Do you shudder at the idea of having to look at data and analyse it, even though you know data analytics is a valuable skill that will help your HR career? Or, perhaps you’re comfortable with data, but are frustrated that your colleagues can’t seem to get to grips with it.

This episode of HR Coffee time is here to help, as HR Career Coach Fay Wallis is joined by Angela Moyle, Chief of Staff from HR software business, elementsuite. Angela takes things back to basics - to demystify data and build your confidence at using it to have an impact at work.

Key Points From This Episode

[01:30] An introduction to Angela Moyle

[03:15] Why data is so important for HR and People professionals

[04:43] Angela shares examples of how her clients have used data to drive behavioural change and business success

[07:36] Fay provides an example of her own experience with data in her HR Career

[09:09] Angela offers advice on how to get started with using data at work

[12:11] Which KPIs to focus on and how to use them within your organisation

• Angela’s HR Data insights guide (free for HR Coffee Time listeners)

[16:08] The benefits of benchmarking

[17:41] Angela offers suggestions on how to get your HR dashboard up and running

[21:56] The difference between an HRIS system and Excel

[26:01] Angela shares her book recommendation – Information is Beautiful by David Mccandless

(Disclosure: this book link is an affiliate link which means Fay will earn a small

commission from Amazon if you choose to purchase the book using it)

[27:45] How to connect with Angela

Useful Links

• Connect with Fay on LinkedIn
• The Bright Sky Career Coaching website
• Video: how to rate & review HR Coffee Time on Apple Podcasts
• Angela’s HR Data insights guide (free for HR Coffee Time listeners)
• Connect with Angela on LinkedIn
• elementsuite’s website

Rate and Review the Podcast

If you found this episode of HR Coffee Time helpful, please do rate and review it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

If you're kind enough to leave a review, please do let Fay know so she can say thank you. You can always reach her at: fay@brightskycareercoaching.co.uk.

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Whether you're like me and initially shudder at the idea of having to look at data and analyze it, or you're an absolute whiz with data, but are frustrated that your colleagues can't seem to get to grips with it. This episode of HR coffee time is here to help. It takes things back to basics to demystify it, and help you build your confidence at using data to have an impact at work. Welcome back to HR coffee time, a weekly podcast that's here to help you have a successful and fulfilling HR career without working yourself into the ground. If we haven't met before, hello, I'm your host Fay Wallis, career coach with a background in HR. And I'm also the founder of bright sky career coaching.

And for today's episode, the person who is going to be doing all of this brilliant demystifying of data is my brilliant guest, Angela Moyle, from HR software business, elementsuite, I really enjoyed meeting Angela and learning loads from her. I hope that you're going to enjoy hearing from her too. So let's get started with the main bit of the episode, and to meet her now. Welcome to the show Angela, it is wonderful to have you here. And can I just start things off by asking you to introduce yourself? It would be wonderful if you could give us a bit of background around who you are and what the work is that you do.

Well, first of all, thank you very much for having me on the podcast. I'm slightly nervous. This is my first podcast. So please do bare with me. So I've been in HR technology for about 12 years, and I am really passionate about demystifying HR tech. Personally, I don't like it when people overcomplicate technology, I think it should be accessible for all whether you're tech savvy or not, whether you're a frontline worker or not. And that I think is really what drives me.

So I am Chief of Staff at elements suite. And we are a HR software company based in the lovely Watford. And for years we have worked with HR professionals with HR technologists. And we quickly bit exasperated about the flexibility of that software. And we decided to take the jump and build our own HR and workforce management software. And that's what we've done. With the aim being it's got to be simple and easy to use for everyone have a great team of developers, and we're very proud to have some fantastic clients, such as McDonald's and Travelodge.

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for that introduction, Angela. It's great to get all of that detail and to have a bit of background. And there is so much that I could ask you today because I know you are just a font of knowledge when it comes to data and analytics for HR. I wish I was a font of knowledge when it comes to this. But sadly, I'm not. So I know I'm going to learn so much from you. And I know everyone listening is going to learn loads too. But I thought it would be a good starting point, if we could just start off with me asking you why you think getting confident with data is so important for HR and people professionals.

Yeah, absolutely. So we are in the digital revolution. Data is everywhere. And I think that data is fantastic for HR, because it takes away those kind of personal views. It takes away those emotions, it takes away that bias. Having that data, I think gives objective, credible insights into an organization. And I think it's a fantastic opportunity for HR professionals to really showcase what's happening within the organization, taking it away from sometimes people might might perceive it as to be an opinion, to actual credible information that can really drive a business forward. So I think it is an exciting time for HR professionals. And I think that being able to show that insight to the business will be truly valuable.

