We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.
The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ...
Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.
Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.
Other cookies are those that are being identified and have not been classified into any category as yet.
Organisations often struggle with unreliable people data, impacting their ability to make informed decisions. This article highlights the importance of high-quality people data, offering strategies to improve data accuracy and effectiveness. Leveraging tools like OrgMaps and ensuring consistent data input can enhance strategic workforce planning, productivity, and organisation design.
Reading time: 5 minutes
As an organisation design consultancy, we work with people data a lot. It’s an important element of organisation design work. The better you understand the make-up of your organisation today, the more informed decisions you can make for your organisation in the future. Crucially, we believe that people data should not be seen as something that is used solely within HR, but as business data that can be leveraged throughout organisations to make strategic decisions.
Despite this, we see people data of all shapes and sizes and there is one continuous theme – that it is often unreliable and not suitable to make decisions with.
“Only a third of HR professionals believe their organisation effectively uses people data to make evidence-based strategic decisions”
In this article, we will outline the importance of good quality people data, tips for improving data quality, and highlight some of the decisions that can be made with good people data.
First, there are the basics. “How many people are in my team?”, “where are my people based?”, “how much does my team cost?”. These questions sound like they should be easy to answer, yet as organisations have become more fluid, spread across different offices and countries, this data has become more unreliable.
The standard insights that any organisation should get from their people data include:
These are the core building blocks that build a picture of your organisation. Although these may seem like insights any organisation should have, it’s not always the case, often due to poor data input or disparate systems.
Having good quality people data unlocks the potential to make more data-driven decisions across your business, not just within HR. When used right, people data should be leveraged in organisations across a number of use-cases:
Comparing spans of control with other performance indicators, such as employee productivity and satisfaction, can highlight areas of inefficiency. For instance, if high spans of control correlate with lower employee productivity, it may indicate employees aren’t getting the support they need to be most productive. Additionally, identifying inefficient reporting structures, such as instances of 1-to-1 reporting, can uncover quick wins to optimise organisation design or reduce cost.
Often, organisations have an expensive HR system, so they believe this should equate to good people data. Unfortunately, more often than not, this isn’t the case. We see companies not getting the most out of their systems, as their problem lies in the data input.
We have some recommendations to improve the quality of your people data: