Wondering what the future of workforce planning looks like? Interested in exploring the full scope of your organization's skills? Host Matt DeSantis catches up with the folks behind hiQ Labs' latest workforce planning product, Skill Mapper, in an in-depth look at a tool that is helping to answer these questions.

First, Amelia Barker, hiQ's Director of Customer Success joins the podcast to chat about her experience as an HR practitioner/consultant and the way that talent acquisition and workforce planning has changed over the past decade. Then, we take a trip back to Elevate Santa Clara to hear hiQ Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer Genevieve Graves discuss the challenges that many companies currently face when trying to build workforce and succession plans. Finally, hiQ People Analytics Team member Ben Teusch joins the conversation to breakdown how (and why) such products are getting built.

hiQ's Workforce Scientist in Residence and the host of this podcast - Michael Housman - has spent countless hours interviewing other leaders in the space but we decided to turn the tables and interview him in anticipation of his departure from the podcast.  Michael shares about how he landed in people analytics, how his training as an Economist colors the way that he approaches problems, his personal reflections about hosting the People Analytics Podcast, and what he's up to next.  We're sad to see him go but Michael will continue to be a part of the hiQ family and will inevitably end up hosting any panels that we organize at Elevate conferences.

Ian O'Keefe has been involved in people analytic for 15 years across a wide array of organizations.  He led people analytics at Sears, joined Google to work on Laszlo Bock's team, and now heads up talent analytics at JP Morgan Chase where he's responsible for 63,000 employees.  As such, he's had a unique vantage point from which to observe how different organizations leverage data to understand their people and has a wide array of experiences to draw from when talking about what works and what doesn't.  He joins Michael Housman on the podcast to talk about his unique journey, the technology landscape when it comes to people analytics, and the must-hear advice that he'd give to himself if he could go back in time when he first started his storied career.

Artificial intelligence is the hot topic that everyone's talking about these days but the term itself is very broad and it touches on predictive analytics, cognitive computing, and even robotics.  Regardless of how it's defined, one thing is certain - it's making its way into the workplace through hundreds of different applications, tools, and technologies that people analytics teams can use to leverage the power of data science.  For the 2016 Elevate conference in Santa Clara, hiQ put together a star-studded panel of industry leaders with different areas of expertise:

• Ian O'Keefe, Global People Analytics Leader, JP Morgan
• Al Adamsen, Founder & Executive Director of the Talent Strategy Institute (TSI)
• Garry Mathiason, Partner at Littler Mendelson

 The three panelists talked about the future of artificial intelligence in the workplace, how companies are utilizing these tools right now to make an impact on their ROI, and some of the risks that are present with respect to the contract that exists between employee and employer.  It's a fascinating conversation that provides a glimpse into the future of HR.

Susan Biancani is a Harvard and Stanford graduate, PhD data scientist, and leader of Airbnb's people analytics initiative.  Not only is she an incredibly thoughtful and knowledgeable people analytics practitioner but her efforts were profiled by TechCrunch for having doubled the ratio of female members of the data science team.  Speaking to Michael Housman from the 2016 Elevation awards, she talks more about Airbnb's inclusion and diversity efforts, their strong focus on transparency when it comes to reporting these numbers, and the unique culture that Airbnb believes starts with their employees and radiates outwards to their customers.  It's a must-listen episode for anyone looking to improve the representation of underrepresented classes within their organization.

hiQ Elevate along with the first-ever Elevation awards were held on October 26th at co-host, Intel’s campus in Santa Clara, CA as the third of hiQ Labs’ 2016 Elevate series. The event recognized some of the most remarkable achievements in people analytics and brought together a wide range of professionals and practitioners to share best practices and learn from each other.  In this Elevate-focused podcast, we hear from Intel's General Manager, Talent Intelligence & Analytics, Alexis Fink, who shares her presentation, “From Optimism to Impact, Getting Results with Talent Analytics," followed by a very special "Man on the Street" segment where our very own Michael Housman interviews attendees at the event and asks them about the parts of the event that really resonated with them, what they thought of the award winners, and what part of the conference was their favorite. Also, hiQ Labs’ CEO, Darren Kaplan, offers his predictions of what the industry will look like in the next five years in this really fun episode that offers up a small glimpse into what it's like to attend one of hiQ's conferences.

PepsiCo, Inc. is a lot more than a soft drink company.  It's a multi-national company producing a variety of drinks, snacks, and foods with over 260K employees spanning multiple geographies, languages, and cultures.  As such, it poses some unique challenges in terms of people analytics and Beverly Tarulli is the person who heads that effort.  She comes on the podcast and shares some of the challenges that she's encountered, their biggest achievements, and her own philosophy towards her work.  The key, she explains, is not just doing insightful work but working with stakeholders to understand its implications and helping them to take action.  It's a great conversation with a lot of fascinating take-aways!

