Human Truth Podcast | Ep. 13: The History of People Analytics and Its Impact on The Future of Work

Welcome to The Human Truth Podcast where, each episode, we take a closer look at a popular workforce statistic ripped from the headlines and ask: Where’d it come from? Is it true? And why should we care? 

Did you know that people analytics, the practice – not the term as we know it today – began in 1911? Since then, people analytics, the practice, has evolved to become foundational to business, people, and financial outcomes. 

According to Insight222, in the last 12 months, 88% of people analytics teams have been asked to do specific work for the board of directors. 

People analytics has come a long way, and in this episode we breakdown its history, how we use it today, and its opportunity in the future of work. 

On the podcast this episode:

• Host, Ian Cook is Visier’s VP of People Analytics

• Guest, David Green, author, people analytics thought leader, and director of Insight222 & myHRfuture.com.

Mentioned in the episode: 

• The 100 Year History of the Human Resources Department

• Visier University: People Analytics 101 Video Courses

Subscribe to The Human Truth Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts & never miss an episode!

Want to get in touch? Email us at podcast@visier.com

Episode transcript: 

Producer: Are you curious what people analytics is all about? Then check out our new free video courses to learn the basics. Engaging experts show you the power of people analytics apply to critical business problems like retention, turnover, accurate headcount, and how to ask the right questions and to get the best answers. Go to learn.visier.com to start learning now.

It's The Human Truth Podcast where each episode we take a deeper look at a popular workforce news, rip from the headlines and ask what is this all about? Is it accurate? And why should we care? Did you know that people analytics the practice, not a term as we know it today, began in 1911. Since then, people analytics, the practice has evolved to become foundational to business people and financial outcomes.

 In fact, 88% of people analytics teams have been asked to do specific work for the board of directors in the last 12 months. It's come a long way, baby, and that's what we're talking about today, how people analytics came to be, where it is now and where we see it going. For that, let's get into it with host Ian Cook and special guest, David Green, author, people analytics thought leader and director of Insight222 and myhrfuture.com. Both people analytics learning networks.

Ian Cook: Hi, I am Ian Cook, the host of The Human Truth Podcast, where today we're talking about the history of people analytics and its forwarder trajectory. To discuss this topic, I am joined by David Green. David and I go way back and we've shared stages over the last 10 years. Both of us focused on growing the practice that is now known as people analytics. David's passion and commitment to building community and through that helping to grow a better approach to the people side of business was apparent the very first time we met and Insight222, which is the organization he leads with other colleagues in the space is the result of all that hard work. So alongside a book on how to build a world class people analytics function, David is also the host of the Digital HR Leaders podcast. So it's a genuine pleasure to have you with us today. David, thanks for joining us.

David Green: Oh, it's great to be on the show, Ian, and it's a bit of a role reversal because I think you were on my podcast, the Digital HR Leaders podcast last year, aren't you? So now you get to ask the question.

Ian Cook: Yeah, I get to ask the question and I'm looking forward to the conversation for sure. I think a great place to start again, if we start with the people analytics past and going back and looking at the history, one of my colleagues was delving around on your LinkedIn feed and found a reference to, let's call it people analytics or the use of people data going back to 1911, in your mind, how long has this people analytics thing been going on?

David Green: Well, it's interesting actually because I think that article, which I suspect is the five ages of people analytics. So it's an extract from the first part of the book, excellence in People Analytics. And when Jonathan and I were writing the book, we thought if you really wanted to understand the present of anything and think where something's going to go in the future, you need to try and understand the past.

So when we looked at the past and tried to see where people analytics started, it wasn't called people analytics in 1911, before anyone writes in, we kind of traced it back to the work of Frederick Taylor and his book, the Principles of Scientific Management, which was published in 1911. And as you know Ian, just for those that don't know who are listening, in it he sets out methodologies to optimize tasks, drive efficiency, maximize productivity, and basically through measuring everything employees did. And it was supposed to be for everyone's benefit, including employees. And perhaps the most famous implementation of Taylorism, as it was called, was in the Ford Motor Company through their production line, which famously automated processes but created significant efficiencies and increased their production speed. So that, that's kind of where we saw it starting from anyway.

