You’ve analyzed the information, identified trends, and found valuable insights – now it’s time to share your findings so they can be used to motivate action and make change. This is where all those great and critical skills of business acumen, communication, and storytelling we discussed in step 1 will come in to play. That’s because impactful people analytics isn’t about the analysis, but in how those who receive the information are able to use it. It is up to you to ensure your findings are communicated in a way that gets through and is best positioned for success. The following tips are intended to provide some advice and guidance on the best ways to share your insights with different audiences so they are most likely to be heard, valued, and acted upon.

Tips for Communicating People Analytics Findings

Tips for Crafting Your Message.

When you share your findings, it’s not enough to simply summarize what you’ve found. You want to know your audience and take a little extra time to tailor your message specifically for them. Different types of audiences will usually require different approaches, even when you are sharing the same exact findings. For example, you will usually find that business leaders crave strategic implications and want to hear how your findings align with with business objectives; they want to hear about things like key performance indicators (KPIs) or return on investment (ROI). However, if you are sharing results with a broad group of employees, they’ll be less interested in ROI and more interested in how what you are sharing relates to them personally; they’ll be more interested to hear about how their feedback contributed to your findings, what growth opportunities or benefits will come to them, or how any resulting organizational changes that come as a result of your findings may affect their working lives. Before sharing your message, learn as much as you can about the types of individuals you will be sharing your message with and consider what will be most important to them. Here are some general guidelines for crafting a message that may be helpful for some of the more common types of audiences you may be sharing your people analytics findings with: business leaders, HR professionals, and employees.

Crafting a Message for Business Leaders:

• Focus on Strategic Impact: Align your findings with company goals. Show how your insights can improve business objectives (e.g., productivity, quality, or performance) or streamline talent processes (e.g., talent acquisition, retention, or leadership effectiveness).
• Speak Their Language: Use business-centric language, focusing on metrics like cost savings or increased productivity.

Crafting a Message for HR Professionals:

• Focus on Collaboration and Practical Application: Focus on providing actionable insights with concrete recommendations for HR initiatives. Partner with HR to brainstorm solutions based on your findings PLUS their deep talent expertise.
• Go Deeper and Draw Connections: Because supporting people is their job, HR professionals typically appreciate more depth in their explanations compared to business leaders or employees. When sharing, frame your findings as a way to support HR decision-making and be sure to include details on methodology and data sources alongside your key findings. You may also want to include relevant HR metrics and industry benchmarks to provide context and spark discussions about best practices.

Crafting a Message for Employees:

• Transparency and Respect: Emphasize how employee data is used to improve the organization, not track individuals. Employee privacy, ethics, and trust is one of the most critical aspects of people analytics; always include details on any steps taken to protect employees in the process or outcomes.
• Focus on Improvement: Frame findings as opportunities for growth and development. Highlight how initiatives are being undertaken based on employee feedback and for the benefit of employees.

General Tips for Crafting Your Message:

• Actionable Insights, Not Problems: Don’t just present problems; propose solutions. If the only analyses you have to share present a problem without a solution (e.g., “Employee productivity has dropped 32%”), then it is most likely that you have not done enough analysis work and are probably not ready to share a message broadly. Your sharing at this point should be with trusted colleagues, your manager, or others who can help you work toward identifying possible explanations, recommendations, or specific actions based on your findings. Once you can outline these, ideally while indicating the potential impact of any recommendations or actions, then you will be better equipped to craft a message that will lead to action.
• Findings, Not Your Work: Avoid overwhelming your audience with complex methodologies. Present clear, concise takeaways, using visuals where appropriate to explain relationships. A common mistake is for those in people analytics to share all of their analyses, or the detailed methods they used to reach their conclusions. While you should be prepared to answer any questions about your process, don’t share all the steps you took to get to your results, focus on presenting the most impactful insights and clear next steps. The focus should be on the data-informed insights and how those findings can lead to change.
• Focus on Benefits: The commonly used acronym WIFM stands for “What’s in it for me?” This is the question on the mind of anyone you are working with. Focus on delivering value to others, make sure there is something in it for them. You can do this not just in how you position your communication, but in the work you choose to focus on and by highlighting how the data can bring about improvements for them, the employees, or the organization.

Tips for Choosing the Right Channel.

Once you have settled on the right message that you want your audience to hear, you need to figure out the best mechanism to get the message to them. The right communication channel can increase the likelihood that your insights are heard, remembered, and acted on. But sometimes it’s hard to know if you should be sending your findings out via email, in a meeting, or preparing a written report. Sometimes you will be asked for your insights to be packaged in a certain way, in which case the decision is easy because it has been made for you. If you get invited to present your findings at a meeting, then that’s where you should be. If you get asked a question via email and it’s clear they are expecting you to hit the “reply” button, well then you know the best way to proceed. I find it is usually best to meet people where they are and communicate with them in the channels they are most comfortable in since they will be most receptive to you. But for those times when you haven’t been given a clear method and it’s up to you to decide how best to share your findings, here are some general guidelines that may help.

• When Communicating with Business Leaders: Opt for executive summaries, bite-sized emails with key findings attached, or impactful presentations with key findings provided at the very beginning of the presentation, and write the key takeaways as the title of each presentation slide.
• When Communicating with HR Professionals: If you are sharing insights with HR it’s usually so that they can either translate it to business leaders or take action on it. For this reason, they usually appreciate a deeper dive into the data paired with the same key insights you would present a business leader. Consider interactive dashboards, detailed reports, collaborative workshops, or meetings. These methods allow them to engage deeply with the information and provide them with more access to detailed answers aligned to the key findings. Plan to be available for answering questions and follow up requests.
• When Communicating with Employees: Transparency and accessibility are key. Internal communication platforms, company-wide or staff meetings, emails, or visually compelling infographics are usually best suited for this. Depending on what and to whom you are sharing your insights, it is usually best to involve someone from departments such as HR, Communications, and possibly Legal if the messaging will be to a large number of people or include sensitive topics (note. most people analytics topics are sensitive topics).

When deciding between the multiple channel options best for your different stakeholders, consider the complexity of your message. Simple findings not likely to be misunderstood or lead to concerns can be easily and efficiently shared asynchronously in emails, infographics, or internal communication posts. For things with complicated findings, sensitive data, or resulting actions that impact people it’s usually best to choose a method providing more detailed information such as reports, interactive dashboards. You may also need to consider methods that allow interaction with your audience so you can answer questions or solicit feedback, such as a well-structured presentations or meetings.

You should also consider your goals. If your goal is for others to independently engage with your insights, opt for emails, dashboards, or reports. If you hope to spark dialogue and gather feedback, opt for presentations, workshops, or meetings. If your goal is collaborative action, opt for meetings and workshops.

Finally, keep in mind that every culture and situation is unique. While my hope is to give you some general guidelines for the types of communication methods that might work best to showcase your great people analytics work, you’ll always have specific considerations to take into account. Such as how urgently the message needs to be shared, the culture and environment in which you are sharing your message, and the preferences of those you are working with. You may even find that your skills are stronger using one method than another, making it a better choice for you personally.