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(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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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”.

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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!

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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.

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Imagine the highest degree for sophisticated data usage. If there was such a degree, which organizations would be nominated to hold it? Undoubtedly, the Israeli intelligence corps would be at the top of the list. Could you imagine People Analytics practices in such an organization? Personally, I would love to have a sneak peek into the People Analytics function of this organization. Wouldn’t you?

I was excited to talk with Limor Pinto, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Israeli Military intelligence, who will retire in a few weeks. In her last role, she served as a Head of the Behavioral Sciences Branch in the Intelligence Corps Headquarters. I met her for the first time four years ago, when I talked to the IDF Behavioral Sciences department about People Analytics, and later again in another learning opportunity of the Intelligence Corps. Fast forwarding the years, Limor was generously shared with me some of her experiences. Here’s a rare chance to explore the most secure organization in our country and probably the entire world. How do People Analytics practices look from an insider perspective? It’s a lucky day! Let’s find out.

Untypical career steps

LSH: You are an expert in Organizational Behavior Studies, but you ended up as a Workforce AI Leader. It is not a typical career leap forward. How did your service enable it?

LP: One of the critical challenges that the Israeli intelligence corps face is identifying patterns in individuals’ behaviors and predicting their intentions. We must excel in doing so, in preventing events such as terrorist attacks. We leverage AI to predict enemy plans. However, we have similar predictive needs when we handle our workforce. Just as we can spot on a suicide bomber using AI, we can alert out talent intentions to carry a particular behavior, e.g., leave the organization. As a strategic advisor to the high command, I have recommended leveraging our intelligence experience in workforce challenges and adopting AI to predict workforce behaviors. 

LSH: Experts in Behavioral Science can impact organizations in many ways. Why did you decide to focus on People Analytics?

LP: Indeed, behavioral scientists are engaged in research methodologies, like surveys and focus groups, to understand groups and individuals in organizations. However, such methods lack the predictive ability, namely, to associate attitudes and motives to actual behaviors. We tend to interpret research findings based on our experience, but we may be wrong in our judgments and professional gut feelings. People Analytics, and particularly predictive analytics, can cover us. 

Innovation in HR

LSH: Can you give an example of a wrong judgment that the predictive analytics project contradicted? 

LP: Consider, for example, a typical attitude of commanders towards young women officers. They interpreted attrition related to these women’s work-life balance challenges, who handle both career and young families. However, women who did not participate in career succession interviews at the right time, were entirely practical in managing their careers and initiating their next step elsewhere since no one in the army discussed it. Their commanders referred it to these women challenges to cope with the intense routines of Intelligence units. Interestingly, such a pattern was not characterizing male officers.  

LSH: The Intelligence units’ reputation in technology and analytics is well known. But what is it like to lead innovation in Human Resources, which may be considered less glamorous?

LP: My team partnered with tech units and experts. However, innovative leadership was owned by our behavioral sciences practitioners. Some tech experts thought they should own the project and challenged our leadership. But eventually, we established an advisory board that represented all parties, and we were extremely sensitive, so we managed to make everybody feel that they are the owners. This board had an essential part in funding the project. We also had an additional committee of users, comprised of volunteers who contributed to data munging, hackathons, implementation, and even ethics discussions. 

Challenges and wins

LSH: We’ll certainly get back to ethics later, but first, let’s discuss other challenges. It sounds like a part of your challenge in leading workforce AI wasn’t technical, but rather political. 

LP: It was complicated. It’s not easy to do the fundraising internally, but when you succeed in that, the expectations for quick wins are high, while the implementation takes like forever. We experienced the tension between the tech experts and HR practitioners, who were actually on their reskilling journey. The AI experts considered the joint venture as their own and insisted on managing the conversation with programmers and data scientists. The HR practitioners thought it’s an organizational project or intervention to help individuals and commanders. We end-up in assigning a senior officer who basically handled the conflicts daily and prevented the parties from political dead-ends.

LSH: Tell me more about your approach to finding and prioritizing business questions.

