HRchat Podcast
Listen to the HRchat Podcast by HR Gazette to get insights and tips from HR leaders, influencers and tech experts. Topics covered include HR Tech, HR, AI, Leadership, Talent, Recruitment, Employee Engagement, Recognition, Wellness, DEI, and Company Culture.
Hosted by Bill Banham, Pauline James, and other HR enthusiasts, the HRchat show publishes interviews with influencers, leaders, analysts, and those in the HR trenches 2-4 times each week.
The show is approaching 1000 episodes and past guests are from organizations including ADP, SAP, Ceridian, IBM, UPS, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Simon Sinek Inc, NASA, Gartner, SHRM, Government of Canada, Hacking HR, McLean & Company, UPS, Microsoft, Shopify, DisruptHR, McKinsey and Co, Virgin Pulse, Salesforce, Make-A-Wish Foundation, and Coca-Cola Beverages Company.
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Podcast Music Credit"Funky One"Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
HRchat Podcast
Disrupt Manchester, Analytics and the Art of HR with Mark Lawrence, Deloitte
What happens when you combine archaeological curiosity with data science expertise? You get Mark Lawrence's fascinating approach to HR analytics.
In this conversation, Mark shares his unconventional career journey from aspiring Indiana Jones to Head of Analytics and Reporting at Deloitte, revealing how his fundamental desire to understand why things work the way they do connects these seemingly disparate fields.
With over 25 years of experience across multiple disciplines, Mark offers rare insights into how analytics can transform HR from a traditional service function into a strategic powerhouse. He candidly discusses the cultural divide that often exists between HR professionals and analytics specialists, describing how most "HR colleagues look at their analytics colleagues as if they're from another species." His practical suggestions for bridging this gap go beyond technical solutions to address the human factors that determine success or failure in data-driven HR initiatives.
Mark challenges both HR and analytics professionals to reconsider their relationships and expectations. For analytics specialists, he emphasizes the importance of demystifying their work and showing "the art of the possible" in accessible ways. For HR leaders, he highlights the extraordinary value hidden within their data ecosystems, suggesting that despite common complaints about HR data quality, the breadth and depth of people information represents a gold mine of analytical opportunity when properly approached.
Connect with Mark through LinkedIn or email him at mark@datadrivenhr.co.uk to learn more about his research on closing the expectation gap between analytics leaders and senior executives. And don't miss his upcoming presentation at Disrupt Manchester on September 24th, where he'll share lessons from both inside and outside the HR domain.
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Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit HRGazettecom and visit hrgazettecom.
Speaker 2:Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show. Hello listeners, this is your host today, bill Bannam, and joining me on the pod for the first time is Mark Lawrence, head of Analytics and Reporting over at Deloitte. With a background in management consultancy, mark has performed a variety of analytical, project management and leadership roles across corporate HR, learning and deployment functions, it and other functions for over 25 years. Formerly a member of IBM's top talent and business and technical leaders communities and GSK's top talent pool, Mark has a proven track record of strategic thinking and service transformation. Mark is also an experienced mentor and recruiter who has led several high-performing teams whilst serving on numerous professional research bodies.
Speaker 2:He designs and facilitates training events and speaks regularly at conferences on topics ranging from ethics to business partnering, from advanced analytics to data visualization and from hr tech to embedding culture. Uh, one of his upcoming gigs, he's uh, I'm very happy to say. I'm very delighted to say that he's uh generously offered to come and speak at a disrupt event in manchester in september, so he and I get to hang out there. Mark, how are you doing? Welcome to the show today.
Speaker 3:Bill, thank you for having me. It's great to be here. You make me sound very busy in your introduction.
Speaker 2:Well, it sounds like you are, mark. I think you do it for yourself. Beyond my wee introduction just a moment ago, as we always like to do on this show, why don't you take a minute or two and just add to what I've said there? If you don't mind introducing yourself, telling our listeners a bit more about yourself, your loves and what gets you up in the morning?
