As an HR and talent acquisition (TA) leader, I truly believe the single most important goal we have is to increase the talent within our organization. We do this by attracting, hiring, and developing employee skills while providing great pay, benefits, and opportunities that improve their employee experience. However, one of the things we don’t pay as much attention to, compared to other parts of our organizations, is our people data, which we can leverage both to achieve our goals and plan for the future.

As kids, we were fascinated by superheroes and bionic men and women with supernatural powers that made them better versions of themselves. As leaders, we can use people data to elevate our employees to a level of super performance they never felt was possible. I could argue that HR and TA have a dynamic duo of people data at their fingertips to empower organizations to build and develop super employees.

We often view people data as a performance benchmark rather than the elevator of performance. I think we should change the narrative so that people data is seen not as something we just use to gather information about workers, but as something which can help them improve and grow their careers. People data can make us all super employees by helping to diagnose where and how we can perform better while providing feedback on our progress along the way.

How leaders can use people data to build super employees

  1. Establish an understanding between you and your employee that they want to become the best version of themselves to ensure you are on the same page.
  2. Shift the mindset around using people data as a “gotcha” and start using it as a tool to discover where employees need to develop. Yes, it can show where workers (or the organization) fell short. However, instead of focusing on the failure, people data can provide much-needed insight to improve, discover what action needs to be taken, and help you move forward.
  3. Spend less time questioning the data and more time understanding how you got it, what it’s telling you, and embracing it as a guiding light to help you improve the employee experience.

Lather, rinse, repeat. The consistency of how we use and take action from people data is a powerful sign to our workforce that we are all in, and it isn’t just a fad we like today, but may not like tomorrow. Workers have a better employee experience when they know what to expect and see accountability from their leaders regularly.

It’s time for leadership’s appreciation and usage of people data to trickle down to people managers and workers. How? By showing them that people data can be the most powerful advocate for their career path and futures.

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