When Numbers Trump Common Sense

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Data [noun]: things known or assumed as facts, making the basis of reasoning or calculation — Google

There is a widely accepted saying in the field of medicine — ‘You treat the patient, not the laboratory results’. This maxim is a way of saying that a clinician’s treatment of a patient should not be based solely on the results of a laboratory test. Rather the clinician should juxtapose the test results with the current clinical condition of the patient to arrive at a right diagnosis and treatment.

This advice is valid for two reasons: first, the patient’s condition might have changed in the time it took for the results to be ready, and second, there could have been a mistake in the results, which could have life-threatening consequences for the patient. Interestingly, the same advice finds an apt application in many corporate organizations.

With the rise of both big and small data, and the trend towards digitization of data collection process, many organizations in Nigeria, are beginning to rely on figures to evaluate employee performance. This is welcome news in the world of Human Resources and Talent Management as data provides an unbiased means of accurately assessing performance. But is this really the case?

While data eliminates the element of bias in Human Resources management, it also ignores the relevance of context in assessing performance — and context carries a lot of weight. Consider a scenario where two employees are assigned similar targets for the month. One of them works in a particularly difficult terrain while the other one has it relatively easy. At the end of the month, one has met the target while the other barely makes it above the 50% pass mark. Looking at the results alone, it is easy to say that the employee with a 100% strike rate has done a better job than the one with a 50% pass. That is until you begin to look at context.

Without context, it is difficult to accurately interpret the data that is generated. And without accurate interpretation, data is meaningless.

When it comes to employee management, managers need to realize that it goes beyond just staring at numbers and KPIs to actually understanding the drivers behind the numbers. Simply basing decisions on numbers alone is a lazy approach that is bound to see a misappropriation in employee rewards.What’s more, once employees figure out how the data they supply is impacting them, the chances that start feeding in false, self-glorifying figures increases, which defeats the major purpose of data collection — making accurate decisions.

It’s high time managers realized that data is just data and nothing more. The real value comes from correctly interpreting the data to yield valuable insights. Outside of this, the organization is as good as one without data.

The End..