Speaker 3:fantastic, happy to. So. My name is Mark and I've been working in HR and analytics well since at least before analytics was a word probably just over 25 years We'll not give away too much and I am a father of four. I live in Yorkshire, I travel quite extensively and in terms of my likes and dislikes, I suppose the thing to know about me is I come from a very sporting background. I played a lot of rugby union when I was younger, a lot of cricket, a lot of judo, and I think that probably has formed me and my personality and probably some of the choices that I've made through my career as I've gone onward. So perhaps we'll unpick a little bit of that later on.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat Podcast. If you enjoy the audio content we produce, you'll love our articles on the HR Gazette. Learn more at hrgazettecom. And now back to the show show. I've actually just recently wrapped up um a season of another podcast that I co-host focused on lessons from elite sports that can be taken into the corporate world actually. So, uh, if we ever do another season around that I I know a man who I can come and chat to and get some, get some more thoughts we could certainly get our geek on there, bill so mark, your career path has been, uh, pretty unusual.
Speaker 2:Okay, so, from my understanding here, um, it says from archaeologist what to accountant to analytics archaeologist really, this is brilliant. Uh, what initially sparked your interest in hr and how it? How has it evolved over the years?
Speaker 3:yeah, you know, I I consider myself very fortunate to have to have tried quite a lot of different things, as, as long as they all start with a, as as it says there um, I think to start with my interest in history. Uh took me into archaeology and um, and I really wanted to be indiana jones. But then when I graduated I found there weren't many jobs for indiana jones and I was volunteering, shattering a few dreams and a few myths and um. And then I was offered a role at PwC and I was very fortunate to join. I tried a couple of different things at PwC.
Speaker 3:Eventually, after a stint backpacking as well, I was offered a wonderful opportunity to work in our learning and knowledge department as a finance manager. It turns out I wasn't a very good accountant, even though I was fortunate enough to be supported with my studies there by PwC. But I made a career choice there that really shaped probably the rest of my career. I managed to find somebody to attract into my team who actually did want to be an accountant and had an interest there. My boss at the time said well, you've kind of made yourself redundant, what is it that you're going to do? And I said it strikes me that we in learning have never really been able to figure out how to answer the question of value. When we are asked at the end of each year, how have you contributed to the business? The answer is basically whether or not we were over or under budget, and I felt there had to be a different way.
Speaker 3:That really then stemmed into my love of data, and it was through that love of data but working in learning, working in knowledge management and then, more broadly, working in HR, that I found a very fertile ground for something which was ticking a lot of boxes in my head, but things that people were struggling to answer, and so I found that there was this wonderful way of trying to quantify and understand what's going on with people, what's going on with their training decisions initially, what's going on with why they're motivated to do that kind of training, how that then starts to feed into their own perceptions of their career journey, their career paths, whether or not they are getting enough learning, whether that then relates to a decision to leave an organization or then, in fact, whether that becomes part of an organization's value proposition and attracts people.
Speaker 3:So those were some of the questions that were starting to open up to me, but ultimately it is that curiosity and that need that I have to understand why things are the way they are. That links very closely from analytics and HR, all the way back from that archaeologist earlier on.
Speaker 4:Once in a while, an event series is born that shakes things up, it makes you think differently and it leaves you inspired. That event is Disrupt HR. The format is 14 speakers, 5 minutes each and slides rotate every 15 seconds. If you're an HR professional, a CEO, a technologist or a community leader and you've got something to say about talent, culture or technology, Disrupt is the place. It's coming soon to a city near you. Learn more at disrupthrco.
Speaker 2:You ever get the hat, the Indiana Jones hat. I could definitely see you in that for sure.
Speaker 3:I do have a love of hats as well. Much to my wife's chagrin, I have a selection of hats all hanging on the wall by the front door. One of them is that very first archaeology hat. Yes.
Speaker 2:Brilliant, love it. Ok, so you work for a little known company called Deloitte. They do amazing things. How do you, how do you, stay updated with the latest trends and advancements in HR analytics, and are there any resources or tools that you find particularly valuable that you can share with our listeners today?