It's great to hear your enthusiasm for this and the fact that you're talking about it being exciting because I know for a lot of people who may not be that confident with the idea of looking at data potentially analyzing it, it may feel a bit scary and the opposite of exciting. So thank you for bringing that really positive energy to our time together today. And what I think could really helped bring this to life for a thought if if you're happy to share some examples of when you've seen clients use data really effectively to benefit the organizations that they work for.

So I have two that spring to mind. The first one was a large a large retailer. They were struggling to get their managers to submit their staff timesheets in time payroll, and we all know how stressful payroll can be. They were trying to you know change behaviors encouraging them Given the notifications, etc, but that still wasn't working. So this is where data really shone, they decided to put together a leaderboard, when the managers submitted their timesheets, and this leaderboard they shared with everyone to be able to see.

And of course, what happened overnight. No one wanted to be on the bottom of that leaderboard. And straightaway, you had managers proactively going out there, and making sure that their timesheets were submitted on time. And I think that is where data having that real pulse that real live data coming in, transformed those behaviors. And of course, alleviated all that pressure from the from the payroll team.

How fantastic to hear that it had an impact that quickly, it's amazing to think that behavioral change can be so hard, but actually there are things we can do to, to encourage it and to move it along more quickly than we might have thought we can. So I'm really looking forward to hearing your second example, now, can you let us know what it is?

Yeah, so the second example was with, Madonna was one of our clients. And when COVID hit, they really had to understand the health and well being of their workforce at the time, they had about 135,000 team members. And they were using our HR self service app. And what we did, we created a card within the HR app that allowed middle team members to notify us of their health in relation to COVID. So we were able to pick up whether they had to self isolate, because someone in their family had COVID, whether they had COVID, whether they had symptoms. And if you imagine 135,000 workforce, and we was getting this live data coming in, and being able to see the health and well being of the organization, it was truly remarkable.

And it allowed McDonald's to be able to be there for their for their employees understand the health and well being. And also being able to when they started to look about opening up the restaurants being able to ensure that they were looking at the right ones where they were there was capacity within the within the team to be able to start those restaurants back up again. So it had two pros, really pros for that for obviously, the health and well being of those team members and being able to, to be there to help them but then also look looking for business perspective about when they needed to set up and start the restaurants and how and when they when they did that. So I thought that was really amazing when you start to see that data coming in live.

Not really is the main thing. Thank you for sharing that example. As you were talking, it's really making me realize the difference in the way that you're talking about using data and my own experience, really of having use data before in my former HR career. Because when I did work in HR, there were two main sets of data that I worked with personally, they were data sets for recruitment and for employee engagement, because they were the two areas that I had responsibility for in my last role. So for recruitment, we kept track of things like time to hire, which looks at how long it took to fill a role in recruitment.

And it was helpful to have that data because it could help us to show that we were improving, but it was all very backwards looking. Whereas what you're talking about here is using data live to implement this sort of instantaneous behavioral change, or to be able to take the business forward right in here. And now, which is just fascinating to hear about it. And now that you've shared just two examples, I feel like I could have asked you to make a whole episode, talking through examples of organizations that are using data. Well, I think that would be brilliant.

But I'd better move on for now, because that is not what I've asked you to do today. So for anyone else who's listening and thinking like me, gosh, this sounds brilliant. I can really see how powerful data can be. But he just doesn't know where to start with it. And it's finding the whole idea a bit daunting. What would your advice to them be?

I think first of all, I understand. I think that when there is so much data out there. Yeah, exactly. So where do you where do you start? So keeping it simple is my best advice, looking at the employee lifecycle. So you obviously mentioned recruitment. So you have recruitment, onboarding, workforce management, performance, learning, all those different areas within your organization. Look at first of all, perhaps areas within the business where there are real or perceived problem areas, and just start to look at those basic measures.

You know, you'll be surprised how many organizations that you know, that we go into that are large organizations that haven't got those basic KPIs is basic measures in place for some of the some of the things that you spoke about, you know, time to fill applicants per note per opening and having that So, in one place that is dive that has that pulse is absolutely fantastic, you can start to then look at things like being able to filter it being able to look at it from a particular lens, it could be looking at it through a department lens, or it could be within a certain area within the organization, being able to slice and dice it is the next stage that you can do. But I think keep it simple look at where there are problems with the organization and target those first.