Ian Cook: No, I think that's a very legitimate place to start because a lot of the focus was on people and how they worked and who they worked with and how they were organized. And as you say that kind of the science aspect of management and doing it based on evidence and measurement and I think it was all clipboards and paper back then. So a little less than digital than we are these days. So we're on that basis. We're celebrating our 110th anniversary though it feels like it's a whole lot more new and evolving as a practice. So again, I think this is also from your book, you came with the years 2010 through 2015 at the age of realization because I think in the last 20 years, certainly for me personally, and I kind of reference off Jac Fitz-enz and the work of the Saratoga Institute is really establishing metrics as a core part of HR practice. So from your perspective that age throughout 2010 to 2015, age of realization, what did you see happening through that phase?

David Green: Yeah, I think there's a number of things that you rightly said Jac Fitz-enz and there was Huselid and Ulrich with the HR scorecard in the early 2000s, I think HR started to change, if we go back a little bit to the '80s and '90s from being purely personnel and looking at administration to looking things like recruitment development and other things. And then we obviously needed to measure certain elements of it as well. And the work of pioneers like Fitz-enz and Huselid and Ulrich and others really helped evolve that. And then, you'll know this Ian as well, but I guess it was probably the early 2000s when we started seeing people analytics teams. Again, they probably weren't called people analytics teams, I suspect it was Google that came up with the term. We saw them sprouting up in organizations principally technology organizations like Microsoft, like Google, obviously as I mentioned, and IBM and a few others.

But I think that was the origins, a bit of a white glove approach perhaps mainly doing work for the leaders within the organization. Probably a lot of data wrangling to be perfectly honest. There weren't applications like Visier around at the time and helping shape decisions for leaders. But again, it was in the minority and you could argue that we were still in that very long age of discovery. I think what probably changed things was the global financial crisis a little bit. So in those companies that had already started to invest, when I speak to the people in those organizations that some of them still there in the same roles, they say that that really was, it almost flicked the switch on a little bit with analytics because they were then using some of the information that those teams were providing to make decisions almost in real time.

A little bit like we saw in the pandemic 10 years later or 12 years later. So I think that was one. I think too in the age of realization, there was that some really good articles and there was that really famous one competing on talent analytics that was in HBR in 2010 with Tom Davenport, Jeanie Harrison, Jeremy Shapiro who's obviously the people analytics leader at Merck and co now. And they really gave some great examples, not just in technology companies like Google, but at Best Buy, they quantified the value of employee engagement from memory as well. So I think those sorts of things acted as an inspiration. And then I think honestly, I think I was at the Wharton People Analytics Conference last week and Prasad Setty who as you know and many of our listeners or many of the listeners will know, he certainly was a huge inference on the people analytics function at Google.

He led people analytics and compensation there under Laslow Bach for such a long time and Google started publishing some of their work Project Oxygen around attributes of managers project Aristotle around team effectiveness. And I think that really creates a huge surge of interest, not just from business leaders but from HR leaders and analytics professionals that maybe had perfected some of their skills in marketing and were looking at other business domains on maybe to move into. So I think that was definitely another trigger. Then we started seeing conferences sprout up, like the one we first met at, which I think was probably back in London in 2014, maybe 2013, not quite sure. But-

Ian Cook: Yeah, no, it's I think 2014 People Analytics World, so London Docklands, I remember it well.

David Green: And there's specialist conferences on people analytics. Last week's, Wharton People Analytics Conference was the 10th anniversary. So I think that happened. And obviously companies like Visier and others started portraying themselves as specialist HR analytics or people analytics technologies as well. So I think number of different things started to come together I think. And it kind of created a little bit of a surge that, which is why we called it realization because it was almost like not just business leaders, but beyond just the few pioneers, more people started to realize that this was a thing.