Speaker 3:Yeah, look, I think it's really important to ensure that we are continually developing, and especially for those of us working in technical disciplines where the pace of change is so fast, and, of course, in an organization like Deloitte and other management consultancies, your currency is very much how you can bring a leading edge perspective or guide a customer or a client on the right course of action, even in non-client facing roles and, in fact, other organizations. It is that ability to inspire confidence and inspire credibility that if you're not continually keeping your skills sharpened and honed, then eventually somebody else will come along who can do that. So for me, it's not only making sure that we are doing our best work, but it's about making sure that we are sustaining not just ourselves for the current job but actually for our future opportunities as well. So to your question about resources, I think one of the things that we're so fortunate about with people analytics is the strength of the network. There is just an incredible array of talent and I can point to probably 50 to 100 people analytics leaders throughout the UK who are really knowledgeable, really open, very conscious to try and help develop each other, all for the good of the discipline. And that's just in the UK, but we have some tremendous links across the Atlantic with our friends in North America, across the channel, with our friends in Europe and even beyond there.
Speaker 3:Last week I was training a group in Bahrain.
Speaker 3:I've been to Singapore, I've been to various other places China as well and what is common throughout all of those areas is, firstly, an incredible appetite for learning, the desire to push boundaries, and I think there is a shared appreciation of the fact that, because this is still quite a young discipline, we have a tremendous opportunity to define new areas of study, to really seek out those areas to add value that haven't been done before.
Speaker 3:So, yes, on the one side, we can use our network to draw examples and in many senses that provides a great way to test and experiment and see if we can do certain things. But once you start to understand and feel that methodology, you can see the opportunities and you can apply it in all sorts of innovative new ways. So that network, I think, is so important. Of course, there are some online learning resources and an ever-growing array of those all the time there are some face-to-face learning opportunities and and I won't go into into mentioning the you know many of those, but I think there's still a tremendous set of resources that suits every learning style excellent, very good answer.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much. Uh, go on. Then you said you said I can name 50 of these moves and shakers in the people analytics space just in the uk. Then you started mentioning all these cool people around the world. Go on then for a chap who loves tagging people on the associated LinkedIn posts. When I put out an episode, a new episode, who would be three or four of those movers and shakers that I should absolutely be tagging on a post about this stuff?
Speaker 3:That's a fundamentally unfair question, bill. I'm shocked that you put that. Look, I think the first thing to think about is the objective right. So whether or not it is about gaining followers and followership and promoting and amplifying the message followers and followership and promoting and amplifying the message then probably people like David Green I'm sure is a name that many of your listeners will be very familiar with and David and I we've known each other for many years. In fact, we both worked at IBM, although we didn't really know each other at the time. Then I think if your message was particularly to dive into a certain discipline or a certain provocation, then you know there's certainly some others If it were around. You know organizational psychology, for example.
Speaker 3:I've worked with some tremendous guys and certainly I'll use this opportunity just to give a shout to my friend, tommy Powell, who I worked with at GSK really really good guy. We had a great team there and a great laugh. If it were to look at the academic side of things, then probably you can look at people like Dave Ulrich, andy Charlwood, even Josh Burson and many other academics. Alec Levinson and I have quite a deep relationship as well, but I don't want to pass over the opportunity to mention a couple of people who have been tremendous inspiration and mentors to me over the years. Inspiration and mentors to me over the years. Max Blumberg is a great provocateur and somebody who's always looking to keep the discipline, thinking about future technologies. And, of course, jonathan Farrar, who has been my mentor and an inspiration since I was at IBM and through our various paths, and I continue to be a great supporter of his as well okay, well done.
Speaker 2:You mentioned a few folks who have been on this show in the past, such as josh person and dave, and a bunch of other people that I should probably be chasing for an interview as well. Um, what, what challenges mark have you have you faced when trying to integrate data analytics into hr processes, and how have you overcome those?
Speaker 3:yeah, it's a really important topic for people analytics at the moment, and I would urge other hr colleagues to to sit up and take note at this point. The problem that I see is that most HR colleagues look at their analytics colleagues as if they're from another species. Yes, you kind of know about HR and, yes, we kind of sit on the same floor, but ultimately you work with data and I work with my customers or with my personnel or with my processes, and it's very difficult to bring the two together. So often that alignment and that desire to really try to make things work together can be a barrier that we have to try and break down. What I found works quite well there is to show the art of the possible and to try and demystify what we are doing.
Speaker 3:When we're talking about analytics, often it's kind of perceived to be a bit of a dark art and, depending on what it is that you're trying to achieve, there are some incredibly advanced statistical methodologies or data science approaches which are adopted.
Speaker 3:However, it doesn't have to be that way.
