THE PERFECT PAIR: THE CHRO & PEOPLE ANALYTICS LEADER
Standard Bank Group
HR LEADER
Jaco Van Vuuren
Human Capital COO
PA LEADER
Ampie Swanepoel
Head: Workforce Insights Value Management
INDUSTRY
Financial
Jaco Van Vuuren & Ampie Swanepoel
Standard Bank Group is the largest bank on the African continent, represented in 27 countries, with over 50,000 employees. Human Capital COO, Jaco Van Vuuren, has been with the banking group since 2004 when he started as the HRIS director, while Head of Workforce Insights Value Management, Ampie Swanepoel, joined in 2013.
With nearly three decades of combined experience in leveraging workforce insights, this duo has found that enabling management with people data is what most moves the needle on business outcomes. It’s also a shared philosophy at the forefront of their people analytics practice, one that was further enabled since becoming Visier customers in 2019.
The custodians, not the gatekeepers, of people data
"People analytics for us is about line management understanding their people better in order to make better talent decisions, better recruitment decisions, and better culture decisions. We're putting [people data] into the hands of line management and not playing a gatekeeper role."
"That custodianship is about quality, providing insights but then putting it in the hands of line management, because it's where the employees are being managed."
Jaco
"Our role as a people analytics function becomes less transactional because our transactional data provisioning and reporting is actually done through a platform-as-a-service, therefore it is consumed by the line managers, as well as by the business partners."
"This was so instrumental in freeing up our team to do more interesting things, more high-value things."
Ampie
With people analytics, Standard Bank Group has:
Enabled people analytics access to 9,500+ people managers with secure permissions
Built predictive workforce planning models to meet DEIB objectives, resulting in improved representation of women at the executive level and in African representation company-wide
Identified a set of employee metrics that have the biggest impact on business outcomes and tied them to leadership performance
PROVIDING SPEEDY INSIGHTS WAS KEY TO ELEVATING HR
"The key for us is quick answers. In the past, we were preparing massive reporting decks. When people ask one question you need to go away and spend two weeks reproducing the reporting pack to answer the question. Now, we're in a world where we put some key insights on the table and questions can be answered within two seconds and we can have a conversation in the moment."
Jaco
"There's never a question in our mind, are we as insights practitioners relevant? Are we delivering value? It is a partnership between HR, senior leadership, and business.
We're not having an HR analytics conversation. We're addressing the right business issues, which enables line management to engage with insights in a very different way.
Then you also need to have the right skills on the HR side that enable the insights."
Jaco on working together to achieve business goals
How to enable thousands of employees with people data insights
Enabling this many people with data insights is a complex endeavor, but one that is paying off for Standard Bank Group now that they’ve empowered 9,500 people managers. They believe that data shared at each management level should be essentially the same to support a culture of trust and transparency—but not every cohort should see the same sensitive information.
Here’s how they determined access:
Level
Span
Data Components
Senior business leader
50+ people
- Headcount Turnover
- Employee experience using NPS
- Employee diversity, executive female ratio, ethnicity
- Learning/development, average time spent learning, % spent on future skills
- Performance ratings
- Manager hours spent on performance coaching Employee relations cases
- Bradford score (measure of absenteeism)
- Risk of sick absenteeism, percent of team at risk, leave compliance status
- Collaboration/burnout
Team leader / front-line manager
~25 or less
All above except collaboration/burnout, plus:
- Compliance training status
- Certifications expired now, will be expiring
- Each leader can see employee view as well
Team leader / front-line manager
~25 or less
All above except collaboration/burnout, plus:
- Compliance training status
- Certifications expired now, will be expiring
- Each leader can see employee view as well
Employee view
~25 or less
- Time spent in learning, time spent in future skill development
- Certifications expiring
- Career journey - roles held
- Movement
- Pay
- Leave taken/leave remaining
How they link business outcomes to people data
In a recent deep analysis, Jaco and Ampie found that the retail branches with the highest revenue had the most engaged employees, and those employees all had the highest amount of learning hours on Degreed, a learning experience platform.
“[We’re] linking business outcomes to what we need to do. They’re not just beautiful insights…we’re making sure we link everything we do to revenue outcome or cost containment. It's not about the people insight. The insight we get through the people analytics gives you a business outcome. And without that, you're just reporting on what happened in the last month.”
"It's not only about the people insight. The insight we get through people analytics gives us a business outcome. And without that, you're just reporting on what happened in the last month."
Jaco
About Visier
Visier is the recognized global leader in people analytics, workforce and compensation planning, embedded solutions, and genAI for people answers. At the core of Visier’s innovations is a simple premise: People impact is business impact, and you can’t manage what you don’t measure. Visier gives people-powered organizations the tools and insights to drive productivity, performance, and business outcomes through people impact. Founded in 2010 by the pioneers of business intelligence, Visier has over 60,000 customers in 75 countries, including enterprises like BASF, Panasonic, Experian, Amgen, eBay, Ford Motor Company, and more. Visier is headquartered in Vancouver, BC with offices and team members worldwide. For more information, visit www.visier.com.