Using data to spur organizational change

Human capital data should be used to create organizational change, but that can only happen if business managers are engaged by the information collected, according to an official with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

Keith Krut, NGA’s director of human capital strategy and strategic workforce planning, outlined how members of his team achieve effective discussions about human capital data with federal managers May 17 at the International Association for Human Resources Information Management Conference and Technology Expo.

Krut said the biggest take-away point from his agency’s experience is that self discovery is greater than imposed discovery. He explained that when people believe that something is their idea or that they came up with a solution, they are more likely to do something about it or even remember it.

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“The analysis we provide is only part of the picture – managers will always know more about their business than we do,” Krut said.

With that idea in mind, he identified the following factors to foster a dialogue between those working in HR and managers:

• Join survey data with workforce data. Mining joined datasets will help you find the variables that matter most.
• Visualize intuitively. Help  others in your organization visualize human capital data by automating its display through charts and/or graphs.
• Facilitate data disclosures through graphics and involve others in your organization in coming up with these graphics during workshops. Also, practice scorecard reporting to ensure change is actually taking place in your organization.
• Import best practices. Find best practices hiding in your data that managers can deliver quickly.

Krut said that a mix of workforce analytics skills at an agency or organization is the “key to success” and added that many of the tools needed to deliver this data-driven strategy can be found in the Microsoft Office Suite.