In this episode, we speak with Leatham Green the Executive Director of the PPMA to discuss why data is so important and what value it brings to the HR Community. Covering a range of subjects from busting myths to help decision making, through to not fearing data and understanding how it will affect future workforces. 

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Introducing the PPMA:

The Public Services People Managers Association is the first-choice association for people professionals in public services. They are an advocacy group providing thought leadership to central government and public sector organisations, people, workforce and organisational development.

Matrix SCM has been working with the PPMA for over 4 years across a range of activities, from attending the national conferences through to supporting research most recently of which was into the effects of Brexit.

Why is Data so important to the HR Community?

The world of HR organisational development is all about people, so sometimes it can be seen as a soft subject but in reality, it’s one of the toughest to crack. With huge workforces across public sectors made of unique, emotional human beings, how do HR professionals get them to operate, perform and engages as an organisation requires.

Data is fundamental to this, as it allows us to have informed transformational conversations by combining the facts with our expertise of human beings. Enriching a story and business cases to help us get the resources we need to deliver now and in the future. Data is relevantly easy to capture, the important element is if it is relevant, timely and appropriate so that HR can action it. Especially in the Public Sector were costs are being cut, we need that data to invest our money and time in the best way.

Actioning data and busting myths:

One of the biggest goals is to bust myths in organisations. People often work on subjective viewpoints that could be based on information that is decades old or no data at all. As an example, at Matrix SCM, we find a lot of organisations have PSL’s in place with big corporate agencies. There is a view that they must work with these co-corporations as they always provide them staff. However, we find opening supply chains to SME’s and big agencies still provides the same quality but increases fulfilment rates to 99.6% within client set deadlines. By looking at this data we can debunk myths and cut down to the bare facts to make informed decisions.

The key here then is linking this with HR, once you have the data what do you do with it? We need to be able to tell stories of the data and go beyond what the data says on the page to make informed decisions. As an example, if you’re struggling with a 15% turnover of staff, that’s the data, but how does that impact our cost to hire? How does that impact Agency Spend? What does that mean in terms of productivity?

What data do we want and why?

Once we have the fundamentals right, we want to understand where you are getting the data from, what you are doing with it and why. Just because a system can produce reports, doesn’t mean we need it. So, as HR professionals we need to understand precisely why you want some data and what technology is the best for getting what you need.

At Matrix SCM we find this comes up a lot, as our system manages the entire end-to-end process of hiring HR have access to a wealth of data. To action this data, our Business Managers actively meet with HR professionals quarterly to talk through this and the contract. Allowing the HR professionals to understand the data and pull the reports they need to make decisions as and when they need it.

Automation and busting more myths:

With automation and AI coming into the workplace it is going to revolutionise the way we think and the way we work. The bulk is about partnering with digital technologies and individuals and understanding what part of the process you are best at and where automation can help. In HR it’s about emotional choices, can a computer really make the decision if someone is a good fit for an organisation and that they have the right behaviour trend? If we automated this process you would end up with the same type of person coming into a business, so diversity and inclusivity become non-existent. There is always going to be a need for an HR Professional and we need to help organisations think what processes we can automate.

There are elements in that process that a computer can do better, quicker and more accurately, but we must also recognise that humans can also do some things better than a machine. From Matrix SCM’s perspective, we have the first-hand experience of this. When clients come on board who have manual processes, we get resistance sometimes around automating processes and driving efficiencies. As what does that mean for the worker who has always done that part of the job? However, the question should be where can we re-focus their time? By integrating systems like CR.NET and Oracle, you automate the role of someone sifting through invoices. Now they can work smarter, so the organisation may not have to employ a temporary member of the finance and can now utilise the time saved of a full member of staff to give them something more challenging and exciting to do.

Future Workforce:

The future of workers is going to be the ability to adapt, allowing them to move into new gaps in work and be future relevant. As HR we need to encourage the ability to adapt and be future relevant, supporting employees to re-invent themselves in their learning. Removing the thought process that ‘this is my job, and this is the way I’m delivering it’. This could be that they are a supporter of people, an enabler of others or an expert in human beings. Technology should be helping to remove the drudgery so that they can focus on what they are best at.

Organisations like Matrix SCM can deliver the process better than an individual organisation can ever afford to invest in, that’s the benefit of partnering with technology companies. There’s no hardship and it’s not wrong to say that, yes, this technology does it better. Together we are working in partnership to add value to the public sector and the local community.

Sharing knowledge:

The PPMA are bringing speakers that can pass on that knowledge and lift the thinking so HR can take it back to their organisations at their annual conferences. On top of that Matrix SCM are constantly exploring key subjects like this in research documents with the PPMA and in our Podcasts.

Next episode coming soon!

We have a series of interesting events we are going to be attending this month, where we will be meeting professionals and having conversations to fuel our next episode. If you are interested in getting involved with the Podcast and talking to us about key subjects in the market, please feel free to get in touch below: