EAST AND WEST DIFFER

People Analytics has become a high priority for many companies and the roles it plays in Asia have multiplied over the past decade.

AS the fastest growing economic region in the world, Asia has an urgent need for management practices which enable organisations to develop value in a sustainable way.

With an explosion in the BYOD (“bring your own device”) trend and an expansion in skilled workforces around small and midsize businesses and enterprises, it is not surprising that organisations in this region view People Analytics (or Human Resource analytics as it is also known) as “mission critical”.

Consequently, over the last decade, People Analytics roles in the region have multiplied and many HR professionals have data analytics skills.

Lying at the intersection of data science and HR, People Analytics is the application of analytics to help organisations make better decisions about their business and employees. However, in Asia, given the “scale and diversity of data”, People Analytics cannot miss out on employee demographics. People in the East are significantly different from people in the West; their culture, history and legacy are very different.

Traditionally in the East, community values abound where the interests of society take precedence over that of the individual. This has implications on the difference in the behaviour and culture of employees as well as those responsible for deciding and executing projects in the region. Therefore, People Analytics in the East must look at employee data from a social capital or relationship lens.

For example, a People Analytics project to understand and optimise leadership behaviour will not be regarded as a priority in a traditional Asian organisation. This can be attributed to the power distance (how power is viewed in a given culture) and often excessive belief in a “leader’s wisdom” more than data.

However, this scenario is starting to change with more crosscultural exposure and a ‘liberal’ Gen Y coming into the workforce whose priorities are different.

Whilst implementing People Analytics, both global and local organisations in Asia must pay attention to:

type and scale of data being generated — because it has many insights into culture. For example, a data structure that captures the ‘conversation data’ between a group of people. This data-structure will find more datasets in an extroverted culture versus an introverted one.

sources of data — because companies in Asia have a strong awareness of the importance and value of the data they collect, but uninterrupted and ubiquitous sharing of this data differs by region and technology maturity. For example, Indonesia will compare starkly low to Singapore in

A People Analytics project to understand and optimise leadership behaviour will not be regarded as a priority in a traditional Asian organisation.