Roberts suggests putting all the data into a spread sheet or a database and then graphing out what you find.
“Eventually you’re going to start to see some trends,” she says. “Start collecting what you do have, so even if you don’t have it today, a year from now you will.”
This empirical evidence will help a company understand its hiring trends separate from its internal culture. Roberts says many companies feel guilty and assume staff turnover is a sign that they are at fault.
“A lot of organisations think, if I just give more training, if I just give more mentoring, more coaching, then [the employee] will be better. So the organisation takes on the responsibility for performance.”
“I think if you get the right person in the job that’s enthused about the role, then they will do a lot of their own training, take on a lot more responsibility themselves.
“So instead of throwing more training at someone who doesn’t have the right mindset for the role, find the person that has the right mindset and your training dollars will go down.”
Roberts suggest looking at data role by role. The minimum size to really begin seeing trends is about 40-50 people in the same job.
She says the model needs to focus on the outcome the business most cares about. So, if you want to predict a staff member who will last longer than 12 months, then you must input the amount of time employees stay at the company. If you want to predict people who sell above 100% of their target, then you need to input current net sales performance in the model.
“If you find the people that are doing well, try to find out what it is they have, and then try to find more people like that,” says Roberts.
She also says it is just as important to look at bottom performers, as well as top performers, to see what sort of person works and what sort of person doesn’t work within your company.
Once you have found a model that predicts your best employees, you can then use it to employ the right people. But Roberts says companies often don’t know how to apply the model to the recruitment process.
One strategy that Talent Analytics uses is to use questionnaires. If you find top performing staff members have a certain type of mindset, ask job candidates to fill in a questionnaire measuring how they stack up against the desired mindset.
Roberts says that while data can point to many employee trends, it will always rely on an employer’s expert opinion to anticipate all the different variables involved in hiring staff.
“Some people may get a little afraid and think the robots and the models are taking over, but it’s not the case. You need an expert opinion to say, ‘well that’s what the model says but we’re going to go against it’.”
“What’s cool is that once you have [the model] set up, then you can really watch to see how the model performs versus how the expert opinion performs.”
Greta Robertson will be taking part in the ADMA Global Forum in Sydney on July 30.
Kirsten Robb is a former journalist at SmartCompany. Previously, she worked at News Corp as a property reporter for Leader Newspapers and the Herald Sun, and holds a Masters of Journalism at Melbourne University.
