HR Analytics

Lecture 4
Data visualization and storytelling
Previous on HR Analytics…

• What is HR analytics? Why it is important?

• The strategic value and position of HR (analytics).
• What do we understand with the “predictive” part?
• Benefits and challenges of HR analytics
• Different frameworks highlight different components.
• There is no “one size fits all” approach to implementing analytics into your people function, but
it is underpinned by capability, data and technology.
• The importance of ethics and governance.
• Information sources, how to measure, analytical software
• Big data
• Make a business case

2
Agenda

• Visualization
• Storytelling with Analytics
• Toolbox
• HR Analytics – the present and the future
Agenda
Learning Objective 5 and 6:
• Justify – “sell” the results of HR problems to top and line management (e.g., to show the impact, weather beneficial
of detrimental of various HR practices towards employee performance) and provide policy suggestions.
• Develop critical thinking and logic – how to develop testable models from theory and understand how such models
can be tested (e.g., descriptive, t-tests, regression analysis), and what software can be used (e.g., SPSS).

By the end of this lecture you will be able to:

• … explain how data can be presented in concise way.

• … understand how you can determine your audience how are the needs of your audience.

• … be able to present your data effectively, pointing the audience to the most important parts of the visualized
figure.

• … understand what kind of software you can use to visualize and present your data.

• … explain how HR Analytics in was seen in the past, how it is seen now and how it can be seen in the future

4
Vizualization
 “The ability to take data—to be able to understand it, to process it,
to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it—
that’s going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades,
... because now we really do have essentially free and ubiquitous data.
So the complimentary scarce factor is the ability to understand that data
and extract value from it.”
— Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist
da – da – da- da 1–2–3–4

tak – tak – tak 1–2-3

 Linguistic Symbolic
(Verbal) (Math-Logic)

Interactive Geometric
(Kinesthetic) (Visual-Spatial)
 Linguistic (Verbal) Symbolic (Math-Logic)
The Pythagoras' theorem is a relation in
Euclidean geometry among the three
sides of a right triangle. It states:
“The square of the hypotenuse (the side
opposite the right angle) is equal to the
sum of the squares of the other two
sides.”
Interactive (Kinesthetic) Geometric (Visual-Spatial)
 “ To develop a complete
mind, study the science
of art, the art of science.
Learn how to see. Realize that
everything connects to
everything else. “
- Leonardo da Vinci
Storytelling with Analytics
Storytelling with Analytics

1. Understand the context

2. Choose an appropriate display
3. Eliminate clutter
4. Draw attention where you want it
5. Think like a designer
6. Tell a story
Practical example
Understand the context (1)

• Before you start down the path of data visualization, there are a couple of questions that
you should be able to concisely answer:
• Who is your audience?
• What do you need them to know or do?
Understand the context (2)

• The first thing to do when faced with a visualization challenge is to make sure you have
a robust understanding of the context and what you need to communicate.
• We must identify a specific audience and what they need to know or do and determine
the data we’ll use to illustrate our case.
• We should craft the Big Idea.
Understand the context (3)

• In this case, let’s assume we work for a startup that has created a consumer product. We are
starting to think about how to price the product. One of the considerations in this decision‐making
process— the one we will focus on here—is how competitors’ retail prices for products in this
marketplace have changed over time. There is an observation made with the original visual that
may be important:

“Price has declined for all products on the market since the launch of Product C in 2010.”

• If we pause to consider specifically the who, what, and how, let’s assume following:
• Who: VP of Product, the primary decision maker in establishing our product’s price.
• What: Understand how competitors’ pricing has changed over time and recommend
a price range.
• How: Show average retail price over time for Products A, B, C, D, and E.
• The Big Idea, then, could be something like: Based on analysis of
pricing in the market over time, to be competitive, we recommend
introducing our product at a retail price in the range $ABC–$XYZ.
Choose an appropriate display (1)

• Once we’ve identified the data we want to show, next comes the challenge of determining
how to best visualize it.
• In this case, we are most interested in the trend in price over time for each product.
• If we look back to our Figure, the variance in colors across the bars distract from this, making the
exercise more difficult than necessary.
Choose an appropriate display (2)

• Since the emphasis in the original headline was on what happened since Product C was launched
in 2010, let’s highlight the relevant pieces of data to make it easier to focus our attention there for
a moment.
Upon studying this, we see clear declines in the
average retail price for Products A and B in the
time period of interest, but this doesn’t appear to
hold true for the products that were launched later.
We will definitely need to change the headline from
the original visual to reflect this when we tell our
comprehensive story.
Choose an appropriate display (3)

• Should we try a line graph here instead of a bar chart—since we are primarily interested in the
trend over time?

YES! Lets do it.

