HR, who owns your data?

HR should own people data
How do organisations measure the contributions of HR?  In many cases, the measurement of HR performance focusses on internal measures of success, such as;
• The number of people trained in a year
• The time to fill a vacancy
• HR costs as a percentage of overall turnover
HR is held to account for the execution of the processes that it is responsible for, and for the outcomes of these processes.  But, as we are all too keenly aware, the world of HR is changing.  A great deal has been said about HR systems and the role of HR in driving them into the business, I have done (and will do) a fair amount of it myself.  However, less has been said about the responsibilities and accountabilities that should come from this trend.

Most organisations have a cache of people information and this information is becoming more and more digitised as time rolls on.  This data may reside in the payroll engine, the HR management system, time and attendance, solutions contractor management tools, or some other people related application.  This data, when aggregated, could provide the foundation for detailed and valuable people analytics.  People data, (that is all the data that pertains to people in the organisation, not only that on the HRMS) can hold the key to unlocking value for the organisation, or at the very least, to obtain a more comprehensive view of the internal workings of the organisation.  This data has value, not only for HR analytics but when combined with other data stores in the organisation, for true enterprise-wide analytics and data mining.

This information, the processes that capture it, and the systems that store it, are now more than ever, under the direct influence of HR.  HR defines the functional needs of the solution, the flow of business activities, and more increasingly, the actual systems used to support them.  HR is intrinsically involved in the entire value chain of the HRMS, and they cannot divorce themselves from its raw product, data.

What I am proposing is that HR should be held accountable for, and measured against the cleanliness, validity, redundancy and relevance of the all the people data in the organisation. If HR wants to take ownership of the broader HR solutions, then they must also take accountability for the information contained within.
We hold the finance department accountable for the financial information in the organisation, so why not hold HR responsible for people data?  If we as HR, want to take our place at the boardroom table, we should be prepared to shoulder some of the uncomfortable responsibilities as well.  It is no longer appropriate for us to shirk this accountability by blaming IT or bad user input.  We must own the data and be prepared to be measured by it if we want to claim the credit for its use in improving our organisations.