LP: Priorities were determined in command discussions, after extracting business questions from a comprehensive organizational diagnosis. We focused on questions related to talent retention, high command promotion, and workforce reaction to upcoming changes in geographic locations of units and compensation.

Actionable workforce insights

LSH: What data sources you had and how did you leverage the integration of data from different sources?

LP: We retrieved structured data about people’s backgrounds and activities from their long journey in the military serves, e.g., psychometrics, demographics, sociometric, and unstructured data from evaluation processes and interviews. We also purchased relevant data about the Israeli labor market and received data from other Israeli army units, concerning commute times, attitudes among tech talents, and more. When we integrated the data from those different sources, we succeeded in offering insights, and particularly, alternative explanations. 

LSH: How did you transform your findings into actionable insights?

LP: We gained a new understanding of daily phenomena and realized that some of our former responses were completely irrelevant. For instance, in the case study of women officer attrition that I mentioned earlier, commanders were required to discuss career paths with their officers right after signing their first contract with the army. We also re-generated academic programs and compensation plans modularly to offer more tailor-made career solutions. Our impact was significant, and eventually, we won the Commander-in-Chief Award for creative thinking. 

Ethics questions

LSH: Let’s go back to the Ethics questions. What kinds of issues were raised, and how did you handle them?

LP: Yes, we had plenty of ethical issues, e.g., notifying individuals about using their data, limiting our sources of data in the appropriate way for the workforce, as opposed to the enemy, limiting permissions to access the data, and more. The senior board handled most of the discussions and decisions. However, we consulted layers, content specialists in the Intelligence Community, and academic researchers in AI ethics.

LSH: In a glance into the future, how this project will mark your career path?

LP: undoubtedly, this project was essentially a start-up within an organization, or should I say, the most institutionalized organization in the State of Israel. It was an opportunity to explore and express myself as an entrepreneur and innovation leader. But most of all, we managed to solve complex problems in the intelligence corps, which we tried to solve for years by our HR strategy. The breakthrough emerged when we transformed HR strategy into an HR data strategy. Predicting workforce behaviors become even more crucial nowadays in Covid19 times. I’m confident that this career-shaping experience will provide value to civil organizations in the public and private sectors in my next career journey as a citizen. 

LSH: Thank you, Limor, for sharing your fascinating experience.

I look forward to following your journey as a citizen expert in People Analytics, and to continue collaborating in educating the next generation of People Analytics leaders in Israel and globally!

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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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So how do you enter a People Analytics Leader role, when you are the one who establishes it? Let’s put our datasets aside for a moment, and discuss the thoughts, plans, experiences, and hopes, at this crucial phase of the role. 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. I had the pleasure to interview Gal lately on stage, on one event of “Amdocs Career Week”.

During “Amdocs Career Week” both employees and managers in Amdocs were invited to participate in activities, such as lectures from keynote speakers, workshops, Hackathon, and panels with leaders, with the main objective of promoting the dialogue around their development and future career path at Amdocs. This special week was a great opportunity to take the first formal step on the journey to data-driven HR within the entire Amdocs HR community, which encompass a few hundreds of HR professionals. In my session with this audience, I offered an introduction to People Analytics. But my introduction could not be completed without Gal’s interview, which shed light on her onboarding. I’m happy to share this interview with our community, and I’m sure it will inspire other People Analytics Leaders who take their first steps and establish the role in their organizations.

Background

LSH: Tell us about yourself, Gal, and why did you choose to move to the field of people analytics?

GM: I’m an organizational psychologist, and until a few months ago, I was working as an organizational development consultant for the past 8 years. I was leading the sensing domain meaning I was responsible for the annual engagement survey and pulse surveys, so you can already see I had a flavor for the mix of numbers and people. Also, I have a Ph.D. in social-organizational psychology that included creating a questionnaire about behaviors and a lab simulation, so I also have a soft spot for psychological research, and I’m no stranger to social science statistics. And last but not least, I love to uncover insights and help others do the same, so when I started hearing about this new domain called People Analytics, I was quite intrigued. Locating myself in the intersection between organizational psychology and data was the next obvious move, and luck was on my side at me when a new people analytics role was created in my company, and my passion for the area was a well-known fact. A real match made in (workplace) heaven and so I found myself moving to this role.