The view in figure on the left allows us to see

what’s happening over time more clearly for
one product at a time. But it is hard to
compare the products at a given point in time
to one another. Graphing all of the lines
against the same x‐axis will solve this. This
will also reduce the clutter and redundancy of
the multiple year labels.
Choose an appropriate display (4)

With the transition to the new graph setup,

Excel added back the color that we removed
in an earlier step (tying the data to the
accompanying legend at the bottom).
Let’s ignore that for a moment while we
consider whether this view of the data will
meet our needs.
If we revisit our purpose, it is to
understand how competitors’ prices have
changed over time.
The way the data is shown in the figure on
the left allows for this with relative ease.
Oh, but wait…

• We can make taking in this information even easier by eliminating clutter and drawing
attention where we want it.
Eliminate clutter (1)

We can improve this with the following

changes:
• De‐emphasize the chart title. It needs to be
present but doesn’t need to attract as much
attention as it does when write in bold black.
• Remove chart border and gridlines, which
take up space without adding much value. Don’t
let unnecessary elements distract from your
data!
• Push the x‐ and y‐axis lines and labels to
the background by making them grey. They
shouldn’t compete visually with the data. Modify
the x‐axis tick marks so they align with the data
points.
• Remove the variance in colors between the
various lines. We can use color more
strategically, which we’ll discuss further
momentarily.
• Label the lines directly, eliminating the work
of going back and forth between the legend and
the data to understand what is being shown.
Eliminate clutter (2)
Draw attention where you want it (1)

• Consider the initial headline: “Price has declined for all products on the market since the launch of
Product C in 2010.”
• Upon a closer look at the data, I might modify it to say something like, “After the launch of
Product C in 2010, the average retail price of existing products declined.”
• Figure below demonstrates how we can tie the important points in the data to these words through
the strategic use of color.
In addition to the colored segments of
the lines in the figure on the left,
attention is also drawn to the
introduction of Product C in 2010
through the addition of a data marker at
that point. This is tied visually to the
subsequent decrease over time in
Products A and B through the
consistent use of color.
Draw attention where you want it (2)

• We can use this same view and strategy to concentrate on another observation—one perhaps
more interesting and noteworthy: “With the launch of a new product in this space, it is typical
to see an initial average retail price increase, followed by a decline.”
Draw attention where you want it (3)

• It might also be interesting to note, “As of 2014, retail prices have converged across products,
with an average retail price of $223, ranging from a low of $180 (Product C) to a high of
$260 (Product A).”
• Figure below uses color and data markers to draw our attention to the specific points in the data
that support this observation.
Think like a designer (1)

• Though you may not have recognized it explicitly as such, we’ve already been thinking like a
designer through this process.
• Form follows function: we chose a visual display (form) that will allow our audience to do what
we need them to do (function) with ease.
• When it comes to using visual affordances to make it clear how our audience should interact with
our visual, we’ve already taken steps to cut clutter and de‐emphasize some elements of the graph,
while emphasizing and drawing attention to others.
Think like a designer (2)

• Two more tips for you:

• Make the visual accessible with text. We can use simpler text in the graph title and capitalize
only the first word to make it easier to comprehend and quicker to read. We also need to add
axis titles to both the vertical and horizontal axes.
• Align elements to improve aesthetics: The center alignment of the graph title leaves it
hanging in space and doesn’t align it with any other elements; we should upper‐left‐most align
the graph title. Align the y‐axis title vertically with the uppermost label and the x‐axis title
horizontally with the leftmost label. This creates cleaner lines and ensures that your audience
sees how to interpret what they are looking at before they get to the actual data.
 I think people have begun to forget
how powerful human stories are,
exchanging their sense of empathy for
a fetishistic fascination with data,
networks, patterns, and total
information... Really, the data is just
part of the story. The human stuff is
the main stuff, and the data should
enrich it.
- Jonathan Harris, visual artists
Tell a story (1)

• Usually, two scenarios in the organization

• Write a short report
• Do a presentation

• Imagine we have five minutes in a live presentation setting under the agenda topic:
“Competitive Landscape—Pricing.”
In the next 5 minutes...
OUR GOAL:
Understand how prices have changed
1 over time in the competitive landscape.
Use this knowledge to inform the pricing
2 of our product.
We will end with a specific recommendation.
Products A and B were launched in 2008 at price points of $360+
They have been priced similarly over time, with B consistently slightly lower
than A
In 2014, Products A and B were priced at $260 and $250, respectively.
Products C, D, and E were each introduced later at much lower price
points...
…but all have increased in price since their respective launches
In fact, with the launch of a new product in this space, we tend to see an
initial price increase, followed by a decrease over time
As of 2014, retail prices have converged, with an average retail price of
$223, ranging from a low of $180 (C) to a high of $260 (A)
To be competitive, we recommend introducing our product below the $223
average price point in the $150−$200 range
Tell a story (2)

