Improve workplace performance and achieve group objectives through people analytics—the process of using behavioral data to understand and manage organizations. Under the instruction of two of the field’s pioneering experts, you’ll learn how to use your company’s data to increase the speed and quality of your decision-making, identify organizational problems, analyze behavioral metrics, and enhance company outcomes.

Course Overview

Born out of the MIT Media Lab, people analytics, using behavioral data to understand and manage organizations, has fundamentally changed how companies operate. This course will provide participants with a foundation in people analytics through discussion and hands-on exercises with real world data and tools. There are basic questions that have an impact on businesses that no one can answer. How much does the executive team communicate with engineering? Is a manager really spending time with their team? How often should a salesperson speak with a customer? The reason we can’t answer these questions is a lack of data. Surveys and consultants are useful, but their shortcomings are evident. They’re slow, subjective, and don’t actually measure what happens in the real world.

New data has changed this equation. We are constantly generating data about our behavior: e-mail, IMs, calendar data, and increasingly sensor data about the real world. This is people analytics: using behavioral data about how people work to change how companies are managed. In this course, we’ll first investigate what data we have at our disposal now and in the near future. We’ll also discover what behavioral metrics really matter and how can you communicate these metrics to other stakeholders. Next, we’ll focus on how these new metrics and data streams can rapidly increase the speed and quality of decision making. Similar to A/B testing in the online space, now we can A/B test how businesses are managed. Compensation, IT systems, real estate decisions, and even org charts can now be rapidly deployed and quantitatively tested by combining behavioral data and key performance indicators (KPIs). We’ll discuss examples from Fortune 500 companies that have successfully used people analytics to improve their organizations, as well as how they are transitioning to an A/B testing decision making culture.

Participant Takeaways

Understanding what behavioral data you already have Learning basic people analysis methods Identifying organizational problems that you can address with people analytics in the near term Understanding common roadblocks to implementing people analytics Learning the potential value of people analytics for your organization

Who Should Attend

This course is ideal for directors, senior managers, executives, and business leaders in all industries who have (or want to have) responsibility for improving organizational performance.

Requirements

Laptops are strongly recommended for this course. Tablets will not be sufficient for the computing activities performed in this course.

Program Outline

This course runs 11:00 am - 2:30 pm on Monday, 11:00 am - 2:00 pm on Tuesday, 11:00 am - 4:30 pm on Wednesday, 11:00 am - 2:30 pm on Thursday, and 11:00 am - 2:00 pm on Friday.

Day 1

Welcome Honest Signals and Social Physics People Analytics: Data and Tools

Day 2

Core Tool: Social Network Analysis Group Exercise: Understanding Complexity Exercise Discussion

Day 3

Moving from HBR Cases to A/B Testing Group Exercise: Rewire the Class with Lunch Group Proposals and Vote Building a People Analytics Team Breaking it down: What problems do you have today?

Day 4

Network Analysis Metric Review Group Exercise Data Analysis and Explanation Analysis Discussion

Day 5

Breaking it down: What problems do you have today? Group Lunch Discussion: Implementing People Analytics in Your Organization Group Learnings WFH and the Future of Workforce Analytics

Links & Resources

News/Articles:

A Study Used Sensors to Show That Men and Women Are Treated Differently at Work. Harvard Business Review, October 23, 2017 People Analytics, discovered in Cambridge. LinkedIn, July 30, 2017.