So the message really is about keeping it simple. And starting with what the business need is right in that moment.

Yes, absolutely. Start you know, it's looking at, you know, how to help the business looking at those looking at those insights. And remember, you know, data is all about telling a story. Really, what you're trying to say is, it went from here to here. So you can start to see that, you know, perhaps there is a trend happening, perhaps there is a problem within the organization, because suddenly, you know, something's happened. And that data is very, very different to what to what it was before. So, yeah, keep it simple to begin with. But it's all about allowing you to be able to tell that story to other people in the organization's

I can definitely see how it can be even more powerful if you're able to bring the data to life by using storytelling. And just thinking about KPIs, I know that you just very kindly touched on some more KPIs for recruitment for us. But if I was helicoptered back into my old HR role, and there were problems outside of recruitment or employee engagement, and I was asked to look after a new project, or perhaps us to look after everything, I think I would be wondering, oh, my gosh, what KPIs are going to be relevant for this new area, or what KPI should I be thinking about for all of these different areas?

And I find thinking that then I can imagine that lots of people listening today might be thinking exactly the same thing. So it would be wonderful. If you could just give us some advice on how an earth you figure out which KPIs you can or should you use for all of the different moving parts that make up a business.

Yes, so I've put together a guide that your listeners may find useful. And if it's helpful, we can circulate that within the notes within the the podcast, and it breaks down by each of the areas within the organization, a selection of KPIs that you might want to consider. And I would suggest that might be a really good place to start. So you could have a look at those KPIs, you could tick them off, if you think that they are suitable for you. And then you could then start to think to yourself, right, okay, how would I get hold of that data?

Now, it may be that you have a HR system at the moment. And it may be that you need to start have some ports within the product to be able to surface that data, it may be that you just have Excel, and you need to be able to pop that into Excel, and be able to look about visualizing that data within Excel as well. So have a look at that guide. It's a really good start of 10 to kind of get you going and will hopefully give you some confidence to be able to, to know that you know, these are, these are the ones that you probably should be looking at. And and take it from there really?

Oh, that's really generous of you to share that with us. Thank you, Angela. And I'll pop a link to it in the show notes. So for anyone listening who's thinking, what an earth are the show notes, or where are they, if you just go to the app that you're listening to this episode on now, tap on the episode and scroll down, you'll see there's a whole load of writing underneath the episode title. And they are the show notes. It just summarizes the key points that we talked about. It has timestamps on there. So if after listening today, you think, oh, I want to go back and listen to one point that Angela made, it's really easy to do that. And in there, there are also all sorts of helpful links. So I will make sure that I put a link to that guide in there.

But if you can't find it for any reason, on the app, you can also find them on the bright sky career coaching website, it's probably even easier to find them there. You just go to the episode, and you'll see all of the notes on the page there with them. But coming back to you, Angela, just to say again, I really appreciate you sharing that resource. Thank you. I've looked at it, it's fantastic. There's so much in it. There's some brilliant benchmarking sources in there as well that people can look at as well as all of the KPIs that you've suggested and talk about, but just to help bring that guide to life a little bit and maybe extract some of the wonderful value from it right away. Can I just ask you, you said there are KPIs for all these different aspects of the employee lifecycle? Would you mind just sharing a couple of examples with us to again help bring all of this to life?

Yeah, so the one I'd probably look at is workforce management. I think it's a really strong area for data. And it really can add value to a business very, very quickly. So if you were wanting to look at your, you know, your total cost of your workforce, your volume per labor hour, you're shedule versus actual hours in it, that kind of data in real time can be so, so powerful. Being able, of course, to filter it by site by department by job role, it really helps to drive an organization, especially obviously, you know, workforce management is all for this kind of hourly paid workforce. It's something that I think as real tangible benefits and insights to a business immediately.

Oh, it's great to hear all of that. And they are definitely not metrics that are data that I've ever looked at before, you're making me want to go back to your guide and have another look at it. So I'll make sure that I see that after we finished recording everything. But one other thing that you mentioned in your guide is benchmarking. So it would be great if you could just talk us through why benchmarking is helpful, and what sorts of benchmarking you can be doing and how to do it.

I think it's always interesting isn't it to, to know what like, within the industry vertical, you're in what is the benchmark for, you know, it could be absence rate turnover, it could be employee turnover by percentage, it's always good to know what that benchmark is within your industry. First of all, look at where you are now. And you may be doing really well, which is excellent.