Ian Cook: No, I think that's a great name for it because I would support or concur with a lot of the direction you're looking at it. But my own background is in organizational development and lot of all of the questions set you have is you're literally doing organizational research with that one-off project base. Hey, let's go in, let's go and find out if this is true or not kind of thing. But as you do those, you understand there's value here, there's insights, there's unique insights that can help the business. As the technology evolved, it's like well this ceases to be a clipboard and piece of paper and let's spend 2,500 hours collecting the information that we need so we can actually analyze it and it becomes a lot more accessible and then all the practices become known. So I think it's a fascinating to understand the past of the interest in these questions has always been there, but the knowledge, capacity and speed to deploy it in business is kind of really radically different, which I think takes us nicely to the next piece that I was going to highlight.

And Insight 222 has done a fabulous job of stewarding the knowledge around people analytics and sharing it broadly so that we can elevate the entire practice and the way it functions inside an organization. And a recent piece you have on impacting business value leading companies and people analytics. Lots and lots of standout pieces of information in that. But one that I think what really like to touch on is like 88% of the teams you surveyed had done work directly for the board of directors in the last 12 months. And so that I think signifies just how much people analytics has come of age. Were you surprised to find the 88%, what do you think is driving that 88%? Because that's a lot of people and directly to the board.

David Green: Yeah, we were pleasantly surprised when we saw that because the survey part of the research was completed by over 180 companies and yes, we approach bigger companies, global companies principally they had to have a people analytics team for us to invite them to participate in the survey. But it was higher than we possibly would've hypothesized at the start. Now we conducted that research last summer, so summer of 2022 I think we've probably all got different hypotheses, but I do think the pandemic acted as an accelerant to the growth of people analytics. When Jonathan and I were researching the book, which we wrote principally in 2020, we saw that it had acted as an accelerant and people analytics was no longer just about HR, it was about the business. So obviously you know this Ian because you were involved in some of this work that was going on at the early stages of the pandemic business leaders just wanted to know things like are employees safe?

Have people got the tools they need to work from home? And then obviously through the various stages, how are people feeling about return to office? How are people collaborating when they're working remotely, when they're working hybrid? So big business challenges I'd say. And then you know, could extend it into the whole debate around skills as well. And the big focus on diversity and inclusion. So a lot of topics that we've looked at as HR topics for a long time are actually now business topics and they're right near the top of the business agenda in most organizations as well. So I would say that that possibly is part of it. I think when we looked at, because the whole report really, that was one big finding and that in people analytics is increasing its influence. The other two were that it's growing in importance.

So teams are getting bigger team, their people analytics leader is increasingly reporting to the CHRO or at least someone on the HR leadership team of 90% of the 184 companies doing that. And we started to see, we started to look at the practices of leading companies. So a lot of that is creating some of those stakeholder relationships outside HR with the CEO, with the CFO in particular, but also with other business leaders, general managers in the business as well. So I think the whole bit of, I guess you could argue that people analytics is sort of 10 years behind marketing analytics. And I think once the C-suite sees the power of it and how it can help them make better decisions, what ultimately is what it should be about, then they'll get people analytics teams as they start to show their value will increasingly be asked to do work for the board.

Ian Cook: And there's a little bit of a cycle there as well where the business, I think as you quite rightly state, going back to 1911, business leaders have always been interested in the people aspects of making work effective, making companies effective. What I think they are now being served with as you highlight, is skilled practitioners with deep understanding of both the data, the analytic practice and the business acumen to make meaningful contributions to as you say, not just HR practice, what should we do with our benefits program, but actual business practice, which market should we enter and how? The other piece I would say, and I'd be interested in your comments on this as well, that the pandemic kind of ushered in a significant pivot in the overall labor market because we're still running in a lower participation rate, we're running with different ways in which people participate in work, we're different work choices.