Challenges

LSH: How would you describe the challenges that your company faces these days in regards to data strategy?

GM: I think that in the past 2 years, we took very important steps to promote ourselves when it comes to descriptive data. We worked hard to create a ‘one-stop-shop’ dashboard for leaders and HRs so that they will have a place to see key measurement in the different people related areas such as recruitment, performance management, talent mobility, burn out and more. I think we still have a way to go when it comes to turning it into a decision-supporting tool and showing the value it brings. But descriptive data is just the first step of the journey when becoming data-driven. However, it’s not people analytics just yet, for which the diagnostic part is the holy grail. When we learn to identify key business challenges and then use clever tools and approaches, such as predictive analytics, ML, planned experiments, etc. to tackle them, then we will be where we strive to be at, which is data-savvy.

LSH: Your HR partners, where are they in the journey of becoming data-driven?

GM: I keep reading articles about how HR is not data-oriented, and the worst thing is they say it about themselves! I believe that where there’s a will, there’s a way and I’m happy to say that I’ve seen a great deal of willingness to go on that journey. People understand that this is a key future capability in HR, and they are willing to step out of their comfort zone and acquire these skills. Yes, I know some might lack the tools and the experience, but this should not hold them back. I’m here to support them, and part of my job would be to provide the tools, training, and consultation that would help them during the journey. I hope this can be a first step in creating their confidence in this data-driven approach, knowing that they’re not alone.

Development in HR

LSH: Why do you think it’s crucial these days for an HR leader to base their discussions on data?

GM: In order to make an impact on the business, you need to talk “the language of the business”, which is numbers, money, analytics, and data related insight. So if an HR leader wants to be a key partner, speaking in the same language and terms is a must. Also, I think that using a combination of their experience and intuition together with the data and analytics would be so powerful that they would be practically invincible. But seriously though, I don’t think data solves everything, but it’s much harder to argue with, and it’s a strong tool to make a point and initiate a change.

LSH: What do you expect from HR leaders as your partners?

GM: It’s easy; I want them to be my partners in crime and go on this journey together. We work in a large organization of 25K employees in more than 50 countries and diverse business units and roles. So the challenges are plenty and quite diverse, it’s never boring, but it’s also a lot. My HR partners are required to be able to raise the business questions in relation to people’s data, as they are there in the field and they know the needs and challenges in a way I could never know. So my request to them is data-minded so we can work together to identify the opportunities to utilize data and uncover the insights that can bring value to the business and the employees. This means the HR leaders should be able to review data, hold a conversation around data points and analytics, and most importantly, find the relevant business questions.

Success

LSH: What would you define as a successful first year in the role?

GM: That’s a tough one, much easier to say what others should do! Honestly, I understand It’s a huge mission, and so much more than being “analytic” and knowing how to work with data. That’s why I would define success in the first year relating to two main stakeholders: First, let’s start with my partners in HR. I would love to see a change in HRs mindset so that they would feel comfortable with data. Again, I see the approach towards HR in relation to data, and I truly don’t think it’s justified. If we will move out of our own way and desert this perception, then I think this can become one more valuable tool in their already impressive toolbox. Also, based on the wise words of people analytics leaders the duty of the people analytics function is to make the HR more data-driven, and I’m not going to argue with the experts but rather take this advice and learn from their experience. Second, If I want to earn my keeping, then there has to be a contribution to business success. And while knowing this is a key element of this role’s essence, I also know it’s very ambitious. So while I already started looking into a few interesting leads, I am aiming to find a quick win people analytics project. This means easy to access and use data in an area it would be possible to do a real change that is valuable to the business. And for that, I need to know that I’m not alone and have my trusted HR partners so that together we will find the right opportunities to make an impact.

LSH: Thank you, Gal!

I look forward to seeing you spreading your net in Amdocs’ huge HR group, and lead it to first successful case studies in the coming year. I’m honored and fortunate to be partnering with you in educating HR professionals to be more data-driven!

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