There's a bit of a debate in my organization (an HR organization) about where the Data Analytics functions/office belongs. In your HR organization, where is the Data Analytics function located? Do you align it under HR IT, Talent Development/Workforce Planning, or elsewhere?
Sort by:
Never can be part of HR ops, Talent dev. Planning etc. it has be always part of IT as it is a overlapping function with dependencies on software engineering.
I've seen different flavors across multiple organizations. 1) centralised and separate D&A function (in parallel to IT) taking care of everything at the enterprise level, 2) centralised D&A function doing only AI/ML part while IT teams taking care of traditional BI, 3) IT team taking care of both AI and BI, 4) respective BUs doing their own AI/ML while traditional BI sitting with IT, 5) HR function doing their own AI/BI and also owning the HRMS systems, while IT teams taking care of rest others etc. etc. As one can imagine, none of these is the absolute best and the answer is always contextual - much depending on an organisation's past history, power politics, risk appetite, perception and performance of IT within the business, individual personalities and leadership etc.
Today it sits in HR. The challenge with HR data is that it contains SPI(I) data which is impacting GDPR risks. While you could argue to put it all in 1 team there is a big security risk in case performance, comp, DEI or talent data is visible and accessible to those who don't need to see this. For this reason many companies put people analytics in HR, having said that what I would recommend is that you have a global Analytics strategy and team, you can then work with sub-teams led by SME's i.e. in this case People Analytics and they can only access People data nothing else, a clear segregation of who can see / use/touch People data is key.
If your organization is currently debating the placement of the Data Analytics function, it suggests that generating and managing data is a critical aspect of your service to clients. With this in mind, I recommend adopting a hub-and-spoke model. In this structure, the hub would be your engineering team, responsible for governing and maintaining policies and models. Simultaneously, analysts should be integrated into various business units as domain experts, directly where their expertise is most applicable. Additionally, it's advisable to establish a circle of practices, led by the hub team, to ensure the standardization of best practices across all units.
Thanks, Pascal. We have a sort of 'decentralized' model within our HR function right now and it's not working great. I'm learning that 83% of HR organizations have their analytics function centralized within HR, but there's some discussion about where, exactly, to centralize it.
The title of the team is not enough to decide its org chart location. It will be dependent on whether the flavor of the team is more technical or business oriented. For analytics teams both versions are common because of its multidisciplinary function.