HR, We Have a Problem - The rise of the workforce systems leader in hr and why CHROs need them in 2025

[00:00:00] is more important to learn the verticalized analytics. So thinking about the subject matter expertise you bring, and it's something I've recommended to a lot of people that are thinking about this kind of people analytics space, maybe having trouble breaking into an analytics role, is spend some time in HR. And really the phrasing I used was buy side. So on the people analytics side, you're selling people analytics to the organization. If you're an HRVP, you're buying people analytics. And you're working with a great team in a lot of these organizations and becoming a really good buyer to understand how it's applied and how the change happens.

[00:00:30] can really further your career and get you closer to the space. But more and more often, again, coming back to this call we're hearing is like, like platforms like OneModel or tools like ChatGPT, they are going to erase generic ability in the analytics space. You've got to bring a little bit more today than you needed 10 years ago. Welcome to the HR Huddle Podcast presented by Sapient Insights Group, the ultimate resource for all things HR.

[00:01:00] It's time to get in the huddle. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the HR Huddle. I'm your host, Terry Zipper, CEO and managing partner at Sapient Insights Group. And I'm back for another exciting episode of HR We Have a Problem. This is the show where we break down the big and most relevant HR issues of the day.

[00:01:26] We help you make sense of what they mean for you. And we talk about what you might do about them. Joining me today is Richard Rosenau. Richard is the VP of People Analytics Strategy at OneModel. And frankly, he's a real thought leader in the analytics space. I know he serves on several boards. He's sought after speaker and blogger. So I was thrilled to get him on my show. Welcome, Richard. It's great to have you.

[00:01:53] Thank you so much, Terry. And I am delighted to be here. I am a longtime listener of the show, as well as the sister podcast, Spilling the Tea. I can't get enough of what you guys do over here. So I truly am delighted to be here. Well, thank you so much for that. I really appreciate it. You and I recently had a conversation about the importance of systems thinking, kind of getting out of silos, you know, making decisions with a system-wide perspective. What are we actually trying to do from an HR perspective and how do we get it done?

[00:02:22] And we said, let's do a deeper dive on this for the HR We Have a Problem audience. So does that sound like a good plan to you? Oh, I love it, Terry. Then let's get into the huddle. So I was looking at your LinkedIn profile this week, and it says, keeping the people in people analytics. I love that. This is obviously a really true passion for you. I saw an interview you did with Lexi Martin, legend.

[00:02:51] I just did a podcast with her, and it was amazing. So I was hoping you might just give the audience a brief how you got here, because I always love to hear about how people found their passion and really just started, you know, going after it. Oh, Terry, I'd love that, and thank you so much. This is definitely a passion area for me. But it did take a little while to find it.

[00:03:15] So I actually got my start way back when in sociology kind of things, kind of thinking about systems and people and groups and how do we study that. And I thought for a long time I was going to go academia. And I really loved that. But I fell into nonprofit, and I realized in the nonprofit world I could create some of these systems to actually help people. And I really loved that work, that sort of like data and people and technology and thinking about things from that different lens, where it's not just that sort of people-people lens, but maybe that people-plus-data lens.

[00:03:44] And it wasn't until a couple years in, like I stumbled on this role. It was actually, funny enough, it was a Deloitte role, people analytics consultant, kind of like they were early days. And I was like, that's exactly what I want to do. And it's tough to pivot into the space. It was tough then. It's still a little tough now, but like trying to find your way in really when you're coming from a different field. I went back for an MBA, kind of broke into the space by that way. But I think one of the critical things in my career history was spending some time as an HRBP. That was something that I did not want to do.

[00:04:14] And I looked at, I was like, oh, that's HR stuff. I want to do the data stuff. I don't want to be an HRBP. And it was, it could not have been a better foundation for my career in just understanding this space, that ability to connect with people on those things that happen at work that are not in the spreadsheets, that are sitting outside of the kind of the deep data that we have. And that context that you bring as the HR business partner just shaped my career in the people analytics world. Maybe fast forwarding kind of a little bit, went through a couple different people analytics teams,

[00:04:43] got to see some very broad, massive projects over at Facebook. The team of nearly 150 when I was there, it was just a tremendous time to be in people analytics in that kind of high-tech environment. And then got to see and build teams kind of across Uber, Nike, Argo AI, and got to see very different ways to play with technology, play with data, work on problems, and started to see some of like what was common, what was different between those different areas. Across that all was really in this like data foundation space.

[00:05:11] And I can't get enough of that, that real like, when you really push down to the very bottom of the data, down to that bottom of that data foundation stack, you find out it's people again underneath the data. It's some kind of people problem always. And that's what's kept me, I think, fascinated in this. And it's why it's been such a joy to come over here at OneModel. So a little bit about OneModel, we're a people tech platform, people analytics platform. We are an end-to-end system in the space that we help out from engineering all the way through to beautiful dashboards and delivery at the end.

