On People Analytics — Employee Turnover
A trillion dollars problem
Before you start reading this
This is the second part of a project that I made. In the first part, I've developed a web application that can predict which employees are most likely to leave a given company. The web application uses a Machine Learning model to make the predictions.
I recommend you to check the project and read through its full story at the GitHub page below, as it has the full context and problem description.
In section 4.0 Next Steps, I wrote:
4.4 Include Design Thinking applied to Employee Experience aided by Data Science, because only identifying the employees is not enough if companies don’t know how to approach them.
So, in this post I'll develop this part.
Before you start reading this (2)
As you can see in my LinkedIn profile, most part of my professional background is Design — Human Centered Design (HCD), this means that the approach on projects that I contribute is based on Design Thinking.
My field of expertise inside HCD is Service Design. In order to make it easier to understand where it stands when talking about HCD, I drew a picture to help us.
Now, I would like you to focus on Employee eXperience Design because it will be the subject of this post.
Main types of employees
According to Gallup on it State of Global Workplace 2017, the three main types of employees are:
- Engaged: those who are highly involved and enthusiastic about work and the workplace. They psychologically feel as the business “owners”, they drive performance and innovation and move the organization forward.
- Disengaged: those who are psychologically detached from work and the company. As their involvement needs are not being fully met, they are investing time — but not energy nor passion — on their work.
- Actively disengaged: those who are not just unhappy at work — are resentful that their needs are not being met and are showing their unhappiness. Every day, these workers potentially compromise what their co-workers accomplish.
Big numbers
In 2018, the total human being world population was 7.5 billions (in Jan, 2020 it was 7.7 billions).
From those 7.5 billions, 3.3 billions were employed.
Now, making a rough approximation to 2017, only 15% (aprox. 495 millions) of employees around the world were engaged in their work.
Okay, so what? What it has to do with businesses?
I'm glad that you asked. That's a good question which I'm happy to share the answer with you.
Companies with a high level of engagement compared to those with a low level of engagement have:
The result of this is that your team, especially the frontline, is more empathetic to the customer’s needs and more willing to solve the customer’s problems. This in turn means that the customer experience (CX) improves exponentially.
When employees are doing the work they love, in an environment in which they feel nourished, there is a physiological change — your body language is more open, you are more empathetic and just a better person — then, immediately, you get a vision more organic, a human-centered interaction.
Still not convinced?
So,
Employee Engagement
It is an approach in the workplace that results in the right conditions for all members of an organization to do their best every day, committed to your organization’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organizational success, with an enhanced feeling their own well-being.
Right conditions… What?
I want you to think about six things that directly impact an employee and its engagement.
1. The Culture
- It has to do with the “way” of the company.
- If your company were a person, how would you describe him/her?
- When you say to people that you work at company XYZ, how do they react?
2. The Leardership
- The relationship between leaders and the people that are under their care.
- How do leaders influence their team’s work?
- How do leaders influence the development of their team?
3. The Technology
- How does the technology the company uses influence the work of it employees?
- How do the tools that people use influence their daily work?
4. The Processes
- How do the processes influence the employees’ daily work?
- How would you rate your company’s processes?
- Are the processes too bureaucratic or too smooth?
- Do things happen quickly or slowly?
5. The Infrastructure
- Think about the physical structure of your company. How does it influence the professionals’ daily lives?
- Do people have good chairs to sit?
- Do people have tidy desks to work on?
- Are the toilets clean and smelling good?
- Are the air conditions at the right temperature and clean?
6. The Power in Relationships
- How free do people feel to express their opinions?
- How do people deal with power and hierarchy?
- How do leaders use this power to manage their teams?
Which lead us to …
The Six Pillars of Employee Experience
Employee Experience
It is the sum of the various perceptions that employees have about their interactions with the organization in which they work. It takes into account how employees see, hear, believe and feel about all aspects of their job.
It is an employee-centered way of thinking about the organization in which decisions made internally consider how employees feel about all aspects of their employment.
Making the connection with the project
Now that I explained all this to you, it's easier to make the connection with part one.
A quick recap of part one
We made all that data wrangling, machine learning modeling and web application deployment.
Then, the HR team and/or any person responsible for the people in their company can make use of this tool to identify who are the ones that are most likely to leave. Now what?
Enter the Employee Experience — Data Science + HCD
It's not enough to have only have the list of people that might leave the company if leaders and business owners are not willing to do something with it. In addition, it's also not enough to just give some corny gifts, throw end year's party in a fancy place or anything else if employees don't feel nourished and part of something bigger.
That's why I believe that the core of Data Science is also HCD, not only data, machine learning and deep learning. You can have all the numbers, business metrics, other quantitative information and predictions, but if you don't know how to make the right approach on making a decision, then you're done.