And that all happened in a very accelerated timeframe, which to me did two things. It increased the emphasis and kind of the crucial nature that people are the biggest unsolved problem inside business and then the SC regulations and now recently the new European CSRD regulations have placed a level of mandatory disclosure about the people's side of business that wasn't there. So I think confluence of factors just place this need to have evidence behind how the people are supporting your business. It's kind of gone from a nice to have to a must have on as you say that C level agenda. Anything from your insight around the kind of workforce challenges that people are tackling today?

David Green: Well I think you talked about some of them. It's a fantastic article that Lynda Gratton published in the Harvard Business Review a couple of months ago, I think, which is about re-imagining work. And in it, it's not Linda's quote, but she quotes someone else who I can't remember at the moment, so apologies to that. But she's talked about this being the biggest change to work since the industrial revolution that we're going through at the moment. Now, that you could argue that's slightly hyperbole, but I think there's no doubt that this shift to hybrid work, and it's not just where people work, it's how work gets done, when work gets done. We are seeing obviously technologies, we couldn't really go through this episode in without mentioning generative AI. It's a bit early to talk about what the impact of that will be, but clearly that's another big thing that's impacting the way work gets done.

Ian Cook: Yes.

David Green: So-

Ian Cook: I don't know if you're, you're aware, but Italy has banned Chat GPT-

David Green: Yeah I saw that.

Ian Cook: Today for 20 days. So I think it is a highly disruptive, highly uncertain, all of that creates this sense of change, which I think is you're valuable to lock into and

David Green: People need information. It's unsettling for leaders, it's unsettling for workers, it's unsettling for managers. So if we can bring data into those discussions and hopefully companies make better decisions about what to do. So I think that's one thing I think employees are generally more socially aware than they've ever been. So topics such as diversity, equity and inclusion, impact of the company has on climate, all that sustainability stuff, I think that's all important now.

And that feeds into what you talked about, the kind of investor lens on this. That's probably another reason why boards are more interested in people data in the work because they're kind of being pushed to by investors and by regulatory bodies such as the SEC as you mentioned in the EU. And we're kind of only at the early stage of this at the moment. And I think guidelines on what information needs to be disclosed if you look at the SEC stuff isn't overly clear, but we'll become clearer I suspect. I think the agreed the EU and stuff around corporate sustainability more about this than I do Ian, but I think that's a little bit more specific around what information companies need to disclose.

Ian Cook: Yeah, no I think you highlight an important piece there, David, that this is emerging is the importance in the standing in terms of board C level. There's a nice game of disclosure tennis going on across the pond with the SEC being the first to mandate it, but the European Union being the first to list what those things are and then debate around how does this all become standardized. So clear movement towards a very different world and a far higher level of transparency and insight into the people's side of business, which is, as you well know, David and I think Peter Capelli did a really nice article on this at the end of last year as basically all the people side of business was hidden in the SG&A line in finance completely hidden, opaque and all that is changing radically and fast. So I'm going to take us to a quick break and when we come back, because I think it's a great spot to jump off from to start considering well where is this all going next? So thanks for listening. We'll be back shortly.

Producer: Are you curious what people analytics is all about? Then check out our new free video courses to learn the basics. Engaging experts show you the power of people analytics apply to critical business problems like retention, turnover, accurate headcount, and how to ask the right questions and to get the best answers, go to learn.visitor.com to start learning now.

Ian Cook: So welcome back. I am Ian Cook, the host of The Human Truth Podcast from Visier. Today I've been joined by David Green, a people analytics thought leader and we're discussing the past, present and future of people. Alex, so just before break, David, we were talking about the present, the increasing impetus from investors, all the amazing work that's been done, the kind of proving out that people analytics can drive business value and that connection to business. If you're gazing in your crystal ball and thinking about these trends we've been both been looking at for some time, where do you think people analytics is going and what do you think the kind of work or the kind of positioning inside a business that's going to have going forward?

David Green: Well again, these are hypotheses of course that we wait to see if they come true.

Ian Cook: Absolutely.