[00:05:39] And I came over here as a sort of like an in-house practitioner and a bit of a researcher. And I get to work with the community a lot. I get to do a lot of different things. And I get to scale some of those learnings I had across the different roles and help other people figure out about this space. So maybe a little long-winded path there, but it's been a really fun one so far. Yeah, well, and it's a really unique skill set that you have, I think. Because having that sort of human connection with the HRVP side of this, where you really do see everything.

[00:06:09] Like you experience everything in HR and that HRVP role. And then tying that back to the data, you know, it must give you a lot of unique insights that the sort of, and not to pick on data nerds, but the data nerd wouldn't necessarily have, because they haven't been out there in the trenches, right? Right. So very, very different, I think, perspective and an interesting career move. I think a lot of people are thinking about that, right?

[00:06:37] Like one of the things I was just talking to Lexi about was people pivoting, right? Or redirecting. And so, you know, there is that opportunity to take the skills you've learned one place and apply it to something that maybe isn't the same. Like it's not exactly what they're looking for, but it has large application. Yeah, absolutely. It's one of the things that I think excites me the most about HR tech right now too,

[00:07:05] is as a people function and as an HR group, we were told sort of like, hey, you have this very artisan way of doing HR. It's very qualitative. You've got to put that to the side and you've got to be data oriented now. And I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that those are opposing forces. I really think it's one of the things that we've got to bring both of those to bear if we're going into this next phase of what HR is going to be in the future. Because what's happening with the technology is this tech change that's occurring right now

[00:07:33] is one of the first ones where the tech is getting dramatically easier and more natural. And so when we think about like what HR is really good at, HR is really good at asking questions and listening. That is core to like, if you're going to work with people in a work environment, you've got to be able to talk to them. You've got to be able to interact with them. You've got to listen. And to be able to do that with technology was hard maybe 10 years ago. But platforms, it's really one of the goals of the platforms like a OneModel is we want

[00:07:58] to make that easier for you to be confident and to move that back from this sort of like, it looks like SQL and code into this natural language space. And as that happens, I think what really unlocks for HR is we get to do more HR stuff. We get to do more HR consulting and strategy and that deeper human side of things. But you sort of have to earn the right to do it again by going through the data. It's not an opposition to, it's not fighting it. You've got to go through it.

[00:08:25] You've got to build your foundation, really understand where your data is at and speak to that. But then you get to go back to that human side. And I see a lot of these advances across AI and conversational tech and even some of the language tech that's out there that's allowing HR to get back to that core, which I could not be more excited about. Yeah. And that's a lot of why people go into HR oftentimes. It's that whole people connection there. You know, they have a unique skill set and innate skill set, right?

[00:08:52] A behavioral skill set that you can't always teach. And they get in there and they find themselves doing compliance and they get burned out, right? They want to be able to do the people side of it. And I think a lot of what the technology, especially with the, obviously now with the advent of AI, I mean, we know analytics is already, it's been a confusing space, right? And it's evolved pretty significantly over the last 10 years.

[00:09:18] What do you see as the biggest challenges for people analytics today? Oh, this is a funny one because I think 10 years ago, 10, 15 years ago, when I got started in this kind of people analytics world, the challenge was really access to data and then data skill sets. Like you've got to be able to code. You've got to be able to use R or Python. You've got to be able to kind of dig in from that really like high technical talent. And we just didn't have that technical talent in the HR space. And we had to really convince a lot of technical people to come over.

[00:09:46] I think the funny thing today is like the platforms have really done a tremendous job scaling that stuff. And the technology has gotten so much better that the funny thing, the longer people are in people analytics, I tend to see them start to become like change gurus at the end of it. Where the hardest part in people analytics is not the tech anymore. Like we have platforms, we have software that can do these things. The hardest part is now that I have an insight, how do I actually make a change happen? And how do I actually pitch for resources?

[00:10:14] How do I make these kind of organizational conversations occur to allow me to do analytical things to then kind of make the things happen in the change side? So it's funny, like, again, it comes back to this, like the hardest thing in this like deeply technical space is this very soft skill, soft skill in air quotes of change management, which at the end of the day, we should be thriving at within HR. And that's one of the things where it's like, I hope we didn't throw the baby out with the bathwater as we kind of move from that kind of qualitative to quantitative, because we're

[00:10:42] coming out this other side of this very augmented world where you have to bring that tradition of HR into the technology space. And as we go together forward, that's the real sweet spot. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And what we've seen in the data is change is just across the board. It's happening way more than it has in the past. Everything that the organization is doing is having some downstream impact from a change perspective.

