Many people find data overwhelming. This is completely understandable – data that isn’t organised or sorted may appear chaotic, messy and confusing. For those who aren’t trained to work with data, its analysis becomes something that is put off, or avoided completely. However, by not making use of people analytics, you may be missing out on critical information about your team.
Data can provide valuable insights into the composition of your team. Bringing awareness to this is important in order to leverage strengths that may be hidden, and to identify and address gaps that expose organisations to risk.
Sorting and organising data is one part of the sense-making process, but where data becomes magical is in its ability to tell stories. According to Harvard Business School, the brain has a preference for stories, rather than raw data. Numerous areas of the brain are engaged when listening to a story, including areas that process emotional responses. Storytelling is thus a powerful way to engage an audience and impart information. By engaging business through data driven stories, we are able to share valuable insights about their teams, and the individuals that comprise them.
In a previous post, we discussed how critical it is to know what is changeable and trainable within an individual in order to risk-proof an organisation. Data can help us to measure constructs associated with this, and these metrics can be a powerful addition to your people analytics toolkit. Furthermore, insights from data allow us to form action plans. The outcomes of these action plans can be measured against the initial results and provide evidence of change.
Click here to contact us and explore how our data driven approach can help you to understanding your organisation’s unique needs.