David Green: Unfortunately, my crystal ball's looking a bit cloudy today, so I can't definitely see what's happening. But I think if you look again, we've been doing the people analytics trends research now for three years and I know you've been doing similar types of research at Visier for even longer. We are seeing a continued growth in the field. So I expect to see that to continue. I expect to see people analytics teams growing relative to the size of their overall organizations. When we maybe run that question again around doing work for the board, maybe their scope for that 88% to increase and maybe the frequency, so that was at least one piece of work over a year, maybe it will be once a quarter. So I think those two things we're definitely going to see growing.

And then if you look at our research, as I said, there were three areas that we really highlighted is there was investment if that's in the team and in stakeholder relationships principally and in prioritization, that continual prioritization to make sure you are doing the work that's most important and not being bogged down in some of the more mundane and less value adding work. The measurement piece I think, which is around obviously measuring the financial business impact, not of every piece of work, but at least some. But I think where we going to see a lot of growth is in the scale parts. So there's three elements to that. So one was around democratizing data and getting that out to people in the organization, not just leaders but also managers to help them make decisions in the flow of work. Also out to employees to give them insights about the data they're sharing and how that can help them with their careers.

I think we are seeing that obviously what you do at Visier is all about democratizing data and getting it out to managers. I think the other two areas are around productization. So we're seeing people analytics teams now increasingly hiring product managers, people with UX experience. So if you want to scale people analytics, you know can't just put stuff out there, you've got to put it in a way that gets people to want to actually use the products that you're creating. So thinking like we would from a consumer perspective. And then the third area around scale is really about helping HR professionals develop an analytical mindset, particularly HR business partners. And even though we've been talking about this for years and some companies, IBM, I know from my time there you have made significant strides in doing that. It's still a big challenge when we speak to people analytics leaders and based on the research that we've done, people analytics leaders feel responsible for doing that or are made responsible for doing that within their organizations.

So I think that's an important part of scaling people analytics. And then more from other perspective, we've talked about the investor demand, so the increasing regulations. So I think that's definitely one area. So this is one thing Jonathan and I did in the book, we look forward to, okay, what's going to drive the growth of people analytics in the next few years? So invested demand is definitely one of those, the human experience at work. So which I think see as the next step in employee experience. So using analytics to develop programs and tools across the enterprise and it's that shifting HR from being an arbiter, a process to a creator of offerings and experiences, which again leads to the product management piece that we were talking about now. That could really be sped up by things like generative AI. And then the other two areas are around skills.

And we are seeing this again in some companies. So if you look at the sort of PWC, Deloitte, McKinsey surveys skills is a top three challenge for CEOs, but ultimately if you want to get to skills data, it's about data ultimately. So if we are going to be looking, moving from the job as a unit of how we design HR programs to skills, that's a huge change and Deloitte's putting out some great stuff about that and others as well. But ultimately if you want to personalize career paths, if you want to recommend personalized learning, all those sorts of things, you need to have good data to do that. So I think, and it's going to reshape is reshaping workforce planning. We're seeing in the companies that are maybe further ahead with this. And then the last thing I'd say is around, and I think we seeing the early signs of this is the kind of improving society.

So this big focus on DEI and actually when we asked in our research where is people analytics adding the most value in your organization, DEI has come out top the last two years. But I think it's not just thinking about your own organization, it's about thinking from DEI from a societal perspective as well. And I think that potentially expands the conversation and what we do in people analytics to the wider communities we serve. And that brings in what we talked about earlier around potentially looking at extending that to climate and sustainability as well.

Ian Cook: Yeah, that's a great answer, David. Really wide ranging, a couple of things resonated for me going back over the times and specifically looking at the research Insight 222 has done or the work we would've done at the start, I think a lot of analytics teams came out of HR reporting, which was the group of people who pulled the spreadsheet out of the HRS. I think way back then in that pre 2010s, I don't think any of them reported to the CHRO. They were known and a friend to the CHRO because they were often the rescue calls like, "Quick, can you get me this data?" And the fact that I think in your latest results, it's like 80 to 90% of people in a mature analytics function are one at or one below. The CHRO kind of just indicates that the strategic impact and the strategic connection of the use of data that has been growing and I second, it's now well established. Does that make sense to you?

