Some companies tell me about their plans for people analytics and soon it becomes apparent that their mandate is something difference: they’ve been asked to report KPIs. The difference between analytics and KPIs can be illustrated by how they think about performance:
- A KPI says, “If performance is on target, you’ll be rewarded.”
- Analytics asks, “Which factors drive performance?”
Admittedly, this simple distinction gets messy when you zoom in. For example, the reward attached to a KPI may be explicit, but it may also be rather vague. Analytics aims to find deep insights, but may start by asking, “Do we have a problem with performance? Are we missing targets?” — which means starting with precisely the same numbers we use for KPIs.
