encounter represent mature stages. However, most new players in this rising profession struggle with different challenges. The onboarding of People Analytics Leaders is fascinating and worth following. Here's one example.

People Analytics in SMBs: Small Data, Huge Impact

This interview with an HR manager in a fireside chat during a People Analytics class offers an introspective approach to a joint journey, as a mentee and mentor: the motives, the obstacles, the quick win, the team participation, and more.

Can you reinvent career development by using analytics?

An interview with a professional in the field of People Analytics, Learning, and Organization Development, about career-growth challenges and internal mobility.

The post There is so much more in my People Analytics circle appeared first on Littal Shemer Haim.

The post Ethics in People Analytics – The Journey Continues appeared first on Littal Shemer Haim.

Background

LSH: Thanks for joining us, Yael. Tell us a little about yourself, your background, your role in PA.

YE: The 1^st phase of my career was in health organizations. I have a Masters in Public Health (MPH) from the Hebrew University. My role as the coordinator of the non-clinical quality improvement program in a large tertiary hospital included many aspects of HR including change management, training, and recruiting. This led me to further my education in HR and to explore opportunities in the HR profession. In the 2^nd phase, I worked for a few years in a placement agency, and then, in the past 11 years, I worked at Microsoft. I started as a staffing specialist in the R&D center in Israel. 5 years ago, I moved to an HR analyst role in a new global team within the HR function (HRBI).

LSH: The People Analytics function at Microsoft is considered to be one of the leaders in the field. What can you share regarding the vision, mission, and principles?

YE: The vision is, in short, #DataDrivenHR. The mission is to enable Microsoft to make evidence-based decisions about workforce and culture. The principles of driving this mission include delivering insightful research and analytics, providing robust and consistent reporting tools in partnership with engineering teams, delivering timely and accurate measurement of companywide business and HR priorities, ensuring data quality, and upholding employee data privacy and security.

The role of technology

LSH: From your experience, what was the role of technology in the evolution of the People Analytics?

YE: Technology supports all aspects of people analytics. There are many examples: It promotes data security and privacy by ensuring the data is used only by authorized people. It enables the use of data by all HR professionals by an accessible format that is easier to understand and communicate even if you are not an analyst. Self-service data solutions, i.e., Microsoft PowerBI saves time and enable us to focus on deeper analysis rather than providing customized data needs. It also enables us to integrate data from various sources and create powerful data models, using visualizations during the analysis and for communicating insights and recommendations. We also can leverage data that wasn’t accessible before, by Workplace Analytics, a company product that enables us to identify collaboration patterns that impact productivity, workforce effectiveness, and employee engagement, based on data from Office 365. We also use text analytics to leverage a huge amount of data from responses to open-ended questions in employee surveys, objectively, and in several languages. More useful products of Microsoft are Yammer, which is an enterprise social networking service that helps us to communicate learnings and ideas, and Teams, which helps to manage resources.

LSH: Tell us more about your role: who were your clients, how did you support them?

YE: People analytics is an evolving field, and I was fortunate to partner with my colleagues in the HRBI team and with HR leaders and managers across the globe. Over time, I partnered with HR teams in both engineering groups and the sales organization. We leveraged an analytical approach to enable the business and HR to execute data-driven decisions in many aspects of the employment cycle, including hiring, headcount trends, diversity, retention, rewards, compensation, as well as candidate and employee sentiment. We partnered with HR to support ongoing HR processes as well as answering specific questions and hypothesis which were raised from their work with the business. One of the best practices was to set milestones during the analysis process in which we shared the work we did thus far, got the perspective and thoughts from our partners before we continued. This ensured that the deliverable answered the needs. Another major aspect of our work was promoting a data-driven approach in HR through one-on-one consultation, standard training on a data-driven approach, and tailored training on specific subjects.

LSH: What do you consider as challenges in your role with respect to technology?

YE: While it is a positive challenge, the ongoing development of knowledge in this field in general and of technology, in particular, requires ongoing learning. Ensuring that you take the time to learn with a very busy day to day work is challenging but also essential and very rewarding. Some other challenges are connected to the fact that technology helps with having more data available for use, thus increasing the need to make sure that we are using the data in an accurate way and to avoid bias throughout the analysis process. The availability of more data also raises the challenge of prioritizing work. One aspect of this is balancing between doing interesting analysis versus doing important analysis. Another aspect is balancing between the sense of urgency that is always driven by the business and the time it takes to do a thorough analysis.