And you should be showcasing that to the management, or it could be that you are falling short. And you know, you then start to have a look at a target for that. But having benchmarking and having access to that within your industry vertical, I think is I think it's really powerful within the guide as well. I have put some links to PwC, Gartner, and some some good ones there for you to view to have a look at as a reference that you may find you may find useful.

That's brilliant. And that brings me on to my next question, which I'm really interested to hear what your answer will be, which is all about dashboards. Because I know that dashboards are another aspect of data and reporting that can feel particularly the one thing, especially as the sheer amount of data available can seem like it can seem overwhelming. So again, for anyone listening who's thinking, right, Angeles got me all fired up about this, I'm going to really get my teeth stuck into this, I'm sorting out my KPIs. I'm going to do some benchmarking. And I'm going to get an HR dashboard up and running. What would your advice be to them?

My advice on dashboards is that that will should be actionable. That is fundamentally what what dashboards should be, they should be able to show you quickly, visually, what you need to do, whether it be a manager, whether that be the HR team, you know, where are the areas that you should focus on, dashboards are not there to be able to just look at all these lovely images and pictures and etc, it is about being able to go on to them think right, I need to focus on this, because this is an area that needs my attention. So dashboards should be actionable, is the first thing that they should be, they should be simple to digest that information, you know, when you know.

What's brilliant about having a dashboard is that you're essentially taking data that can be very, very boring, you know, from like an Excel, you know, line columns and rows into something where it actually tells a story. And you will need to be able to look at that data and see those trends have a dashboard that allows you to go to go back in time clearly. So you can set the date ranges. So you can see right here I am now but I was here is really important too. But don't overwhelm people as well with lots and lots dashboards. The other thing I'd say, if you're going to look at dashboards, of course, the dashboards have to start at the top and go all the way down.

And so if you want a manager to focus on certain certain things, just make sure they have the dashboard for only those only those areas, don't give them those dashboards because they just spend all time looking at it. You want them to have an have a look at the dashboards that they have got to action. And just keep it really nice and simple. But I absolutely love dashboards because I think that it really drives behavior within an organization, especially when they are actionable dashboards.

Okay, so your key message for today definitely seems to be about keeping it simple. But I love what you were just saying there about thinking of okay, what did the managers need to see? I don't know why, but I hadn't expected you to say that. I think I've been very much thinking of this as, okay, as an HR team. What do we need to see how do we need to work on this, but you've raised such a good point, that it's not about being insular and inward looking as the HR team, it's also about thinking, these are real live tools that people can be using right now. And that can empower the people who work here, the line managers to go ahead and do an absolutely brilliant job.

Yeah, I totally agree. And I think it's very much, you know, it's about transparency and about visibility. That is what people want with an organization doesn't matter what role you're in it, they want to feel part of an organization, they want to know what's going on, they want to have transparency, they want to know what's happening. And the more I think that you can offer that to everyone within the organization, I think the better when you empower managers, they they do wonderful things.

Yeah, that's really, I think that's a bit of a lightbulb moment. For me, I'd be really interested to hear for anyone listening, if that's a light bulb moment for you to Angela, and I would love to hear from you. So if there is anything from this that has really resonated with you, or made you think in a different way, please do let us know, you can always contact either of us on LinkedIn. Or of course, you can always drop me an email at Fay at Brightskycareercoaching.co.uk, it's always so great to have feedback on the episodes because at the moment, it's just Angela and I talking to each other, we have no idea how it's landing with you.

So please do feel free to give us some feedback. And, Angela, I know I haven't looked at your system elementsuite in lots of detail. In fact, I would love to do that if you're happy to show it to me one day. But one thing I do know that's possible with it is the fact that the dashboards can be very sophisticated. And it does mean that you can have sort of live alerts and things could you just quickly talk us through what you can expect from an HRIS system instead of working in Excel.

Fundamentally, it has a pulse, because as soon as you put it into Excel, it has nothing driving that that data, because you're extracting it from from somewhere, or you're creating it from somewhere and you're putting it into Excel. So as soon as you put into Excel that that date and timestamp is, that is it. Whereas obviously with the HR system, it has that pulse because everyone is going in, they are booking their holiday, they are you know, looking at their rotator, they are wanting to swap their shifts, all of those things are happening in the moment. And that is the power of having dashboards within a hrs is having that pulse.

But knowing that any one time you can have someone ask you what is happening the organization and you can give them in that moment, real time data as to exactly what's happening. Now. I think that you know, when when COVID hit it, clearly it took us all by surprise and changed our work life forever. But there's lots of you know, CEOs, execs saying to everyone across the business, not just HR, but everyone, right, give me accurate data now, as to you know where we are. And lots of companies struggle with that. So that is the power of having your dashboards and your data within HR system.

