How to map business value with human capital?
During a 1&1 meeting, a product designer brought up a challenging topic.
“Hey, I have a question for you- do you mind if I am speaking with you about this right now? “
“Sure thing, what can I do for you?”
“I have learned that the company is looking for a new front-end developer. Look, I learned so much about the different front-end frameworks, and writing code in Javascript, it is a big part of my work to guide engineers and know limitations. It became my passion to write code and fix problems on the technical level. I also write code to prepare working prototypes. The combination of my product design experience with my coding passion makes me believe that I could bring even greater value to the company if I work as an engineer.”
“Hmm I see, to be fair, this project requires someone with multiple years of experience as the deadlines are quite tight. There is not much time for conceptual errors and a long learning curve. At the same time, this means, we would need somebody who can replace you and also to guide you on your new journey. I am not 100% if we can pull this off right away, but let me think about what options we have.”
“Thanks, this is something I want to do for my next career step, I want to become a front-end developer.”
Even though I had a good feeling about what will be the main issues, it is quite unfair with someone to reason only on gut feelings and what might be the future needs of the organization. Additionally, the conversation left me full of questions, not knowing yet, how to resolve this issue. I was facing potentially losing one of the best product designers in the team, leading to filling two positions instead of one and at the same time, the team chemistry would suffer for the upcoming months. If however, I support the transition right away, the employee would get a tremendous pressure of delivering fast and write good quality code, she was definitely not ready yet.
Mitigating risks
Such a disconnection between the key position and the talent is quite risky as it could drive a snowball effect on the company derailing or even prohibiting the team to be capable of reaching business objectives. The true understanding of talent needs and the requirements of a critical role is a challenging task for any business leader. Using people analytics, helps business leaders to identify, evaluate, and drive strategies about mapping the right talent with the right position. Not only that, but it also enables leaders to monitor the skill gaps between the required skills for a role and the current level of an employee. Connecting top performers with the appropriate skills to the key role is not a one time exercise. It is a high priority and continuous discipline that requires permanent monitoring.
Evaluating and exploring values
The initial step in the process is to look outside of the box, by understanding what are the customer needs and what are the company targets. Instead of just focusing on the role itself and the required core skills, people analytics is focusing on auditing the human capital needs for the whole digital product or operation unit. Finding touchpoints where employees are interacting with technology can be easily discovered by using the customer journey and system interaction maps. After the initial phase, business leaders have a much better understanding of where human capital interactions with the system are required and what value the key position has.
This second step of identifying and quantifying values becoming the center of driving data-driven human capital management. Critical roles usually fall into two categories. The first category is the “producers”, they are the ones constantly generating income, save costs, or boosts performance. The second category is the “facilitator” where human capital is paving the road ahead of “producers”. Setting up a skillset matrix for each key role reveals the specific needs of the organization. Having a clear vision of the required talent provides great insights for organizations to start making better decisions on hiring, training, coaching, relocating, or transitioning human capital to have the maximum impact on performance and team health.
The last phase of value evaluation is to be very specific on:
- How does an ideal candidate skillset-matrix look like?
- What is the business unit´s mission, how it is aligned with the company mission and individual interest?
- Which activities need to be done?
- Which values the key role will provide inside and outside of the organization?
- How to evaluate the performance of the position?
Without a clear definition and expected impact on values, the organization and its leadership will remain opinion driven also keeping the front line workforce unaware of skill or seniority gaps. In a data-driven culture, human capital requires clear guidance based on facts and leadership support to grow and excel in their work.
When working with people, not being specific and clearly show why a transition would be or would not be possible at that time, in the short term will lead to discouragement, in the long term it can lead to a situation that a key employee is rather leaving the company to fulfill his interest.
Connecting human capital with business values
Having a clear view of the impact and business values enables business leaders to search and map the right talent with the critical role. It also helps to articulate the needs internally and externally. Using a data-driven approach with the help of people analytics has four major outcomes.
First, the process of mapping talent with business value becomes specific and evidence-based.
Second, it also encourages leaders to focus on closing the gaps in the skillsets each team member has, to provide the right coaching and training for the existing workforce, or provide a cristal clear sourcing requirements outside of the organization.
Third, the data-driven process reduces risks and keeps business leaders aligning strategies to identify and support future demands of the position, and at the same time, it reduces the risk both for the facilitators and producers.
Fourth, the process helps business leaders to learn deeply about their business and adjust strategies on innovation and business growth.
Having a 360 view
Leaders using people analytics will be able to see both sides of the equation. On one side, the key values and requirements for human capital, and on the other side seeing the existing team and individual skills and capabilities. Using people analytics and evaluating individuals are aimed to guide both leadership teams and front line workforce to find the opportunities to link the right talent with the critical position. During the continuous individual and team assessment, leaders will understand how value is created and what impact it has on the organization. Having real-time data about human capital significantly lowers the risk to have a great talent in the wrong position.
Lowering risks on decision making
In this particular case about the employee request, it is hard to make the right decision, however, supporting any of the opportunities will have significant consequences. Taking risks is unavoidable, however coming to the right conclusion with the use of people analytics helps leaders to calculate risks, and make better decisions when it comes to mapping talent with business value. The true transformation to be data-driven requires the change of a mindset for both leaders and first-line workforce. Identifying early missing skills or misalignment on the interest will prevent frustration and employee turnaround and at the same time, it creates an environment where everyone feels secure to make decisions. Knowing the expected skills for the role and the current skills of an employee will enable leaders to create transparent learning and transition plans or build a solid talent pipeline.
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Read -> How People Analytics helps to empower and manage tech teams?
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