LSH: What do you consider as a success story with respect to technology?

YE: These a great feeling of accomplishment when your HR partners share how they leveraged the tools and knowledge to promote a data-driven approach and seeing our work impacting business decisions. And of course, every time you succeed in a tough technical challenge with your data model or an effective visual you feel a great success. Personally, some of the meaningful cases of success were the use of technology, e.g., text analytics, to help in promoting general values of the unbiased approach, inclusiveness, and collaboration.

Data Ethics 

LSH: How do the people analytics team handle data ethics? Are there processes, partners in the organization, or outside?

YE: Microsoft has a volume of Privacy Standards dedicated to employee data, Data Use Framework for employee data, and Data Protection Notice for employees. Other internal tools and projects have more detailed communications. The company has created an Employee Data Governance Board to provide consistent company-wide direction and oversight on the legal and corporate policy issues reflected in the company’s privacy standards for processing employee personal data. This board is made up of a core team of privacy managers and attorneys for HR, Finance, and IT. Due to the need to combine employee data with business data, a data analytics governance framework was created and is used when embarking on a new people analytics project, to ensure that the right people are involved from the beginning, including legal, HR and any business stakeholders in addition to the people analytics team. We have a privacy manager on the team, who focuses on people analytics data privacy and security, and partners with other roles outside of HR on their use of employee data. We also have mandatory annual training for HR on privacy and data use, which is updated on a yearly basis. Training is helpful in framing the definitions and aspects of ethics, e.g., ensuring a purpose behind each data element and anonymization in reports.

LSH: What would you advise your colleagues whose employers are in an early stage in the field?

YE: Choose as your 1^st project subjects that are both important for the business and easy to succeed. Data is available regarding many aspects of HR. Use it to help with important business questions and with building the trust of the business in the data-driven approach. As long as you are aware of the limitations of the data you have, don’t be afraid of doing analysis with partial data. If we wait until we have the “perfect dataset” we will never start doing analysis. Also, showing the value from a partial analysis while being transparent regarding the limitations is a great argument for investing in more resources. As in any other aspect of HR, People Analytics requires ongoing continuous learning. Make sure you leverage resources and collaboration opportunities to continue learning.

LSH: Thank you, Yael! We are fortunate to have your perspective in our course and professional community!

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(Reading Time: 3 minutes)

What new roles do HR leaders have in the 4th industrial revolution? HR departments practice People Analytics to help business leaders to improve performance and growth through insights from people data. But what’s beyond People Analytics? How should HR leaders be prepared for the fourth industrial revolution?

AI changes everything. We have new responsibilities.

We’ve discussed a lot the two trends that contributed to the emergence of People Analytics a few years ago: data democratization – managers demand people’s data to run the business, and data consumerization – employees require to use data for growth, well-being, and positive experience at work, just as they do in other aspects of their lives.

But today, AI can make everybody better in many fields. I use AI to make myself more productive, e.g., I use speech-to-text and text-to-speech to cover content more quickly. Moreover, I collect data about myself in many aspects of my life.

However, I think I’m still among the few who read privacy policies, and I consider them when I choose apps. Data can make us heroes, but it might also destroy us if misused or abused. We leave data traces everywhere: when we drive our cars, watch TV, buy products, consume web content or interact with people on social media. And, of course, we leave data traces with every breath we take at work when we move across offices, write e-mails, manage calendars, learn, conduct our work, or even when we don’t show up to work.

Who owns these traces of data? The regulation now defines it in many parts of the world, but it lags compared to technology. So it is our responsibility, not only as managers or consultants but also as people, parents, and citizens, to understand the rapid changes and make informed decisions. I mean, not only by insights derived from data but mainly informed choices about the usage of data-based apps, which are every app. 

New learning path. New employer rating.

Privacy and ethics are not new in the organizational research field. For instance, we discussed the smallest group we can analyze in surveys more than two decades ago. However, we now have so many new data sources for the workforce, from sensors, smartphones, and desktop apps. As I mentioned, people are not aware of the digital footprints they leave. Therefore, this data might be turned against their interests.