[00:11:09] And we're trying to educate leaders. Like we really think that the change leader is critical in this space, right? Because it's not a project, right? It used to be that you would say, well, we're implementing Workday. So we need to do a change project to implement Workday. Great. Obviously, there's a lot of adoption, a lot of work that needs to happen to affect that change within the organization. But at the same time, there's so many other things going on.

[00:11:39] And everything touches everything else. It's not like you're in a silo in HR where you can say, well, we're going to implement this new payroll system. And we're the only ones that need to worry about it, right? I mean, this impacts everybody across the organization, including other functions significantly. So yeah, I completely agree on the change management front. There's a lot of work to do there. And I see that in a big way around analytics. Yeah, it's funny.

[00:12:08] The words change and transform get thrown around a lot as buzzwords get in the space. But like they get thrown around a lot as nouns. Like we're going to do change. We're going to do a transformation. And the reality is it's a very active thing. But if you take a step back to rephrase it a little bit, I think what we're going after is our ability to respond. And HR needs a stronger ability to respond that's faster, better, quicker. We need to be able to respond in the moment as the world changes around us.

[00:12:38] And that muscle of being able to respond is very different than how tech was built in the past. A lot of HR tech was built very statically. Like you had your core HR system had these reports and they were canned, they're out of the box, they're ready to go. And the ability to actually have the muscle to create what you need in the moment, that's the thing that we really need today. If we're going to be in this constant change and this constant transformation motion, you're going to have to build muscles instead of having pre-canned solutions.

[00:13:05] And that's a hard shift, I think, for the space. But it's one that once we get through that, we're going to be in a much better position to respond faster. Hey, this is William Tenka, Work to Fun. Hey, listen, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about Inside the C-Suite, the podcast. It's a look into the journey of how one goes from high school, college, whatever, all the way to the C-Suite, all the ups and downs, failures, successes, all that stuff. Give it a listen. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:13:35] I couldn't agree more. And, you know, it's creating a lot of... I was talking to some people this week about skills and, you know, that area is really exploding. Everybody's wanting to focus on skills right now. You know, it's some of the same challenges, right? I mean, people are, you know, obviously people analytics is important, helping leaders make

[00:13:59] decisions, orgs are, you know, talking to and very focused on the tech. But there's this human side of it, obviously, that, you know, impacts it across the board. Nothing happens within the organization without the human effect and the culture of the organization, which oftentimes sits, sort of sits with HR, right? Everybody thinks HR drives everything people, but it really comes down from the top. It starts at the very top.

[00:14:28] And I know you guys are seeing a lot of new roles come out. So talk about new skills. You're seeing different roles emerge as we get further into the success of people analytics and sort of driving it further into the organization and making sure the right people are using it. And it's actually doing what it's intended to do, right? What are you seeing there? I know that you've done some research on this and there's some interesting things emerging.

[00:14:58] That's a really fun one to talk about. And it actually goes back to the very beginning that keeping the people in people analytics, it's a little bit of a double play there because really I have a real passion for connecting people to open roles in the space. And that's something I've always been kind of keeping an eye out for, making connections, making sure people are kind of placed. And it's because we have phenomenal talent and we have a lot of openings and the job market's just tough for this space because it's called so many different things. There's a ton of reasons there. But as part of that, we've been, we've actually been operating a job board from one model for the past two years.

[00:15:25] So it's every job in North America, UK, Canada, Australia, across people analytics. And that's, it's a fascinating thing because we didn't automate that. That's not a feed from somewhere. That's not a direct kind of Google feed or any Indeed feed. It's actually just a manual process I go through every three weeks, which has been tactical, maybe is the word for it. But it's also, it's hard to give up that, that manual process because I've learned a lot looking at a lot of these different postings. So we've got a database down of about 7,000 jobs that have been posted over the past two years.

[00:15:55] And as part of that, you start to see some of these trends that like as roles are shifting or as roles are a little more complicated to place on the board. Because if a job is like a head of HR operations, that job might be people analytics related. It might not be. Or maybe that role has a function that reports them that is people analytics. Does that go on the job board? Does it not? And it was a lot of those conversations we had around some of these like edge cases that kept popping up and popping up that we started to realize there's actually a potentially new center of excellence coming together within HR.

[00:16:25] So what we found is that we see a lot of these roles that are horizontals. So people analytics is a horizontal across HR. We touch kind of every of the verticals, the kind of verticals being TA, operations, comp, you name it. We go across. There's a couple other horizontals that are pretty closely related to people analytics that kept popping up. We started seeing HR tech. We started seeing data roles. We started seeing some HR ops or services. We started seeing some PMO type things. And the more we started seeing those, we started realizing that there's a relationship here between these functions.

