Analyze this

Workforce, June, 2003 by Samuel Greengard

"Building the infrastructure for workforce analytics can prove intimidating. Many organizations have purchased applications and wound up with them sitting on the shelf or sitting idle."

There's also the task of changing a culture that once allowed only the top executives to view data but now pushes decision-making further down into the organization. "If line managers and others don't understand the value of a workforce analytics application and how to collaborate and share data, then the system isn't going to produce anything close to the desired results," Barkley explains.

At the Census Bureau, the learning curve has been steeper than expected, Pejsa admits. When the agency first turned to workforce analytics a couple of years ago, it had plans to use an assortment of features and tools that have since been placed on the back burner. What's more, it wanted to introduce the application to dozens of senior-level managers, but most were woefully unprepared for the hands-on approach. "Our goals were too ambitious," he says.

Another giant headache was revamping the agency's organizational structure to fit the application. Over the years, the Census Bureau had assumed a decidedly horizontal structure, and the SAS software required a distinctly hierarchical model to function effectively. Pejsa spent more than a month working with his boss and staff analysts to map all the desired tools, capabilities, and permission rights to the appropriate users.

Finally, the process of connecting all the various systems proved more than a bit troublesome. At first, other applications and systems produced hiccups when the Census Bureau attempted to switch on the workforce analytics tools. And in some cases, servers crashed and nerves frayed when the agency attempted to plug in back-end applications and stream data across the organization.

The Census Bureau's encounter with workforce analytics has been more successful than most. Only about 10 percent of organizations are now using it in any significant way, and another 10 to 15 percent are dabbling in it, says META Group's Hanscome. Part of the problem, he says, is that some vendors' applications aren't ready for prime time. They simply cannot cull and organize data in ways that provide maximum insight. Another factor is that tight IT budgets and a heavy emphasis on other projects, including customer-relationship management and supply-chain management, have diverted funding and attention away from the somewhat nebulous world of workforce analytics.

Yet, for the Census Bureau, which spent less than $100,000 to get the project off the ground, the payoff has been substantial. Despite occasional glitches and breakdowns, the agency is evolving into a smarter, more flexible organization that's finally able to measure the cost and value of its workforce. And as the agency has plowed through various problems and challenges, it has found a clear path to success, Pejsa says. "We now have the tools to make strategic decisions faster and better."