I think it’s time for people to learn how to protect themselves, and this learning path should also be a new responsibility of organizations. We discuss Ethics in People Analytics and HR tech, but we must keep in mind that this is a crucial topic in educating our employees. To do so, learning leaders must already understand this domain thoroughly. Unfortunately, this is not the case in many organizations.

Furthermore, there’s much talk in the HR sector about employee experience. I believe that soon enough, employees will start exercising their rights to data privacy. We’ll see employer ratings based on data transparency and data usage aligned with employee interests – growth and well-being, which is what we mean when we talk about using employee data for good.

New skills. HR people are not there yet.

As AI sweeps HR tech and is introduced to many HR practices in every stage of the employee lifecycle, someone in the organization will have to pick the right solutions for the proper needs. I forecast demand for two new skills in the HR role: Procurement and Ethics. However, if HR people keep procrastinating their up-skilling in analytics, the consequences might be that Procurement and Ethics roles will be filled by someone else in the organization.

You can’t evaluate AI solutions without understanding the basics of practical machine learning and predictive analytics. You don’t have to be a data scientist for that. It’s like driving a car – you don’t need to be a mechanical engineer to buy or drive your vehicle, but you need to know how to hold the wheel and obey traffic rules, so you don’t kill anybody. Therefore, I call HR professionals to start their journey into the data world. And start it today.

The post HR Leaders in The 4th Industrial Revolution appeared first on Littal Shemer Haim.

(This article is based on my Hebrew “TED” talk at the conference People Geekup Tel Aviv in June 2019. I dedicated this talk to HR professionals who make their first steps on their data-driven journey. Read also my list of Public Speaking).

How to change the analytic mindset of HR for good? I deal with this question for years. I’m a People Analytics consultant and mentor. I help HR teams to leverage people’s data and HR technology to drive insights that contribute to business success. A nice side effect of my activity as an advisor is making HR professionals heroes in their organizations. I’m an applied researcher for more than two decades now – a multidisciplinary professional with a background in Economics, Business Strategy, Psychology, Statistics, Programming, and more. Connecting all dots into a diverse role is not only a millennials theme. It is the reason I started my own business many years ago.

Connecting the dots

 

Here’s a fun fact about me: I’m a photographer artist. I’m also an eternal student, a curious character who learns about ideas and human experiences, and an autodidact in wide-ranging fields of interest – Positive psychology is one example. A few years ago, I realized that principles of Positive Psychology, which I learned from books and lectures, are nicely reflected in my personal experiences as a photographer artist. I started to document those reflections, and soon enough, I introduced to the world a new therapeutic photography method, that was proved to be effective to my students and audience. I called it Focus on Happiness.

If there a single sentence that sums up my entire therapeutic photography method, this would be it: “The view is an interaction of ability and opportunity”. Every picture or frame of our lives is a combination of the things we can do and the circumstances that enable us to do so. As simple as that. This insight is most relevant for me today, as I mentor HR managers on their data-driven journey. The impact of HR professionals in their organization is a combination of what they can do with data, and the business needs, i.e., the circumstances in which they express this ability. Today I’ll share the three key practices (and a bonus one too) that enable such a combination, between ability and opportunity. If HR professionals follow them, their success in impacting the business by People Analytics is guaranteed.

Computers are useless

 

Why not start with the bonus, for a change? The first quote I added to my diverse inspiration list has been attributed to Pablo Picasso, the most vital artist of the 20^th century: “Computers Are Useless. They Can Only Give You Answers”. Obviously, Picasso had no clue about People Analytics, but his idea is applicable to all of us in this domain. There is no point in running the most sophisticated analytics or building a shiny dashboard, without the attempt to answer a business question. Start your analytical journey with a business question that involves actionable insights. Picasso was right! Computers can only give us answers. We are the ones who must come up with the right business questions in the first place. Only then, we can proceed with the data, our people data.

Experiment with data – our own data

 

In my recent article, People Analytics – Build the Value Chain, I mentioned that there are plenty of online courses for People Analytics. Some are pretty good; others are nothing but excellent because they enable students to be exposed to the invaluable experience of experts, respected colleagues in this field. However, all online courses lack the opportunity to exercise actual business questions of your company and real people data from your own HR-tech solutions. This can be done only in Intra-organizational training and mentoring. Such training enables up-skilling HR to be more data-driven, and moreover, it may also be the actual foundation of People Analytics projects.

