Sponsored by SAP.
In this episode of #WorkTrends we explore how people analytics is transforming the world of HR and talent management. From turning workforce data into strategic insights to leveraging AI agents for smarter decisions, we’ll unpack how leaders can use analytics to boost engagement, retention and performance.
Join us to explore how this new generation of people-focused intelligence is reshaping the future of work.
Soren serves as the Senior Director of Product Management for People Intelligence at SAP SuccessFactors. He has product responsibility for strategic workforce planning, operational headcount planning, dashboards, embedded analytics. I don’t know what you’re thinking out there in the audience, but that’s a lot as it is. Wow. His specialties include product strategy, building new innovative products, and growing business startups.
Mick is Global VP GTM for SAP SuccessFactors. He is responsible for go-to-market messaging, commercialization strategy, internal sales training, prospect and customer engagement, partner management, and guess what, there’s more, product thought leadership.
Management Challenges
What talent management challenges today are most in need of getting better data and insights? [To Mick]
So I think capability is probably one of the biggest areas of need for better data. Second is capacity, employees’ capacity to fulfill the work that they’re engaged in, whether that’s due to mental health and stress and burnout or responsibilities at home with childcare or elder care as well. So better understanding not only are employees able to work, but do they have the capacity to do so. And then probably the third big theme is this idea of fairness. And we’ll touch upon this a little bit later, but younger employees expect organizations to be good corporate citizens and be transparent and fair in their work processes. And I think it’s an area that’s really untouched by data.
Complex Problem Solving
So would you do us a favor, Soren, and break it down? What are the complex problems you’re solving?
I think AI is incredibly exciting for everyone and particularly for analytics. If you think about analytics just a couple of years ago, any insight you needed, you had to run a report, find a dashboard where that insight was surfaced, and you had to kind of decipher a chart and figure out if there even was a problem to be solved. So that is now kind of a thing of the past. With AI, we can do so many things and it’s incredible. Just think about democratizing analytics, the easy access. You can just ask a question and get an answer rather than having to know which dashboard to navigate to to find a particular metric. Second of all, of course, now you get the insight, you actually understand what the chart is showing. Well, AI can help you generate a narrative to explain to you what you are even looking at.
And that’s just the kind of tip of the iceberg.
Using People Data
Mick, this one’s for you. Leaders today must be able to be more savvy with how to gather and utilize people data, using it to spot trends, to boost engagement, fingers crossed, and improve retention. Can you share a few examples of how you’re seeing that play out?
I think we’re in a cycle now where HR is being much more proactive about engaging leaders and helping them understand what the right questions might be to ask. I think for many leaders, they come through a masters of business administration program that probably touches on HR topics for all of about five minutes across the course of two years. So we have to be more proactive about what are the right questions to be asking based on often our leaders’ limited experience with HR data beyond some of the examples you mentioned a moment ago. I mean retention, turnover, two of the biggest topics. But leaders who are more informed now are not just saying what is my turnover rate or my retention rate, for example, but what does it mean for critical parts of the business? How do I take that and apply it to operational capacity? Or how do I apply that to workforce planning and thinking about the future kind of workforce?
For More Information People Analytics
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