David Green: Oh yeah, yeah. I think that definitely makes sense. I mean the closer you are, again, teams were buried way down in HR and as you said, they were just seen as, "Okay, we need data, we'll go to the data team, reporting team." And now it's very different. And I think even some of those people that don't report directly into the CHRO now they're still part of the extended HR leadership team. So they're at the table. And I think more importantly than that, it the CHRO obviously sending a message to the rest of HR that this is important and this is important for all HR professionals to have that analytical mindset, but also it's getting that interaction I guess with the people analytic team and the business as well, probably with HR bus in concert with HR business partners as well.

Ian Cook: Yeah. I think the collaborative stuff is a big part of it because I think that's the second piece that I see in inside your answer is a lot of the early work of the early teams that I would deal with, they're like, "Yeah, so-and-so's done this project. They've come to me to ask me to measure it, to work out whether or not the project has been successful." It's that post fact do some measurement so we can go back to the business and say we spent money wisely.

One of the changes I certainly see, and again interested in your perspective is often they're actually doing the work with the data upfront in order to shape pay strategy, in order to shape DEI strategy. Again that I'm not surprised it came through in the survey around the DEI results because we've had some great stories within our own clients where an analysis of DEI was what then shaped the DEI program. So it was driven from a view on the data first as opposed to setting aspirational targets and then hoping that you got there. So I think we've moved from a data to work out what happened to using data to work out what should happen. I think I can see that extending, as you say, out into more senior roles and a broader population, getting to that management population I think is a very significant step.

David Green: Yeah. And we've seen that with hybrid work, haven't we? Because a lot of people analytics teams that we work with respectively have helped shape their company's return to office strategy, their approach to hybrid work, and now they're looking at understanding the effectiveness or not of that and understanding when in person matters, understanding insights around onboarding as it relates to people maybe onboarding in a hybrid or remote perspective. So I think lots of, and as you said the data is shaping the strategy rather than the other way around. And I think that's important because the closer you are to strategy, then the more impact you're likely to have.

Ian Cook: Yeah. So we've probably got one final question for you, David, and it's while we're talking about the future because we're starting to see glimpses of it within the people that we work with where they're taking a system like Jira, which captures the work being done not by a development team, they're blending that into their people data system. So they'd have sentiment data from surveys, they might have collaboration data from network detection. They've got the HRS data of who do they work for and how long do they work for us. They're blending that with story points from Jira or call center data to actually try and understand that as you highlighted with the skills, how are people doing work, how do we help them do work better? A lot of it around making a great work experience. Do you think that's going to stay the preserve of just the very best, it'll be like the 5% who are driving that down that path, or do you think in the future that will be a common approach for business?

David Green: I like to think it'll be a common approach for business. And I suppose if you look back over the progress that the field's made in the last 10 years, you would expect it to make similar progress in the next 10 years. Certainly to the companies that are a bit newer to this perhaps. I think now we are in a field where mean every time I pick up half a business review or MIT Sloan management review, there's always an article that's got some, even if it doesn't call it out as people analytics, it's got some analysis of people data in there that that's supporting some work. You're doing it. So that inspires business leaders. It inspires people in our field to do even better work. And I think it's just easier to get some of that data, isn't it now? Collaboration data 10 years ago, how many people were doing network analysis of passive data, you could probably count them on one hand, I suspect, whereas now lots of companies are doing this.

Yes, arguably we're still in the early stage of it and yes, we need to make sure that we are looking in it from a privacy and ethics perspective as well. But I think the power, when you combine, for example, your engagement data with your network data, your badging data, and then you start to link that to some of the business data and then you can start to really understand the impact positive or negative of different work models and that really supports good decisions. I think the power of, I'm sure you'd agree in the power of people data isn't looking at one data set on its own. It's when you bring numbers of different data sets together to answer a specific question or questions and that's when you get the real value.

