Better People Analytics - Harvard Business Review

'Better People Analytics'

In the Harvard Business Review article, Paul Leonardi and Noshir Contractor detail the importance of measuring  not just who people are, but also who they know. Leonardi and Contractor put forward the importance of Relational Analytics - that is, how people connect. In essence, when we say relational analytics, or even organisational network analysis, what we are referring to is Social Network Analysis (SNA).

Leonardi and Contractor propose ‘The six signatures of relational analysis’. Of course, there are many more than just six ‘structural signatures’, but the general point is that the structures of relationaships in an organisation can give us answer to important questions such as:

• Which employees will come up with good ideas?
• Which employees will change others’ behavior?
• Which teams will complete projects on time?
• Which teams will innovate effectively?
• Whether an organization is siloed?
• Which employees the organization can’t afford to lose?

As Leonardi and Contractor conclude:

“People analytics is a new way to make evidence-based decisions that improve organizations. But in these early days, most companies have been focused on the attributes of individuals, rather than on their relationships with other employees. Looking at attributes will take firms only so far. If they harness relational analytics, however, they can estimate the likelihood that an employee, a team, or an entire organization will achieve a performance goal. They can also use algorithms to tailor staff assignments to changes in employee networks or to a particular managerial need. The best firms, of course, will use relational analytics to augment their own decision criteria and build healthier, happier, and more-productive organizations.”

https://hbr.org/2018/11/better-people-analytics