People data is business data, according to reporting from Deloitte. This philosophy has elevated people analytics to an organizational imperative for many companies. One organization that has adopted a tech-driven people analytics approach is Gore Mutual Insurance, an Ontario-based firm with more than 600 employees.
The leadership team invested in a platform offering insights benefiting employees and the overall business strategy. At the same time, the human resources practice was transformed from a traditional department into one with a more cohesive approach to employee experience and engagement, according to the people leader.
Why people analytics?
There were certainly pain points before the change, which originated in 2020. Previously reliant on spreadsheets, Gore Mutual struggled with data consistency. Meanwhile, the organization was in the throes of increasing its workforce and working to stabilize employee retention during the pandemic.
However, as one of Canada’s first property and casualty insurers, Gore Mutual’s agility has always been its superpower, says Sonia Boyle, chief people officer at Gore Mutual. “When we embarked on our most exciting transformation in 2020, to position our company as a ‘purpose-driven, digitally-led national insurer,’ we elevated our traditional human resources team into an inspiring people experience function.”
Gore Mutual’s prioritization of people analytics aligns with that of other leading businesses. According to Harvard Business Review, a majority of large organizations now have people analytics teams, and 70% of company executives consider people analytics a top priority. HR leaders are looking for new ways to harness workforce data to remain competitive, which is why this is an area of focus at this year’s HR Tech Conference.
Data makes the difference
Boyle and her leadership counterparts sought a tech-driven upgrade to the firm’s people analytics process, so Gore Mutual brought on the workforce planning platform Visier. “Before working with Visier, most of our decisions were based on anecdotal evidence and historical trends,” says Boyle. Access to employee data and insights results in more informed decisions, which Boyle says her team can offer to company executives and people managers.
Deloitte’s 2023 High-Impact People Analytics research surveyed over 400 organizations from 18 countries to identify the key elements of effective people analytics. When asked how they prioritize their people analytics work, 60% of respondents pointed to data availability as the key factor. This underscores the crucial role of accessible and reliable data in guiding the focus of people analytics teams.
“People data analytics has transformed how we make decisions—from hiring to promoting—and has elevated the status of the HR team,” says Boyle. The data has provided a better understanding of the employee population and helped identify key points related to engagement, productivity and turnover risk.
Data-driven insights have broadened the company’s view of workforce trends, something Boyle found helps leaders address the sources of friction, highlighting the underlying problems leading to an increase in turnover.
“Having a greater sense of the data-driven trends, we can now plan out specific employee journeys,” says Boyle. Her team can identify who is most at risk of leaving, determine what they need and develop ways to address the issue.
Culture and people analytics
Boyle says that the HR department and leadership team stayed locked onto strategic goals as the organization grew, knowing people were key to success. “We can’t grow and transform without our people,” she says.
Boyle explains that the people analytics project has actively shaped organizational culture by using a data-driven playbook to fulfill the company’s employee experience promise. This approach has played a crucial role in reducing turnover, which was one of the company’s key concerns.
According to Boyle, some early indications of success include a 25% increase in retention rates, the establishment of a culture of recognition and the design of an employee value proposition.
Additionally, the HR team has used scorecards to track engagement, which has improved by 8% in less than a year, bringing the overall score to 80%. According to Gore Mutual’s team, inclusion and well-being scores have also reached 80%.
Gore Mutual is not alone in this effort—Gallup’s 2020 survey of 2.7 million employees highlights the strong connection between employee engagement and performance, revealing that low-engagement teams faced turnover rates that were 18% to 43% higher than their highly engaged counterparts.
Vendor partnerships matter
Boyle adds that tech partners, including Greenhouse and Qualtrics, play a significant role in Gore Mutual’s people analytics strategy. Visier’s integrated insights and ease of implementation for adoption made it an appealing partner, for example, according to Boyle. “We had Visier up and running within six months, and almost immediately, we uncovered insights in days that would have taken us months to surface before,” she says.
Speed, quality and customization were priorities during the digital transformation. One example was the need to incorporate employee sentiment into the platform. Boyle says that Visier co-designed a novel approach so that users could still access the same sentiment metrics but with the additional benefit of being able to cross-examine this factor alongside other metrics like engagement or turnover.
Having been through this process, Boyle says that one of her biggest pieces of advice to share with other HR leaders and companies looking to undertake a people analytics project is to start with the basics and then build for scale while demonstrating business value. “Change doesn’t happen overnight,” she says. “But with the right partner, you can take a fast track to better results.”
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