[00:16:54] And so across a number of different interviews we did, we found what we're calling the people data supply chain, which goes strategy, ops, tech, data analytics. So to do good, really good people analytics, you need good data. But to get good data, you have to have technology that's implemented properly. But to implement your technology properly, you have to write down what you're doing. You have to have really solid operations. And to have solid operations, you have to know what your strategy is. And there's some kind of connection between those five subfunctions, those five horizontals,

[00:17:24] that it started to create this sort of gravity where those five subfunctions have started to come together. And more and more often, we're seeing a role pop up above those subfunctions. So it's in between people analytics and the head of HR. It's in between HR tech. It's in between ops and the head of HR. But it's somebody to navigate. And honestly, one of the phrases we hear a lot is transformation. If you see a VP of HR transformation, they're probably in charge of these roles. VP of HR ops services, analytics insights, a VP of... It's these like very long 60 character titles.

[00:17:55] And every person I interviewed, the funny thing, they all thought they were the only ones doing it. Like almost without fail. Wow. And so what's been funny is like you see this sort of center of excellence starting to come together, much like compensation has total rewards and benefits and equity or whatever else they might have. Or talent acquisition has recruiting, sourcing, branding, all of their subfunctions. We actually have a new center of excellence coming together with an HR. And the funny thing is, it doesn't seem like there's somebody selling it from a consulting

[00:18:22] side or there's not somebody that's pitching this as the new best way to do it. It just naturally seems to work really well. And I think people analytics leaders see this the most because people analytics sitting at the bottom of that chain, everybody above them on the supply chain can create problems for them. And so they all know the pain. They've all had to work upstream. They've had to work and consolidate. And we see a lot of people analytics leaders taking on this role above. We've been calling it a workforce systems leader. That's somebody to manage the systems of work.

[00:18:51] I think it plays really well into Josh Burson's systemic HR. It's a role to really own and drive systems thinking within the HR space. Is that name going to catch on? I'm not sure. There's a lot of names out there still. There we go. Okay, we got at least one fan. We got a lot of people with a lot of opinions, but that's okay. And it's a little bit of consolidation is a good idea. Perfect consolidation, probably not possible. But to talk about it, it's helped a lot of teams start to realize, oh, those are the problems I have above me. And I think this gets back to where people analytics is changing.

[00:19:21] We see teams realize that I can't be successful alone. I have to have my data, my tech, my ops, my strategy alignment. And if I don't have that, if I don't have the change management properly set up to make that successful, I can't be successful on my own just with a pile of data creating insights. I have to be woven into the organization. So a bit of a long answer there, but really excited to see that change and seeing that role pop up has just been tremendously curious about that. Yeah.

[00:19:49] Well, and I mean, it's been very difficult for the CHRO or the head of HR to sort of look across that and know what all is happening. You know, you've got your recruiting TA, talent acquisition, talent management, benefits and total rewards. They're all competing for the same resources in IT. And obviously, you know, oftentimes the loudest voice gets the support.

[00:20:17] And IT is looking at it and they're trying to solve recruiting problem, right? Or they're trying to solve the benefits problem. They're not looking across and saying, we have a broader problem that affects both of these areas. And if we fix that, obviously we'll have a much more holistic result. And nobody's been doing that, right? And I read through your, I love the people data supply chain.

[00:20:42] I thought that was really interesting because at each stage, you know, you had sort of, here's the latest challenge. And it brought back some early days for me. Like I used to implement technology, I used to implement comp technology back in my early days. And I just remember one of the biggest challenges was people didn't, they either didn't have a process or they didn't understand their process. So you were implementing the data in the system. Sure.

[00:21:10] And without a process, it really wasn't going to, you know, I wasn't going to be able to give them the things that I committed to them in the demo because my demo was clean and everything was great and, you know, everything was set up the way it should be. You get to start implementing this with no process and no clear direction. You're not going to get the results you want. And so, you know, I could see that all across that data supply chain, just the pitfalls, right? Oh, totally.