So, whatever you do to educate yourselves, make sure that your learning opportunities include experiments with your own data. Master business questions in your organization and your own data, so you’ll be able to build your company HR data strategy in the near future – move from business question to actionable insights by owning your data sources, storages, analytics and visualized outputs.

Hack #1 – when you afraid to fail

 

I was recently a panelist in HackingHR Tel Aviv. For me, the most exciting moment in the event was when half of the audience raised hands after I asked, “Who works today or is going to start working soon in People Analytics?” I knew most of those faces in the audience, and I realize my contribution to establishing this profession in my country. But it doesn’t mean I didn’t fail. And personally, I know a lot about the fear of failure.

When you start your journey to data-driven HR, be prepared to fail. However, if you create psychological safety in your learning environment, you won’t be afraid to start again. Your failure will only mean that you are not there, yet, but you are getting there. Take Adam Grant’s advice – always question your default solutions and try other options. Or, in the word of a mentee testimonial, in a case study of people Analytics is SMBs – “We could afford to experiment with data, and making mistakes, knowing that we had the support of a professional framework… In our mentoring sessions, but also between sessions, each of us could comfortably ask any question, raise ideas, and make a mistake. Thanks to the openness that was created within the team, everybody felt that we were able to cope with the challenge.”

Hack #2 – when change is difficult

 

Change is inevitable, and that is also true in the HR domain. But the experience of leading a change is hard. Why? Scientific evidence connect the challenge of change to the way the human brain is wired and explains why most change initiatives fail. As I previously mentioned, “A core driver of the brain function is maintaining safety and stability. Therefore, even a beneficial change can be perceived as a threat. When you lead a change in your organization, you directly conflict with your brains’ core needs.”

To overcome this barrier, and help against the reflexive resistance, you need to create new rituals within learning sessions, that would generate a sense of security. While mentoring HR teams, I discovered that rituals are effective: “When meeting agenda and pace of learning are predictable, and when new social norms such as asking questions and thinking out loud are created, people practice openness and curiosity. Familiarity with the setting gives them a sense of certainty and stability.”

 

Build the Value Chain

 

I followed all these key practices – Practice your own data, psychological safety, and rituals – As I built my training program for data-driven HR, which I offer now to organizations worldwide. I help HR professionals to build the People Analytics value chain through sixteen lessons and four milestones. Each HR team can create, with my guidance, its unique rituals. The team members learn by using their own data to solve their business questions, in an experimental environment, where mistakes and failure are welcome as an opportunity to learn. I’m very excited to mold my experience, both my failure and successful case studies, into a structured course that suits each organization, no matter how large or small.

 

 

Data Makes you fly

 

When I started this blog, I chose one of my crane’s photographs for the main page slider. As I previously wrote, cranes are a great metaphor – always on a worldwide journey, with their large flocks, dynamic roles, and inter-dependencies. They are just like us, people in organizations, who are on their journey to data-driven HR. When I wrote on that slider that “data makes you fly”, I couldn’t imagine that in three years I would be recognized as one of the global influencers in the HR-Tech industry, and have such a fascinating career opportunity. In my mind, I only had my career path up to that point. But I also thought about HR leaders who embrace analytics and become heroes in their organizations.

I hope that the HR journey in the data world will last, as the cranes’ endless journey. However, we face such dramatic change now, that may turn everything to other directions. The demand for new skills in the HR role, i.e., the Procurement and Ethics of HR-Tech breathe down our neck. HR people can’t procrastinate their own change. They must up-skill and be more data-driven. I call you to join this journey today.

Featured in the book

"This book is not a typical textbook about People Analytics practices. It offers readers an opportunity to learn and change while enjoying themselves, taking time to contemplate, absorb ideas, and, hopefully, overcome barriers."

"You will find in this book sixteen lessons, organized in four milestones that, from my experience, build the People Analytics value chain."

Littal Shemer Haim

Author

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The post Changing the Analytic Mindset of HR for Good appeared first on Littal Shemer Haim.