More organisations are implementing artificial intelligence (AI) to better understand data - gathered from various employee life-cycle touchpoints, and improve aspects such as employee experience. To learn more about how AI and advanced analytics are transforming the HR landscape, we spoke with Rohini Singh, the Chief People Officer of Fractal, a leading AI & analytics firm with 3600+ employees worldwide. Edited excerpts:

One area which has seen huge investment from organisations is talent acquisition. Moving forward, how and where will AI add value to talent management in 2022?

There is a range of data that HR team amasses during the course of hiring, promotions, and employee life-cycle patterns. Our best bet is to use AI to better understand this data to enhance aspects such as employee experience and how we view and segment our talent for growth. Another way to leverage this is by capturing future trends around what your people are responding to more as opposed to less and using this to better predict the chances of success of any interventions that are brought in.

Secondly, with traditional structures giving way to more fluid cross-functional teams, we can capitalise on AI through additional means like:

Instant, Continuous and Effective Feedback – Imagine getting instant feedback on every interaction at work. Soliciting instant/continuous feedback is something most organisations have moved to. However, making this feedback impactful would mean being able to derive insights at an individual level which in turn can be linked to development & growth.

Personalised Career Journeys – An ability to create personalized career journeys based on capabilities, potential, and future positions of interest. Providing a guide (what skills to acquire, where to acquire from, connecting employees to mentors or coaches etc.) to grow vertically, horizontally or diagonally within an organisation based on an individual’s career aspiration is the future.

Advanced analytics is transforming the HR landscape with the majority of large organisations having people analytics teams. What’s your advice on how to align people analytics with business, not just HR?

Historically, organisations have based their decision making on their intuition due to messy and unorganised data. We’ve seen isolated metrics failing to add any strategic value to the business. With analytics in the fray now, we’ve come to normalise fact-based decision making.

Any form of people analytics needs to be tied in very closely with overall business objectives and culture across short-term, mid-term and long-term goals, rather than only solving problems that are ‘here and now’. Given its impact in understanding not just how the business performs, but also getting to the root cause of why a business performs the way it does, there’s every incentive for businesses to adopt people analytics.

Anything we do currently in this space today is to enhance business value, people experience and to be able to assess impact.

 An important point to make here is that people analytics should not lose the essence of the “people” behind the data. We are complex beings that operate in social, organisational frameworks and therefore relational analytics becomes very important to identify such people networks as well as the key influencers within these circles.

How do you think organisations will leverage people analytics to combat challenges such as The Great Resignation while elevating employee experience in 2022?

As we analyse the employees’ life cycle, it is important to assess the business impact of the churn. To help improve retention, we typically interrogate the data to identify the triggers that amount to flight risk. While the reasons for turnover may vary, we see the focus on ‘stay’ decisions now shifting toward lived employee experiences that are driven by culture and that ultimately becomes the key differentiator.

When an organisation looks to build a 100-year success story, leveraging analytics to provide clear people insights on why people don’t engage and quit allows us to intervene at areas of impact and shape a culture that enables a ’sticky quotient’ and thereby help manage retention.

How are organisations applying a data-driven approach to measure the effectiveness of their DEI programs?

Organisations have long relied on representation to track and measure progress on diversity. Representation matters as it empowers the traditionally underrepresented groups to have a voice. This range of approaches and diverse perspectives available from backgrounds and experiences of the workforce is an organisation’s competitive advantage in our increasingly global world.

However, diversity without inclusion is not beneficial for a diverse workforce to flourish. Therefore, organisations are now looking beyond representation and key indicators such as retention rate, employee engagement, internal mobility rate, inclusion scores based on diversity perceptions, and equity in pay are captured to gain insights into where inclusion lacks and thrives, as well as the different experiences of inclusion across employee groups.

Measurement of change and effectiveness on DEI programs by applying data allows for focused planning, gaining champions who value the cause, promoting retention, and is the only way to achieve parity in the workplace.

Learn how you can elevate the employee experience with emerging innovative digital solutions at People Matters EX India Conference 2022.