[00:21:38] And when each of those roles reports directly to the CHRO, the trouble is like the CHRO has a lot on their plate. There's a lot going on right now with CHRO burnout and risk and just what they have to deal with managing out and up to manage the board and the CEO and the C-suite and their peers. That's really where the CHRO needs to be focused. But when we have those five pieces of supply chain reporting to the CHRO, they have to navigate the politics between. And the CHRO has to come down to then say, okay, tech team, you've really got to get

[00:22:07] that data out for the analytics team or ops team. You've got to really work with the tech team. Come on, you guys got to play nice in the sandbox. And when the CHRO, what we've seen is when they bring on this workforce systems leader, somebody that can actually coordinate that whole system for them, it's a massive relief to the demands and the stress of the CHRO. Because this role can actually effectively coordinate a strategy through to execution. If you want to become more data literate as an HR organization, you need to get your

[00:22:33] strategy ops, tech, data, and analytics all aligned and talking to each other in order to push that out to the HRVPs in a way that's actually going to be effective. And if you don't have somebody in charge of bringing those five functions together, that's your job as a CHRO. And it's just, they've got too much on their plate. And so we've seen a lot of this sort of, at the smallest companies, you'll see it kind of combined because of just lack of headcount. At the middle-sized companies, these roles tend to spread out again. And the CHRO kind of eventually takes on too much.

[00:23:01] And then at the largest kind of Fortune 500s, we're seeing this role happen more and more often because suddenly there's just too much for a CHRO. They've got to bring in some support. And we've identified nearly 200 people that are in this job today. Every one of them has a different title, of course. But they're all in this community of practice now that they can start to talk to each other, connect with each other, and start to share insights because they realize they might have a similar job to some other people in this space. Yeah. Is this largely big organizations?

[00:23:29] Because I was curious, and you talked a little bit about sort of how you would scale this, right? Because there's a lot of, I feel like a lot of the smaller businesses coming into this, there's huge opportunity for them. And if they can scale that with tech and some resource, they can get it done. But sometimes they look at this big picture and they think, my God, we can't add this whole new function. Yeah. And some of that comes out of my own personal experience.

[00:23:59] When I was at Argo AI, I had HR tech, PMO, and people analytics. And so the three of those combined, I was able to move a lot faster when it came to actually getting insights out because I wasn't arguing with my workday team and they weren't fighting me for data access. And we could just kind of like solve some things very quickly. So I do think at that smaller organization level, this role makes a lot of sense to have somebody kind of combined across and it lets you hire different level people too. And I think this gets back to something interesting about people analytics.

[00:24:27] Those early people analytics teams that occurred kind of back when I was starting in the space, they had leaders that were like mavericks in the field. Like they could carve out space and they were politically savvy and they weren't going to be asked to the table. They were going to fight their way there. And those politically savvy people analytics leaders are not frequently found. It's an interesting kind of combination. I don't want to be like too generalizable here, but like if you're really nerdy and excited about the research and the consulting side of this and you really want to get into the

[00:24:55] data, you're not always the most politically savvy and you don't want to always be that kind of resource management person. You want to do the research. And so what we found is that it's also a way for teams, maybe if you're struggling to find that right people analytics leader, bringing in this workforce systems leader to really take on the politics, the resource management. You can hire maybe a senior manager of people analytics then instead of a director where there's some different ways to play with the teams underneath. And so I think for those smaller and mid-sized organizations, it opens up the talent market

[00:25:22] in a very different way and can allow them to access people analytics maybe earlier than they would have if they didn't have somebody maybe managing across those multiple areas. Yeah. I think it requires the leaders to start looking at some non-traditional skills for people coming into these roles and those non-traditional technical skills, you know, looking at where have you been like yourself, you know, where were you in HRVP?

[00:25:50] Did you work in, you know, hospitality? Were you out there with, you know, in the moment? And what kind of political savvy do you have, right? And we can measure a lot of these things these days, right? We can see that. Oh, totally. No, I agree. I think it's a, it's an exciting time. And maybe, maybe to put a point on kind of as people analytics has changed and evolved, one of the things that's been the most fun just watching this field shape is that it's not done.

[00:26:19] It like as much as I'm going to say some maybe offensive to my friends in payroll, but like payroll has been around for 75 years, 100 years. Like we've been paying people for a long time. Payroll jobs have calcified. That's a pretty, there's a standard kind of thing that you need to learn. There's certifications. There's great programs for that. You can become a payroll person. People analytics is still figuring out its space. They're just being a very young function that we haven't actually like nailed this to the ground yet. And if you try to nail it to the ground right now, you're going to be out of date in a

[00:26:47] couple of years, just with how quickly this is shaping and changing. And of course that's the kind of AI advances, but it's also the tech platforms again, kind of eating the bottom and pushing people analytics into this more consultative in strategy and change management space. It's a very different function today than it was 10 or 15 years ago. And that can make it hard to keep up with what's going on too. If you're looking at this from the outside and being like, man, that space is a little confusing. Those of us that are in it are also confused most of the time because we're still learning.

[00:27:15] And so I think taking some of that sort of, it's okay if this is confusing right now, but you've got to get involved a little bit. You've got to learn a little bit more about where it's at, but try to surf and maybe not go as deep if you're still trying to pick up what's going on here. Yeah. And if you're interested in analytics, you know, be curious. I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of things to learn out there and it's really about the, the result that you're looking for, right? Like I need to, I need answers to these questions.

