Discovery Land Company

Keith Coldon is an HR technology and people analytics professional with experience across SaaS, consumer goods, hospitality and real estate. He began his career at HelloFresh USA, progressing through recruiting, people operations, people analytics and HRIS while supporting the company through rapid growth, acquisitions and its IPO. He also led the strategic implementation of Workday HCM.

Keith later worked across several SaaS companies, strengthening HR operations and people strategy through internal controls, HR technology and analytics. In 2023, he joined Discovery Land Company, where he implemented Workday for a global workforce and continues to optimize the platform. His work focuses on operational efficiency and data integrity as the foundation for meaningful people analytics and business strategy.

Building a Data-Driven People Strategy

Reliable Data Sources as a Foundation for Strategic Insight

Workday enhances operational workflows by housing business process transactions within the platform, creating a history of business transactions that can be reviewed, audited and extracted. By storing approval workflows for offers, new hires, job changes and terminations within the system, all data within each of those business processes is also reportable. This allows analysts to extract information that is relevant to workforce themes identified by leadership to drill into the conversations that matter most to the business. Because Workday is also highly customizable to the needs of each of its customers and it puts configuration in the hands of the customer, it allows organizations to create workflows that are meaningful for them. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach to systems management. This is important because the HRIS is typically the source of truth for any data that is used to create people strategy across the organization.

Looking Beyond Headcount and Attrition

Some organizations that have never analyzed people data think about their workforce trends through a static lens of headcount growth and attrition as some of the key markers of organizational health. While these metrics are valuable, getting more nuanced in these discussions and combining the output of the analysis with the context of the current state of the business will drive more meaningful storytelling.

Is every employee who exits the organization considered a regrettable loss based on performance or other qualitative information? Probably not.

Does a decline in headcount inherently mean the business is at risk of failing? Not necessarily. Some businesses operate on a seasonal basis and plan for headcount fluctuation.

“Without the combination of qualitative and quantitative data, HR is not able to serve as trusted advisors to the business.”

The metrics that I find most critical to HR decision making include regrettable turnover, headcount growth, upward and internal mobility, and how each of these datapoints trends over time. Splitting out the view of this analysis by different business functions, locations or management hierarchies can also be helpful in identifying certain themes within the business.

Putting Business Context behind the Numbers

HR practitioners cannot rely purely on static metrics to design workforce strategies that work for the business. Using qualitative context, whether it is from the goals set by the leadership team, recent reorganizations in the business, or feedback extracted from employee engagement surveys to explain the trends that are being reported on is key.

Without the combination of qualitative and quantitative data, HR is not able to serve as trusted advisors to the business. People data analysts need to clearly understand the organization’s goals, recent success stories and challenges, and interpret what a change in the data means in relation to those stories. For example, what does the same metric say about the business under different circumstances, a reorganization, ramp in seasonal hiring or a hiring freeze altogether? This is the key to being able to collaborate with the organization’s leadership team on developing strategies that can be adopted and embraced by the whole organization.

Protecting Data Quality at the Source

Inconsistent or inaccurate data entry always limits the effectiveness of data analytics. If people data is not managed in a clean manner at its entry point, we can’t expect to drive meaningful conversations about what the data is telling us after it has been reported on. Workday and many other HR systems of record, have options to implement guardrails during the data entry process. This can come in the form of Workday’s Guided Tours or Help Text. Many systems allow configuration of soft alerts, reminders, or hard errors that minimize inaccurate data entry. It is also up to HR leaders to train their teams on the importance of data quality.

 

Ask the questions:

● Are all assignments for the following fields for every employee correct?

• Business Titles

• Management Levels

• Compensation

• Full Time/Part Time Status

• Hourly/Salary Status

• Work Location

• Manager Assignments

● Do the effective dates of the employee changes reflect the actual dates of the changes?

● How can we establish a routine process to audit this information on an ongoing basis?

Turning Employee Feedback into Measurable Action

People insights can use employee experience as a metric to explain the landscape of the workforce and shape the goals of the HR team accordingly.

When an organization is surveying employees on their experience, the HR team can use the responses to develop a compelling Employee Value Proposition (EVP) that directly responds to employee feedback. For example, if employees frequently mention a desire for leadership development and enhanced benefit programs in the engagement survey, it is the responsibility of the team analyzing those results to work with HR leadership on creating an EVP that tangibly responds to what employees asked for and then commits to it publicly. Over time, HR analysts should be able to monitor the impact of those programs on employee retention through metrics pulled from their HRIS.