Voices in Leadership • 7 MIN READ
What Great People Analytics Actually Looks Like in Practice
MAR 11, 2026
HR analytics has been promised as transformative for a decade. One people leader shares what separates the organisations that have realised that promise from those still running pivot tables.
The data quality problem no one talks about
Every analytics conversation eventually runs into the same wall: the data is not clean enough to trust. Job titles inconsistently applied, manager assignments not updated when teams are restructured, leave records that have not been maintained, performance ratings that were entered retrospectively to meet a deadline. Before investing in analytics capability, invest in data quality: define data standards, audit the HRIS regularly, and assign ownership for each data field to a specific person who is accountable for its accuracy. Analytics built on poor data produces confident-looking numbers that are wrong.
Starting with a business question
The organisations with the most mature people analytics functions share one characteristic: they start every analysis with a specific business question, not with the data they happen to have. 'Why is voluntary turnover in the sales function higher than the company average?' is a business question. 'Here is a chart of all the data we have on our employees' is not analytics; it is reporting. The business question determines what data you need, what analysis you should run, and what a useful answer looks like. It also makes the output immediately relevant to the person you are presenting it to.