[00:27:46] How do I get those answers? What advice, you know, when you're talking to people that have a fairly, you know, new, or maybe they don't even have an analytics function, right? They're relying on the reports they get out of their HRIS and, you know, some other systems. You know, what's kind of the first thing you talk to people about doing just to get started, right? Like to lay the foundation. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:15] Well, one of the things I keep in mind, especially when I'm talking to kind of broader HR teams about people analytics and getting started in the space is really people analytics as a way to listen at scale. So when I think about, again, like HR, we're very good at listening and that's a core competency of a good HR person. And if you're in a team of 50 people, you can listen to everybody. If you get to a team of 150 people, suddenly it's like, oh, I can try to make time for everybody. Might have to listen to more managers than people. If you get to 1500, suddenly you can't talk to everybody. There's no way.

[00:28:43] And as an HR person, more and more often we're finding ourselves in these ratios of 1500 more than 50. And so when we get to that spot, we start thinking, how do I actually get feedback? How do I get a sense of what's going on? How do I listen? And if you start to see data through that lens, we can look at something like attrition data. And if you start to listen to the attrition data, you can see things like, hey, maybe there's pockets where there's some toxic behavior going on. Maybe there's something wrong with our training program because I'm seeing some spikes.

[00:29:09] And the data will tell you that story if you kind of like look across and really come at it from that perspective of how am I listening to my workforce still? Something I'm very good at and something that HR knows and understands. Coming at it from that position of strength, I think, is a place to help break down some barriers. Because I've seen a lot of people look at analytics and be like, well, that's calculus and I didn't like calculus. I want to get out of there. And the reality is it's a lot of those small steps of some descriptive stuff to start.

[00:29:37] I had a manager way back when it was when I was at GE for some workforce planning. He said, what we do is fourth grade math at the college level. It's sometimes very simple math. And you can get away with some really tremendous things and you can build some tremendous insights from some simple math if you have access to your data and you can start pulling some data and start getting involved. I think that access point is a really tough one. And this is one where I see a lot of teams kind of wagging their finger at HR and saying, you need to be more data savvy. Why aren't you data literate?

[00:30:05] And then at that same breath, they don't invest in data architecture. They don't invest in data access. And so we have starved the HR team of data for years. We have deeply underinvested in the ability for HR to access its own data. And we definitely don't give them data from other functions. And then we tell them to be data organized and data literate. And I think that's very difficult. So as much as possible, when I talk to HR teams too, I say, hey, like I see you trying because HR people are trying today. We don't have holdouts like we did 10 to 15 years ago.

[00:30:35] They're like, that's not for me. I'm just going to be artisan and I'm going by my gut. Like that doesn't exist today. Like everybody's nervous and they all want to be data oriented. But a lot of them don't have the tools, don't have the access, or they don't have the talent on their team because they've been denied the ability to hire somebody. So I think that we really need to look at like what's stopping us? Where are those kind of points that we're not able to get through? And more often than not, it comes back to investment. And how much are we willing to actually invest to make this happen?

[00:31:03] And I think a lot of times that falls more at the CFO and the CIO than the CHRO in terms of the ability to execute. Yeah. Well, and you've really got to make the case for what's the return on my investment, right? What is this going to give me in the end? And if you can't make that case, which I think some organizations are challenged with, right? They know they need certain things, but they don't know how to turn that into a financial answer for the CFO, right?

[00:31:33] And, you know, oftentimes that's where the decision sits. So this is a tough one. And ROI to me is fascinating because like I've studied ROI. I've gone down the path of ROI. I've had to build ROI cases. The longer I've been in the space, the more I realized that when a finance leader asked me for the ROI, they're just telling me to go away. If they really cared, if they really cared about the result and they cared about what we were doing, one, they would help me.

[00:32:01] Two, you don't actually need the ROI for most of these things. If it's a business requirement or if it's like access to our data, why do we need an ROI for that? It's 2025. We're in HR. I'm a business leader. You have promoted me to CHRO and you will not give me access to data to run a section of the business. That's wild. And so I see a lot of HR people try to do ROI arguments. And the funny thing about HR is because we sit so far from the value chain, we support

[00:32:27] people who support people who do work or there's eight supports in there before do work happens. Yeah. We sit so far back that you get this like butterfly effect of ROI where it's either we did everything like a butterfly flapped its wings and a hurricane happened across the world. Everything's HR or nothing's HR. Yeah. But it's really tough. Like the ROI of sales, very easy. Salesperson hired, money happens. But that HR person who supports the sales team, where's their ROI? And that's where, like I've, again, like I'm trying to advocate for HR sometimes to just,

[00:32:56] you got to fight back a little bit on some of these things because some of these requirements we get from other teams, we comply and we want to help because we're people, people, we want to support people. We help each other out. If somebody tells me to do a project to get my investment, I'm going to go do it. But sometimes that person may not have the best intent. And I've learned that with ROI. That's a word that I watch out for because it's one that when a CFO is really invested in the business and a CFO is a people-oriented leader, you don't get those same questions.