• Some general advice for the presentation but also the report:
• By drawing our audience’s attention to the specific part of the story we want to
focus on—either by only showing the relevant points or by pushing other things to the
background and emphasizing only the relevant pieces and pairing this with a
thoughtful narrative—we’ve led our audience through the story.
• Here, we’ve looked at an example telling a story with a single visual. This same
process and individual lessons can be followed when you have multiple visuals in a
broader presentation or communication. In that case, think about the overarching
story that ties it all together. Individual stories for a given visualization within that
larger presentation, such as the one we’ve looked at here, can be considered
subplots within the broader storyline.
Tell a story (3)
Tell a story (3)
Toolbox
 Tool landscape (1)

Abstract, Flexible, Difficult Blackbox, Limited, Simple

Slow, Code, Expressive Quick, GUI, Efficient
 Tool landscape (2)

Abstract, Flexible, Difficult Blackbox, Limited, Simple

Slow, Code, Expressive Quick, GUI, Efficient

Canvas Grammar Visual Charting

Paint directly on a Collection of Visual analysis Collection of fixed

pixel grid. Design & graphical primitives languages allowing charts that require
manage every for composing data flexibility to design data to be shaped
element of chart. driven graphics. many variants. in a particular way.

Processing R-ggplot2 Tableau Excel

Nodebox SPSS Gephi Mondrian
sketchpad raw plot.ly Many Eyes
Raphael.js d3.js Google Charts
Paper.js Vega HighCharts
Processing.js Bokeh Fusion Charts
The future of people analytics
HR Analytics – the present and the future

• The key role of the HR function is still more or less the same (e.g., Ulrich & Dulebohn,
2015)

• Is HR analytics a fad?
• It is an buzz phrase and very popular. Advanced HR analytics is
becoming mainstream (Fecheyr-Lippens, Schaninger, & Tanner, 2015) and is increasingly
considered to be an indispensable tool for HR (Boston Consulting Group, 2014).
HR Analytics – the present

• HR Analytics today, some insights (n=20, HR specialists in 11 big Dutch

companies) (van den Heuvel & Bondarouk, 2017) :
• Four key areas: Application, Value, Structure, IT
HR Analytics – the present

• Analytic pitfalls that will contribute to make it a fad (Rasmussen & Ulrich,
2015):
• Lack of analytics about analytics.
• Mean/end inversion or data fetish. Some are enamored with analytics, thinking that
more data (or ‘‘Big Data’’) is always better. It is not about data, but about data for
informed decision-making.
• Academic mindset in a business setting.
• HR analytics runs from an HR Center-of-Expertise. The phenomena of “Data mining”.
• A journalistic approach to HR analytics. The problem of “power is knowledge”.

• People do not care (Angrave et al., 2016).

HR Analytics – the present and the future

• So, what can we do to overcome the fad and establish HR analytics as a

decision making (Rasmussen & Ulrich, 2015) or decision science tool (Cascio et al., 2019)?
• Start with the business problem.
• Take HR analytics out of HR.
HR Analytics – the present and the future

• Remember the ‘‘human’’ in human resources. We are not rational.

• Train HR professionals to have an analytical mindset. The love/hate relationship with
data.
“There are few courses in HR analytics, and those that exist may be superficial. A course in
HR analytics would include: deploying a diagnostic framework, basic training in statistics
and science methodology (or perhaps just a recap for some), change management, and
storytelling.”

Rasmussen & Ulrich, 2015

It seems you are in the right place!

Where are we going?

• Here are again some predictions:

Value

Structure
Where are we going?

Structure

System support
Where are we going?

• Khan & Miller (2020) > Number of evolving and emerging trends
Organizational network analysis (ONA)

• ONA is a structured way to visualize how communications, information and decision flow through
an organization > the next big thing in people analytics.
• It looks beyond the organizational charts (the organizational behind the charts), and helps you to
understand how your business really operates.
Some applications of ONA

• Understanding the challenges associated with effective collaboration in organization. Who are the
informal influences who resonate with people? Hoe can silos be broken down?
• Strategically managing and levering the alternative workforce to ensure business growth.
• Change and how that can be implemented more successfully based on the network that exists in
an organization.
• Leadership behavior and the impact of their networks on success.
• Digital transformation and how to implement it more successfully.
• Creating an innovation culture through employee networks and high involvement strategies.

• Hierarchy? It is more than that?

An example
“You're not just looking at one [social network] diagram. You're looking at
who communicates with whom, who trusts whom, who goes to whom for
new and innovative ideas, who gets information from whom, who goes to
whom for decision making.”
Kate Ehrlich, IBM
An example (1)

• Information Sharing
within
an Expert
Consulting
Group
An example (2)

What they did:

• internal projects—work together
and so begin to develop an
appreciation of each other’s
unique skills and knowledge.
• mixed revenue sales goals so
that each of the managers was
accountable for selling projects
that included both a technical and
organizational component.
• several new communication
forums were created—including
weekly status calls, a short
update e-mail done weekly,
and a project-tracking database.
Network diffusion
Summary

• Visualization
• Storytelling with Analytics
• Toolbox
• HR Analytics – the present and the future