Well, I'm sure that everyone listening, I'm going to be completely convinced that having an HR system is a great idea after hearing you talk about that. But I know for lots of people, unfortunately, that may not be an option for them right now. And they are having to use XML. So for anyone who is still having to use XML, rather than having a Wizzy fabulous HR system, have you got any tips for them on creating a dashboard if they're in that situation?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, Excel is absolutely brilliant. There's absolutely a time and a place for for Excel. And I totally understand everyone may not be on the journey of having an HRIS. There is fantastic graphs. And you know, some of the stuff that you can do within Excel is absolutely brilliant. I have one of our guys that works for element suite that is amazing, an Excel and I look him some time and think wow, that doesn't even look like Excel. It looks brilliant.

So you can do fantastic things like so, the one thing about doing anything with data is that it is you know, it is an art, it really is when you start to look at data, you have to think to yourself, Well, how am I going to visualize this, whether that be in Excel or in a dashboard? You know, what graph do I use? Do I use a line graph? Do I use a donut? Do I use a starburst? What graph do I use to best visualize that data to best tell the story of what's happening with that data? So it's something that just won't happen very, very quickly. It's something that you'll think, Oh, I've got this data. How best too I show this data.

So it could be for example, if you're looking at a holiday, how much holiday does someone have within a year you could use a donor's or use a doughnut shape and then you could say right okay, so half of that donut has already been taken, the whole has been taken. And you can quite clearly see the other half of that donuts, you know, they have X amount days left. And you can visually see that. So, you know, looking at what visualizations what graphs you're going to you're going to use is so important when you use dashboards, because if it doesn't make sense, with the visualization, it's not going to mean anything. But you know, do not worry, if you've just got Excel, there is amazing things that you can do with an Excel to be able to bring that information to life.

And talking about visualizing data to bring it to life, that's something that I don't find easy. I'm definitely a words person. I can write stuff, but I find it hard to be able to think, oh, gosh, you know, how, how could this be visualized? I know that you have got a great book recommendation to share with us about this that might be able to help us all be able to think of new ways to express and visualize data. Can you let us know what it is?

I can, um, my book is information is beautiful by David McCandless. And the reason why I love I love that book is it's one of those books that you can actually give to any age group. You know, my son loved it, you know, when he had it, that gave it to him when he's 15 years old. And it's just absolutely brilliant to be able to bring data to life, it will give you ideas about different visualizations. And it's just an inspiring book, it will make you think, Ah, I could perhaps use this kind of format, this visualization for some of the data that I have within within my organization.

And I think he's actually got a new edition that's come out, which I haven't got yet. So I need to I need to go out and get that. So it's not expensive. It's on Amazon. I don't know, it's about 10 pounds or something. But it would definitely be worth just just getting excited about data and how to visualize data.

Well, I completely agree with that recommendation, Angela. I haven't always read all of the books that the guests kindly share on the show every week. But I have read that one because I was lucky enough to hear David McCandless speak a few years ago, where he presented a lot of the visuals from his book. Yeah, it was really amazing. His work was absolutely incredible. And he was a brilliant speaker. So I've actually gone on to buy that book as a gift for one of my friends who works with data all the time.

And I think he was really happy with it. So thank you for the recommendation, I will link to the book in the show notes for anyone who would like to take a look at it, and see if they'd like to buy it. And as we're approaching the end of our time together for today, what is the best way if anyone listening to learn more about elementsuit, or to get in touch with you, because I'm sure there will be people who would like to know more?

Yeah, I'd love to hear from anyone you know, any advice they want to you know to have from me, then please do feel free to contact me probably my LinkedIn is the best way to get ahold of me. So go into LinkedIn, or go into elements suite.com. And there's an Information button there. And you can get ahold of me through there too.

Great. And I'll make sure that I put a link to the website and the link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes so that it's nice and easy for anyone to do that. But that brings us to the end of our time together today. All I've got left to say is a huge thank you. It's been wonderful to have you. Thank you so much, Angela,

Well I thank you very much for having me. It's my first podcast, so I cannot take that off the list. So thank you very much.

We've been absolutely brilliant. You'd never know it was your first podcast. Thank you. Let's wrap up today's episode. I hope that it's helped you to feel more confident about using data and analytics in your HR role. Or if you are already confident, I hope it's acted as a reminder of some of the basics to go over with your colleagues if they're struggling to get to grips with using data at work.