[00:33:25] And a lot of the teams that have been thoroughly successful in people analytics or investing in people analytics, a lot of them have not had to do ROI equations. And so it's a tempting thing to say, if I can perfectly get this ROI, I will get my investment. That'd be great. But there's always blockades. There's different things that pop up. And it's where this comes back to change management because I think spending time with the CFO to say, hey, where are your people problems? Where are you having trouble understanding the business? Where do you wish we had more insight? And find out what they care about.

[00:33:53] I would say that'd be much more valuable than an ROI you did by yourself most of the time. So sorry for this dumb speech. That's just a, that's one that I really watch out for in this space. I completely agree. And, you know, it is hard for HR because, you know, we can, there are some things we can obviously measure it in terms of, but, you know, we're really doing the work for the leaders in the business, the front line, right?

[00:34:18] And so, you know, I think it's obviously important to have those relationships. And again, this comes back to the politics, right? How do I have to make sure I have the relationships with the right people so that when I need to make a case for something that we need, they're, they're standing beside me or they're helping me make that case, whether there's a number involved or just, you know, here's the, here's the political ramifications. If we don't, you know, if we don't do this, there's not always going to be a perfect number.

[00:34:48] So yeah, I completely agree. And I think people struggle with that, right? They, they, they work in a silo trying to figure it out instead of just going and having the conversation and saying, help me figure it out because I think this is really important to the business and here's why. And, you know, again, obviously it depends on your CFO or the people in finance, what, what their level of interest is. You know, organizations are a mixed bag. You never know what you're going to get, right?

[00:35:18] Oh, totally. I'll say though, I'll put in a shameless plug for y'all. This, the Sapient Insights HR tech system survey has some of the best data I've seen when it comes to actually tying HR investment to business outcomes. Stacey shared a couple of those slides with me from early on that, that show that sort of, here's the actual things that statistically make a difference. If you can make this investment in HR, you see these business outcomes change. It's a tremendous report. Make sure you take the surveys and get a free copy or, or get the budget to go pay for the copy because it's worth it.

[00:35:45] Because I think if you are being pressed for that ROI conversation, I would point people directly to that, that report that you all create. Yeah. Yeah. But I think, I, I think your advice is great that, you know, if you're, if you're struggling with it, ask for help, you know, it's not incumbent upon you to always come up with, with the right answer. Right. And that's what I love about organizations is there's so many people you can collaborate with. Oh, absolutely. And, and, and it's a great piece of advice for the community as a whole,

[00:36:13] especially if you're new to people analytics, maybe tying back there. Yeah. People analytics as a community has really grown up online, which has been a little funny. Like all of the people that do this work, that do this in practice, they're on LinkedIn. You can find them and they are so pro community in investing and lifting each other up. I have never seen something like this and I'm not, I hope other communities have this too, but within people analytics, if you're getting started and you're looking for, Hey, how do I do this? Or you see someone that does it well somewhere, reach out to them. And I'm sure that that person had someone they reached out to, to get started in the

[00:36:43] space too. It's a very collaborative organization, this sort of like multiple company organization of this people in analytics community. And it's something that's kept me in this space for so long is that collaborative nature of the field itself. Yeah. Yeah. I think some of the stuff that Danielle Bushen is doing at Sanofi is just amazing. You know, she and I did that fireside chat at HR tech last year and, you know, just learning about all the stuff that she's done in an organization of that size and magnitude.

[00:37:12] It's a little bit intimidating. Yeah. And Danielle's a great example because she also finds time to start the Toronto people analytics meetup. She's investing in mentoring people. I mean, that's across the board. You find these people that have these incredible, massive jobs that are finding time to give back and find ways to give back within people analytics. Yeah. And yeah, Danielle's a great example of that. Yeah. So you're not alone. Not alone. Absolutely not. Yeah. You can find people out there.

[00:37:39] Well, Richard, what's one thing that you might, you know, if you think about some of the people that are either in analytics and sort of struggling to get started or thinking about going into analytics or maybe not thinking about it at all, but they listened to the show and they thought, hmm, that sounds really interesting. I might want to go into analytics. Is there any advice you would give them or, you know, something that they can do to maybe determine whether this is the right place for them? That's a great question.

