HR Analytics programme (1.5 days), delivered both in an open format for an executive audience and as an in-house version for individual HR Departments. Client/partner not named for confidentiality reasons.
The need
Almost every HR Department today claims to want to “work with data”. In practice, most HR Analytics initiatives fail to generate real value: dashboards that show what has already happened, without ever explaining why it happened or predicting what will happen.
The problem is not the availability of data or tools — Excel, Power BI and HR software are now within reach of every HR Department. The problem is twofold.
First: basic statistical literacy is often lacking when it comes to correctly interpreting an output, and this makes HR professionals dependent on IT or Data Science even to read their own numbers, not only to produce them.
Second, and more insidious: the starting point is almost always the available data rather than the right business question. The result is technically correct dashboards that no one uses to make decisions, because they do not address a real organisational priority.
For HR and L&D, the question becomes: how can an analytical capability be built within the HR Department that does not depend on an external technical expert at every step, and that starts from business priorities rather than from the data already available internally?
How we worked
We designed a 1.5-day HR Analytics programme, delivered both in an open format for an executive audience and as a customised in-house version for individual HR Departments — the same methodological approach, calibrated each time to the client's real data and cases.
- From the question to the model, not the other way around. The programme starts with the “Right Question” method: subgroup work designed to teach participants how to formulate the right question — for the business and for HR — before opening any spreadsheet. This is the prerequisite that turns analytics into a decision-making tool rather than a reporting exercise.
- Defining the value chain as a guide for priorities. Participants apply the model to their own HR processes to identify where analysis genuinely creates value for the business, rather than where data is simply more readily available.
- People Analytics Maturity Model. A Value/Difficulty model helps each Department honestly position itself along the journey from simple “reporting” to true “analytics” — a necessary step to avoid promising the organisation more than its current maturity allows.
- The essential statistical foundations, not a data science course. Statistical indicators, correlation, regression, the difference between supervised and unsupervised learning — the minimum required for an HR Manager to critically evaluate a model without having to delegate it entirely.
- Real hands-on work with Excel and Power BI. Each theoretical module is followed by an exercise in which participants build their own dashboard, starting from a dataset and progressing to a working prototype by the end of the classroom session.
This approach reflects a belief that guides Base 9's work on this topic: HR Analytics is not software to be installed, but a strategic decision about which questions the HR Department wants to be able to answer — the technical component comes afterwards, not before.
The results
- Each edition — open or in-house — leaves participants able to critically interpret HR data using a basic statistical framework and to leave the classroom with a first working dashboard built with their own hands in Excel and Power BI.
- The models applied in the classroom have become prioritisation tools that HR teams continue to use in their daily work to answer strategic questions through data.
- Several processes have been optimised by redefining the data management process and the creation of the related dashboards.