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Tina Ullmann, Vice President, HR Business Partner Avangrid Networks, AVANGRIDThe People Business Partner is an evolving role within the Human Resources environment. In fact, it’s been continuously evolving for more than a decade. In the last three years alone, the role has resurfaced from Human Resource Business Partner to People Business Partner (PBP) with an understanding that its goal is to align the business and people strategies within an organization.
At its inception, this role was very tactical and focused on general employee relations. It’s grown into a consultant and thought partner that understands the business, can speak the language, and helps to define the talent capability and gaps that will drive the business strategy. Analytics has become an essential tool for PBPs to make informed decisions and drive business outcomes. With the help of data analytics, PBPs can identify trends, predict future outcomes, and make data-driven decisions that can positively impact the organization. This evolution has transformed the role of PBPs from being reactive to proactive, from being transactional to strategic, and from being focused on compliance to being focused on driving business outcomes.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic happened, and a major shift needed to occur.
This unprecedented event shifted the function back to its roots. Companies needed a tactical, generalist role that could review and change policies, update the business, track employee whereabouts and determine exposures. Human Resource departments were needed more than ever, and we answered the call.
During this time, the data needed was constantly changing to ensure we were maintaining safety within our organizations. We became emotional support for our leaders and teams, taking on the burdens of the business while simultaneously processing how the pandemic was impacting our own mental capability. We built tools and resources as they were needed since we had never experienced a pandemic in our lifetime.
It was gratifying work, but it was also extremely draining. The demands of the pandemic caused large turnover within the HR departments. In a survey by Workviva, 98% of HR employees replied being burnt outor leaving their role. However, these experiences from the pandemic also made us stronger. It refocused us on a human centric workplace leadership that defines the business strategy through data and analytics with a focus on attracting, engaging, and retaining our employees.
“The future of HR is telling the story behind the data. The ability to share organizational trends and discuss how they align to the market will allow us to engage leaders in more robust discussions on people capability needs and drive business outcomes”
Consider business intelligence dashboards as an example. Although dashboards started prior to the pandemic, the urgency to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our teams sped up their adoption. Data was critical to establishing safety protocols, so companies acted swiftly to assess new tools that drove analytics. These dashboards move us away from excel spreadsheets and are an important factor in analyzing data to drive strategy. They drive real time analysis, which is critical to the continued evolution of our people centric model.
As strategic partners to the C-Suite, we can focus on financial business acumen with an understanding of business challenges. Leveraging the data differently has enabled us to consider how we can use the data to understand past, present, and, more importantly, future trends of our business and industry. By analyzing this data, PBPs can identify the root causes of these trends and develop strategies to address them. For example, with a focus on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging turnover and retention, we may be able to identify a talent gap in our team to help us improve. By leveraging historical data trends, we can prepare a forecast of expected turnover in a standard environment. Or as another example, at my company, AVANGRID, we use our data analytics dashboard to determine trends in our workforce and create development opportunities based on workforce demographics in specific lines of the business.
The future of HR is telling the story behind the data. The ability to share organizational trends and discuss how they align to the market will allow us to engage leaders in more robust discussions on people capability needs and drive business outcomes. At the end of the day, it’s not possible for us to build a people centric strategy that supports all workforce needs without an increased focus on people analytics. We need to let the data take the lead.
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