Ian Cook: Yeah, 100%. And again, your search scenario, search corroborates that this is, you don't solve a people analytics challenge just by looking inside your HRS, the answer is usually not there, it's usually across other stuff. I think, again, I appreciate the optimism, David. I think that's one of the reasons we've always stayed friends is I love hanging out with optimists, but I also think you're really touched on a, it's probably going to get faster because from my observation, HR is a suitably cautious because everything we do impacts people. But when the business outside of HR starts to get a sense of things that can really work, I think about the engagement world. We'd been running surveys for years, but as the connection of sentiment to performance became really clear that it took off in a way that may not have happened if the business was less clear about what it meant.

From what I hear you saying, and again what I see myself, I think we're at that same phase where business unit leaders, CEOs, enlightened operations leaders are kind of going like, "You know what? This people data can help me run my business in a win-win way. Good for people, good for business, I want more of it." And my own view would be that that's going to accelerate the demand. It's going to accelerate the opportunity. It's going to accelerate the impact. So 10 years from now, you and I don't know where you're at in terms of retirement plans, but we're maybe looking at the twilight of our careers. We can look back and see just how far we've come because I think we'll be moving faster in the next 10 years than the last.

David Green: I think you're right and it's an exciting field to be in. Whether a practitioner working in an organization, whether you are a technology firm like or whether you are consultants and kind of observers of the field like we are, it's grown so much, but you could still argue that, again, you'll know this as well as I do and probably better than I do, Ian, there's so many companies that are quite early in their people analytics journeys. So there's a huge ramp for us to grow significantly, I think in the next five to 10 years.

Ian Cook: There is, we actually did a piece of research ourselves looking at a adoption of data. There's a growing body of research, a bunch of it supported by people like BlackRock that indicates using your people data connects to business value. Again, Accenture just published something that there's a seven percentage point premium if you involve the people elements in your data and technology strategies. And our view is that as you talked to two or 300, we've got our couple of hundred clients, there's maybe 700 enterprises across North America that have a capable people analytics function up and running. There's 3,700 enterprises with over 2000 employees in North America. So there's 3000 or more organizations that probably want to listen to the podcast, probably want to follow Insight 222 and start thinking about how do I play catch up because the field is clearly established, the results are clearly established, and as you and I would say, the results are not going to be slowing down anytime soon.

David Green: No, I'd agree with that.

Ian Cook: So we'll call it a day here. Again, anybody who's listened to this, if you're in the people analytics domain and you're like, oh, I'd like to know more, very much encourage you to follow Insight 222. If you're in one of those HR organizations, that's how to data on the radar but has yet to take action, then again, hopefully you've got some ideas and understanding of how to turn this into a practice inside your business. Certainly between David and myself and the people we know, we can tell you exactly what to do and not to do. We've been there, done it, done it hundreds of times. So there's a lot of experience for people to pull on.

So I'm going to close out the episode and just again, express our great thanks to David Green for joining us. It's fantastic the work that you and the team do, the knowledge you shared, the contribution you've made to growing this practice, I think cannot be underestimated. And then thanks to our listeners, you're listening to today's episode of The Human Truth Podcast. We've been talking about people analytics, where it was, where it is, and where it's heading. We hope you enjoyed it and look out for more podcasts in the future. Thanks all.

Producer: Thank you for joining this episode on The Human Truth Podcast presented by Visier. More links and information presented on today's show are at Visier.com/podcast. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. The Human Truth is brought to you by Visier, the global leader in people analytics, whose mission is to reveal the human truth that helps businesses and employees win together. Today's episode was produced by Grace Sheppard with technical production by Gabriel Kava. Sarah Gonzales is our head of content and Ian Cook is our host. See you next time. And until then, visit us at visier.com/podcast.