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Gene Pease
Optimize Your Greatest Asset—Your People
Optimize Your Greatest Asset — Your People
How to Apply Analytics to Big Data to Improve Your Human Capital Investments
Gene Pease
Copyright © 2015 by Gene Pease. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Pease, Gene, 1950-
Optimize your greatest asset — your people: how to apply analytics to big data to improve your human capital investments / Gene Pease.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-119-00438-7 (cloth) — ISBN 978-1-119-03997-6 (ePDF) — ISBN 978-1-119-03982-2 (ePub)
1. Manpower planning. 2. Human capital — Management. 3. Personnel management. 4. Big data. I. Title.
HF5549.5.M3P433 2015
658.3′01 — dc23
2015016150
Cover Design: Wendy Lai
Cover Image: Business Silhouettes © iStock.com/Robert Churchill
My father, Gene A. Pease Sr., was the most influential person in my life, both professionally and personally. He was a World War II veteran, and upon returning from the war started a company in his partner's mother's garage while pursuing a college degree at night. He successfully ran his company for over 30 years while juggling being a terrific husband and helping to raise four children. He taught me the virtue of hard work and the value of ethics, and he showed me how entrepreneurs persevere in spite of the odds. Although he passed away too young, I use the lessons I learned from him every day. I love and miss you, Dad.
When you are an entrepreneur, you will experience many, and I mean many, ups and downs in attempting to take a dream and turn it into a reality. You will also understand how important support from your family assists you getting through those many down days. The commitment to be an entrepreneur is stressful for all involved. My partner, Pamela Pease, has supported my career for many years. She is my lifelong confidant, psychiatrist, and mentor. My two daughters, Tiffany and Heather, have wisdom beyond their years and consistently give me advice and perspective that surprises me. Thank you for your love and support. You make me strive to be the man our dog Bailey thinks I am.
I have been very fortunate to have grown up in a close-knit family that practices unconditional love. My mother, Deanne, the matriarch of the family, has taught us too many lessons for one book. My sister, Dr. Susan Instone, provides her younger siblings wisdom. My brothers, Jeff and Scott, are a joy to be around, especially where there's beer and a band. Thank you for your continued support and encouragement.
Foreword
I am always excited for the start of a new year — it is a time of reflection for the year just past and an opportunity to look forward to the year ahead. I am an optimistic person by nature, so this reflective process is always filled with promise, hoping to learn from my experiences over the previous 12 months. I felt especially optimistic approaching 2015; my personal life is great (wife, Molly; daughters, Regan and Maggie; and son, Aidan, are all healthy, happy, and doing well) and the horizon for my profession has perhaps never been brighter. After almost 20 years in the workforce analytics and planning industry, the marketplace was FINALLY accelerating; the discussions have moved from whether organizations should invest in analytics to how to optimize investments.
The industry has been on quite a journey the past few decades. Many point to Dr. Jac Fitz-enz starting the industry with human capital benchmarking programs and the launch of the Saratoga Institute. This work was enhanced through innovative consulting, benchmarking, and technology firms across the globe. The contributors were many, including InfoHRM (Peter Howes and Anastasia Ellerby from Australia) and the larger professional services firms (Mercer, Deloitte, AonHewitt, etc.) all the way to combinations of the two (PwC/Saratoga). I believe the growth of the industry started an initial period of acceleration, and acceptance, as the software firms started to get into the game. Large, global enterprise resource planning (ERP) software firms such as PeopleSoft, SAP, and Oracle included benchmarking, metrics, and dashboarding capabilities into their software platforms. These innovations, and the capable software sales teams, made HR dashboards a must-have tool for every human resources department.
The growth capabilities in the large ERP software platforms also contributed to the growth of the performance/talent management software vendor community and the rise of cloud computing. These new cloud-based firms such as SuccessFactors, Taleo, Kenexa, and Cornerstone OnDemand brought new capabilities to the marketplace. The industry started to move from HR Metrics and benchmarks to more advanced analytics and concepts around workforce planning. The ability to aggregate data in the cloud across organizations brought a whole new dimension to the analysis that could be conducted, produced, and delivered to C-suite executives. These were exciting times as the promise of finally linking human capital to business results appeared to be achievable. And it was! The industry saw leading companies such as Capital One, The Home Depot, Starbucks, Target, Ameriprise Financial,