Paul Edelman is the managing director and founder of Edelman and Associates - a boutique recruiting company that focuses on people analytics teams - but he's far from your ordinary recruiter.  He has an undergraduate degree in Physics from MIT, a PhD in Psychology from Harvard, and over 25 years experience in the space.  He joins us on the podcast to talk about his work, trends he sees in the field, and the conversation even veers a bit towards some interesting ideas in cognitive psychology.  Even people analytics teams have to think analytically about how to hire and recruit their own talent and Paul offers up some invaluable tips about how to build your team, the things you should be thinking about, and the importance of the individual vs. the team when it comes to finding the right fit.  It's a fascinating conversation that every CEO, CHRO, and Director of People Analytics should listen to before making their next people analytics hire.

In his keynote address for the May 2016 Elevate conference in NYC, Chris Gagnon (Solution Partner, McKinsey & Company) provides a bit of historical context around where the HR department sits within the organization and how they can elevate their own standing.  He points out that the CFO wasn't always regarded as a critical strategic partner until some changes forced them to "up their game".  Likewise, he sees this same transformation occurring to HR but points out that it must be facilitated by the CHRO and other HR practitioners supporting the strategic priorities of the business.  Many of our podcast guests talk about the cool things they're doing with analytics but Chris' perspective is very different: equal attention must be paid to building stakeholder consensus, how results are messaged, and the process for working with business leadership for HR to be able to move the needle.

Zev Eigen, Littler Mendelson's Global Director of Data Analytics, has an unusual background in that he is both an employment attorney and also a data scientist.  As such, he's in a unique position to talk about some of the opportunities and the risks posed by some of the cutting edge data science techniques that are increasingly being applied to the workforce.  He joins us on the podcast along with hiQ's very own Head of People Analytics - Ryan Hammond - to have a fun discussion about cognitive biases, the best way to present technical work to lay people, and even some of the work that his new venture - Cherry Tree - is doing to de-stigmatize those with criminal backgrounds and help get them back into the workforce.  Learn about how big data can be a force for good.

Eddie Ahmed has a fairly unusual perspective as the CHRO of Mass Mutual because he was trained as a computer scientist.  So he naturally thinks very analytically in terms of "if-else statements and infinite loops".  What that perspective lends to his current role is the ability to ask probing questions and seek out the answers in unusual places.  Eddie joins the podcast to talk about the stock ticker-like people analytics readout that he aspires to create, the one trait he thinks is most critical in people analytics practitioners, and Mass Mutual's efforts to promote employee wellness by providing incentives for them to engage in healthy behaviors.  It's an outstanding conversation and Eddie is one of the most thoughtful guests that we've had on the podcast so this is a must listen episode.

Josh Bersin is one of the foremost authorities on the ways in which HR is being transformed by technology.  This episode is the second half of Josh’s keynote hiQ Elevate NYC in May 2016 where he talked about the place that people analytics will occupy within forward-looking companies, where he expects the space to be within 5 years, and even some of the cutting-edge research going that maps employees within the broader social networks that exist at work.  It's an illuminating talk that sets the stage for the exciting developments that we should expect to see in the next few years.

Peter Cappelli is the George W. Taylor Professor of Management at The Wharton School and has been studying labor and personnel economics for well over three decades.  He is regarded as one of the most influential scholars on the topic and was named by HR Magazine as one of the top 5 most influential thinkers in management.  Dr. Cappelli joins us on the podcast to talk about how the interesting topics in HR research have evolved over the year, the emergence of people analytics, and the fact that interest in these topics seems to be cyclical.  He explains that the foundations for much of the ground-breaking work that's going on were laid many decades ago and that just because something is "hot" doesn't necessarily mean that it's completely "new".  It's invigorating conversation with someone who has a unique perspective on the topic and deep subject matter expertise.

SalesForce is the quintessential San Francisco SaaS platform, has a market cap of $55 billion, and an employee population of 19,000 employees. A workforce of this size and diversity poses some challenges in terms of people analytics but their rockstar Senior Director of Employee Success - Ernest Ng - comes on the podcast to share some of his insight around how they prioritize different initiatives and where they focus their attention in order to help get their sales team up the learning curve more quickly. Hear about some of the cool changes they're piloting and maybe you'll find a few nuggets that you can apply to your own organization.

In this episode of the People Analytics Podcast, we were lucky enough to have Josh Bersin, Principal and Founder, Bersin by Deloitte, share his thoughts on the state of HR technology and people analytics. He delivered this keynote at hiQ Elevate in New York in May 2016 and talked about how data was completely disrupting the way we think about organizational culture, diversity, employee engagement, and performance reviews. According to Josh, companies are struggling to keep up with all the changes brought about by rapid improvements in HR technology. Have a listen and hopefully it'll help you stay on top of all the changes in the space!

Fortune magazine published an article in March 2016 entitled: "Is Software Better at Managing People Than You Are?"  The title is meant to be provocative but it does force us to wonder what role data and algorithms has in developing and managing talent. 

At the May 2016 Elevate conference in New York City, moderator Michael Housman had the pleasure of hosting a panel with three people analytics leaders - Ryan Hammond (hiQ Labs), James Gallman (GE), and Emilie Thomas (Hersheys) - two of which were quoted in the article.  In this recording of the panel, we learn more about their views on the space, the proper role of data / analytics, and how they think about implementing this philosophy within their own organizations.  It's an outstanding conversation with a cameo from Josh Bersin that's worth a listen.