[00:38:09] And I think it's changed a little too, because I think 10 years ago, I'd be like, learn SQL, like get involved with coding and like find a way to learn that. But like, and everybody just ran out the door. They're like, I know we'll be losing people on that. But I think today it is more important to learn the verticalized analytics. So thinking about the subject matter expertise you bring. And it's something I've recommended to a lot of people that are thinking about this kind of people analytics space, maybe having trouble breaking into an analytics role is spend some time in HR. And really the phrasing I used was by side.

[00:38:37] So on the people analytics side, you're selling people analytics to the organization. If you're an HRBP, you're buying people analytics. And you're working with a great team in a lot of these organizations. And becoming a really good buyer to understand how it's applied and how the change happens can really further your career and get you closer to the space. But more and more often, again, coming back to this call we're hearing is like, like platforms like OneModel or tools like ChatGPT, they are going to erase generic ability in the analytics space.

[00:39:06] You've got to bring a little bit more today than you needed 10 years ago. I think if I was graduating with just a pure data analyst degree and a data analyst certification, I didn't know what I wanted to do with it. You're going to have a really hard time. So I think finding that area of the business that you feel like you can add value or that strikes a chord for you, whether that's marketing or finance or wherever it may be, hopefully it's people analytics because we love having more people over here. But I think learning that deeper subject matter expertise is going to become tenfold important in the next couple of years as the technology floor rises.

[00:39:36] And as the remaining questions start to become more human and a little bit less data. Yeah. Yeah. And I think people end up in areas, but you start to see people who have this sort of idea of analytics emerge no matter what area you're in, whether that's marketing or finance or HR. So where they take and decide to apply, you know, that curiosity and that interest in driving that is, you know, hey, come over to HR.

[00:40:05] Some fun stuff happening over here. Oh, I've seen that again and again. Somebody comes over from finance or marketing or healthcare and they're like, you guys are so happy over here. You're doing big projects and I feel like I'm giving back. And they just like, it fills their cup in a very different way. And I think that's why people analytics catches some really phenomenal people. It's like, if you want to give back and help people help the world of work, like work is tough sometimes. If we can make a work a little bit better, you can go home and I feel like, hey, I made somebody's life better today.

[00:40:33] It wasn't just a spreadsheet or a ad campaign or whatever else it might be. It's like, hey, I'm helping my coworkers. I'm helping my colleagues. And I think that keeps a lot of people in this space. Yeah, I think so too. Well, I would suggest people read the white paper because you have a white paper on a lot of what we just talked about right here. So, and I think it's fascinating and it's all, I think it's, it's all useful information. It's not just fluff.

[00:40:59] It's there's some real tangible activities in there. And, you know, it's not a step program, but there's some ways to, to really help you kind of get, get started and to maybe pull back a little bit and think, okay, wait a minute. I don't want to go down this path. I need, I need to be more structured around my thinking for this and how all of these areas touch one another, you know, and ultimately how to tie this together. If that's going to be my, my job. Yeah. And we're continuing research in this space too.

[00:41:28] So if you're a workforce systems leader as ops tech and analytics, please reach out. So I'd love to talk to you to share more. And we're continuing to talk to CHROs about this too, to see how this role best helps them. So some good research going on right now too. Hopefully we'll, we'll be able to share something else soon too. Well, join the research then. So, well, Richard, thank you so much for joining today. This has been a great conversation. Do you want to give people your, where they can reach you online or on your social so they can find you? Oh, absolutely. OneModel.co.

[00:41:55] If you want to learn more about what we're up to over at OneModel, we're always excited to talk to people about this. And then LinkedIn Richard Rosenow. That's the best way to find me. I dabble with other platforms from time to time. I have a Blue Sky account. I have other accounts out there. It's hard to do more than one. So you can find me on LinkedIn. That's my second home and send me a message, say hi and get involved in the community. And he does respond. So yeah, definitely check that out. Well, that is all the time we have for this episode of HR. We have a problem.

[00:42:24] I also want to encourage you to listen to our sister podcast, which will be out next week, Stacey and Cliff, while they spill the tea on HR tech. I want to thank our producers, Brand Method Media Group, Kelly Kelly, and our marketing team, Cindy and Summer, who make sure that you get this podcast every week. And thank you for tuning in. We really appreciate it. If you enjoyed this episode, you can subscribe to it on your favorite podcast app. Leave us a review. Reach out.

[00:42:53] We'd love to chat with you on the website or let us know what you want to hear about because we like to tailor these. This particular podcast was tailored to what we learned from the survey this year. People said, hey, we want to hear more about analytics. And I thought Richard was the perfect person to bring that to us. So we will be back in two weeks with another episode of HR. We have a problem. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, everybody.