People Analytics in the Age of Performative HR
Do you remember when the last time was that you looked at an HR process and asked why? Do you remember when the last time was that the answer to your question was not something like “That’s just how we do it, and it’s how everybody does it”?
While my instinctive reaction has always been: just because that’s how everyone does it, why does that mean we have to do this activity the same way? Most of the time, for the sake of keeping peace in the room, I stay quiet. Because—let’s be honest—we have all had moments where we know our comments will not sway the room's opinion.
Most of the time, people are creatures of habit. With HR being a creature of habit, we often do things just because we feel like we must and because everyone else around us is doing it. It’s like putting on a performance and acting in the HR Theatre; we don’t quite know what our actions mean, but we are working from the script that’s been handed to us, and we are making our organizations go through the dance with us. For example:
Performance Management: Why do we make our workforce fill out self-reviews and awkwardly boast about their accomplishments for the year; then our managers fill in way too much paperwork in the name of assessment and documentation and then make everyone have possibly one of the most awkward conversations they would have had all year? We know the once-a-year performance review doesn’t do much for the workforce nowadays, and yet, as HR, we still dutifully crank out the year-end performance review reminders to our organizations.
Recruiting: Why do we make our candidates answer application questions that should be essay prompts and never have the answers circulate anywhere beyond the recruiter; then spend 50+ emails coordinating interview times with way too many managerial-level resources; then script the questions interviewers are allowed to ask during the conversation; and all of that to have an email chain circulated with three questions for the interviewers to answer and arrive at a yes/no decision? The rigidity of an interview process doesn’t guarantee top performers or an absolute culture fit, yet HR still puts everyone through this in the name of fairness and standardization.
DEI: While I firmly believe in DEI and its ability to drive a business forward, I am not a fan of how I have seen DEI done in HR Theatre. In organizations where the HR Theatre is alive and well, what DEI ends up looking like is the creation of Employee Resource Groups (often volunteer-led, so someone in your workforce is doing additional free work to make a difference in the workplace at HR’s request) and then spending a few thousand dollars per ERG annually for events and activities. Limited success metrics, limited vision of what success looks like, and a lot of hoping and wishing that this will make all workplace inequities disappear.
The list goes on, and I can probably start a series on the horrors of performative HR alone.
Here is where I have a bone to pick with performative HR—and, in hindsight, what drove me to write the last piece on People Analytics and the org chart. Sometime in the last few years, without any of us noticing it directly, the HR Theatre has introduced a new act called People Analytics. This is where we hire People Analytics resources to have them on the org chart, where we ask those resources to build glorified reports and dashboards and force them to call it “Analytics,” and where we shelve the outputs from People Analytics somewhere on a shared drive and never look at it again until the business leaders ask us to “be more data and insights oriented” whenever they can think of it.
I know this sounds incredibly bleak, and I also know from the tales told to me that this is the synopsis of many People Analytics professionals—especially aspiring ones—today.
If I could, this is what I want to stand on a soapbox and shout to the HR world:
People Analytics isn’t a collectible item to have in your organization.
People Analytics isn’t something you can check the box on; it takes time and investment.
People Analytics resources, like everyone else who gets into HR, are passionate about using their work to make a difference in the workforce. In this case, the worst thing you can do is say ‘thank you’ and shelve their work because you don’t quite know what to do with it.
People Analytics isn’t a mature HR function with well-established playbooks to follow, so the typical “just come in and operate business as usual” doesn’t work if you don’t have a clear purpose in creating the function/role.
Most importantly (and because I love a good analogy), People Analytics isn’t the season’s latest must-have tote bag you can acquire, push to the back of your closet, and feel good about having. It’s more like the pair of hiking boots that take time and effort to break in before they are comfortable and start working for you. Before you buy the shoes and start the painstaking process of breaking them in, you usually have a trip or trail in mind for them. So, please do the same for the People Analytics function on your team and the resources you hire.