‘A company’s culture defines how you adopt the tech’
If you care about people analytics, Ranaq is someone you should know. Before his current role as Associate Director - People Tech and Analytics at Mobile Premier League (MPL), Ranaq served as HRMS Implementation Lead - South India at Darwinbox.
On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, we talk with Ranaq about both these roles, in addition to a smorgasbord of other insights:
At what stage should companies start taking care of the data?
The earlier, the better. Suppose there’s a company with 80 people working in it, and there is no documented data in the company as their communication was verbal. Here, starting with documentation from scratch is troublesome. When your company has only a few members, begin to document data. When you’ve reached a higher number later, you will have the past data to refer to. This will help you avoid biases.
The first set of People Tech recommendation
Ranaq advises the company to move away from Excel. When the employee count crosses the threshold of 20, the company should start maintaining data, and when it crosses 100, investment in some lightweight HR tools will help. These HR tools will help in solving the lapses and capturing data on the back end. Start small, slowly move on, and don’t make change too many changes to the database.
The company would always want to know who its best employees are and how they are performing. If they don’t have data, the company may end up recognizing the wrong talent.
The right time to bring in a robust feedback and performance management system
Start at an early stage and with light tools. Then, gradually shift to robust systems.
The negligibility in not maintaining the data will hinder having People Tech on board in the system. If it’s 20-30 employees, it’s possible to collect the data and start working on it. When the number rises to 100+, it is difficult but possible. But once the employee count is beyond 1000+, it is downright impossible. It’s recommended that whenever your company’s team member count crosses 100, start storing data somewhere. Many free tools can be availed, and when your count increases to a threshold of 200 or more, bring a robust system on board.
How do you make people use technology?
Buying from the top and a push from the top—is the secret mantra to get people to use technology and get accustomed to it.
If the founder of a company says they won’t accept anything out of the system, or when they say that they’ll review the performance of employees only based on data in the system, the employees will have no other way left but to become friendly with the system.
Follow Ranaq on LinkedIn, Twitter and his blog
Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Abhash Kumar