Have you ever watched a duck swim? It may look calm and effortless above the water, but below the surface, it’s paddling like mad to keep going. Remind you of anything?
Many workforce analytics programs are like “duck works.” They may look calm but behind the scenes, they’re going crazy trying to keep afloat. Duck works happen because programs are reactive as opposed to proactive. Thankfully, there are ways that you can make your analytics program proactive and go from duck works to smooth sailing.
Be patient
To smooth out the functioning of your workforce analytics program, embrace patience and resist urgency. You don’t necessarily want to get to the wrong place in a hurry.
Focus your efforts
When your program focus is too broad, you end up scrambling, a classic duck works action. Make sure that you get the biggest impact for your work by understanding the RO for every analytic effort through the decisions that can be made. Triage those with the biggest paybacks, and you’ll know where to focus your program.
Know your decision makers
Decision making is only as good as the data that informs it. Know your decision makers, what they need and what decisions they can make with different or better data.
The most effective workforce analytics programs are methodical and efficiently focus their efforts where they can achieve the biggest impact. To develop this kind of a program, build capacity in your analytics team and use specialized workforce analytic tools to scale. Once you have the team, tools and method in place, you’ll have a smoothly functioning program that gets results. Good luck!
