People Analytics: Data to Decisions

This book is an exploration of the people analytics possibility, bringing out both theoretical frameworks and detailed practical case studies from the author’s experience in industry and business across both sides of the table, with an understanding of data science models and SMAC (Social, Mobile & Cloud) technologies underpinning it. It further explores and lays out a business case for why organizations need to invest behind this space and why HR functions and businesses need to embrace and adopt it. The book examines how people analytics makes a difference to business, describes stages of adoption and maturity models for its effective deployment in organizations and explores the journey from employee master data management and conversion to reporting and visualizations to dash-boarding and descriptive analytics, operational analytics to finally predictive modelling.

The book provides insights on the impact of big data and social networks on HR and talent frameworks and the opportunity for HR to mine these networks with a view to culling out predictive insights for the business. It also describes in great detail the specific applications of people and talent analytics through case examples. The book discusses and makes the case for HR to be metric driven focused on business outcomes. It enumerates upon ＂lead＂ and ＂lag＂ indicators and the need to leverage relevant measurement systems. It provides an understanding of relevant statistical tools that could be deployed to mine key insights from the data to enable robust decision-making, and examines the power of ＂visual intelligence＂ and data representation that goes beyond traditional tools like Excel.

This book is for HR practitioners who seek to challenge the status quo. It does so by helping them leverage a data and evidence based approach; asking the right questions and building new capabilities with a view towards leading change and driving transformation both in their domain, the wider business and the larger organization. The book is also useful for HRM students to gain a deep understanding of ＂people analytics＂ as a critical sub-domain within HR.

＂HR is not just about people but now also about Tech, Data and Analytics. Upgrading numerical/analytics skills in order to have greater impact on the business, is the new wave of HR, which Rahul helps address via his own rich experience.＂

- Gurprriet Siingh, Managing Director, Russell Reynolds Associates, Mumbai, India.

＂This book would help HR & Leadership Teams find a way of discarding perceptions and uncovering truth by embracing data patterns as opposed to just continuing with incremental changes to how it has always been. This is particularly so of successful organizations.＂

- Vikas Gupta, Divisional Chief Executive Officer, Education and Stationery Products Business, ITC Limited, Gurugram, India.

Rahul Ghatak is the co-Founder & CEO of Acumetric Global Solutions, a recent SaaS People Analytics start-up venture with its proprietary cloud based people analytics platform. He brings 25+ years of HR deep domain experience across MNC’s & Indian conglomerates straddling diverse sectors across consumer and manufacturing, financial services and BPO/ITes. Rahul has had Human Resource Management, HR Digital Transformation & Business Partnering experience across the entire canvas in large & mid-size organizations (4000+ headcount; turnover 100 million ＄ to 1 billion ＄; Indian & MNC); key role in scaling up businesses & operations across sectors & geographies; cross-cultural exposure across India, Africa, Asia-Pacific, Middle-East, US, France & UK; and he has been an integral part of global HR leadership teams in two large MNCs. He has overseen change management & organization design & restructuring; performance management; employee relations; talent management; rewards restructuring; organization development; leadership coaching; resourcing & assessments; M&A; ERP & HR digital transformation to name some.

He has held key positions across organizations such as ITC, PepsiCo, HSBC, Capita, RPG, Welspun & BIC while leading the function over the last 10 years. Last three leadership roles he held were: Vice President Human Resources - RPG (Ceat Tyres); Director Human Resources - Capita India (subsidiary of Capita Group Plc UK;) FTSE 100 Company; CHRO - BIC India (subsidiary of Societe BIC); and in these roles he partnered closely with CEO’s & promoters, both Indian & expatriates across multi-cultural environments. He has been a recipient of ＂global best-in-class certification＂ in Strategic HRM from University of Michigan - Ann Arbor; recipient of Harvey-Russell Global Chairman’s Award for cutting-edge work done in the Diversity & Inclusion space in PepsiCo International; recipient of the NCPEDP-SHELL Helen Keller Award. He is also a certified Occupational Testing Techniques & OPQ psychometric assessor; certified by SHL as well as a Diversity & Inclusion Practitioner, certified by DDI.

Rahul has also been involved in various professional and learning forums such as CII Training Sub-Committee, IQPC Forums on HR Technology, CIO Choice Awards, World HR Congress and has been part of several conferences in HR Technology & Great Place to Work conclaves. He has also in his spare time lectured at various Business Schools such as TISS, IIM’s, ICFAI, SOIL, Great Lakes, PIBM etc as well as contributed articles in leading publications such as People Matters etc. Rahul holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from St Xavier’s College, Kolkata; a Masters Degree in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and a Masters Degree in Human Resources Management from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.