Speaker 3:I think one of the lessons that I was taught very early on was that a causal model can actually just be written down on the back of an envelope.
Speaker 3:It's about understanding what it is that we're trying to achieve and just looking at problems in a slightly different way. If I were to then think about well, ok, we get some of our HR colleagues on board at the moment is that there is a disconnect between senior leaders and what they are expecting their analytics teams to deliver, versus what the people analytics leaders, who have gone through a huge amount of learning and development, and what they are expecting that they will deliver. So if we have a gap between the people analytics leader and their manager or their CHRO or their senior sponsor, then that gap can be quite difficult to bridge and often it goes unacknowledged until there is frustration, disappointment and ultimately it leads to failure in that relationship. So I'm actually working on some research at the moment which is seeking to explore this and hopefully, bill, we can use this show as a little bit of a plug for anyone who wants to contribute to that research, uh, to perhaps reach out to me mark, I love a love, a plug.
Speaker 2:I'm all about a plug. So let's continue with plugging, shall we? You are one of our esteemed speakers at the Disrupt Manchester event that I mentioned in the intro a little while ago. I think it's September 24th, I think. Don't quote me on that, listeners, there'll be links in the show notes, I'm sure, and you can register there. If you links in the show notes, I'm sure, uh, and you can register there if you're in the the northwest of england. Um, I'd love to get a little snippet of an insight around the session that you're going to be presenting. So just to remind our listeners, with disrupt, it's five minutes, 20 slides, 15 seconds per slide. There is no mercy. We automate. We automate those slides to rotate every 15 seconds. So it's quite a unique challenge and mark's been very kind, uh, to to offer to be one of our illustrious speakers at the event. Are you able, mark, please, to take a minute and uh and tease our listeners a little bit about what you'll be addressing at that summit?
Speaker 3:of course, and I hope it's the 24th of september. That's the data I have in my diary okay, very good so, um, currently I'm working, uh, outside of hr.
Speaker 3:I'm leading a reporting and analytics function, um, which is driving a lot of our enabling functions within Deloitte, and one of the reasons I was so excited about this role was that it gave me a chance to really look at how reporting and analytics and data is perceived and managed outside of HR. And then what interests me now is what are the lessons that we can take back into HR? What are the things that other parts of the business do really really well that we can learn and try to ensure that we accelerate our service? One of the other things that I see is actually there are some things which HR already does quite well as well, but perhaps doesn't perceive how well it does, and maybe we hear frustration from some of our HR colleagues about those things, but actually other parts of the business are hugely envious of the fact that we can do certain things. So it's that duality between where we do a great job in HR, where we might have some areas that we can improve upon, but also actually to celebrate some of the great stuff that we can do and some of the great understanding that we have.
Speaker 3:For example, hr has an incredible richness of data. Yes, most people will talk about their HR systems and say, oh, the data's rubbish. We wish it was better, it's too complicated, and so on. But but actually, when you look at the breadth and depth of opportunity there that that richness of data provides, that creates so many wonderful opportunities. So I think we also need to take a little bit of time in that 20 minute slot to try and celebrate some of the great things that we do in HR as well.
Speaker 2:Sounds wonderful. Just so you don't get a shock on the day, it's five minutes mark with 20 slides, so I'd hate for you to turn up expecting a full 20 minutes there and find out to the contrary. Okay, just before we wrap up for today, how can our listeners connect with you? Uh, how can they learn more about data-driven hr and how can they learn more about all the cool things happening over at deloitte?
Speaker 3:so I'm very happy to to take any any emails at mark at data-driven hrcouk. I'm also also very active on social media. Linkedin is usually the best way to get my attention and I'm very happy to connect with anyone who would like to do so. As I already mentioned, I think the network is incredibly strong there. So by connecting with me, you're also connecting to that network of expertise and I will always try to make time to have a conversation.
Speaker 2:if it's helpful to your listeners, Excellent. Well, that just leaves me to say for today Mark Lawrence, thank you very much for being my guest on this episode of the HR Chat Show.
Speaker 3:Thank you, bill. It's been wonderful to be here, big fan.
Speaker 2:And I look forward to meeting you in person in Manchester on the 24th of September. I just double checked that it is the 24th of September and until then, listeners, as always, happy working.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette and remember for what's new in the world of work? Subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom.
