The Center for Business Analytics is pleased to recognize Wake County as an honoree of the 2023 Drexel LeBow Analytics 50 Awards. Read more about how Wake County used analytics to solve a business challenge.
Submitter
Bonnie Brown, PhD, Chief Data Officer
Company
Wake County
Industry
Government
Business Challenge
The HR department managed employee information requests through a series of extracts and spreadsheets with limited access to data from the source systems. Due to the manual nature of the process, the frequency of data sharing was limited, making it challenging for other departments to access employee information. Directives supporting diversity, equity and inclusion and data-driven decision-making further pushed the need for access to more data in a timely fashion.
Analytics Solution
HR and the data and analytics team partnered to define a set of key metrics by starting with a department director dashboard, including calculations and sources. From the dashboard wish list, data and analytics teams developed an HR data pipeline from multiple source systems. They designed a data warehouse and modeling solution that provided the foundation for a new HR enterprise dataset. This became the single source for dashboards and reports associated with HR metrics, from recruitment through retirement. The first HR metrics dashboard developed provided department heads with critical information about their staff and recruitment processes, including current employees, historical trends and comparisons to county-level metrics. Row-level security ensured that departments could only see their data.
Impact
Department heads have described the dashboard as their one-stop shop for employee information that informs decisions regarding salaries, staffing, recruitment and succession planning. This single source for HR information provides a summary in easy-to-use graphics. Results are filterable to allow quick glances or more in-depth HR data analysis. As adoption has grown, so have the attributes and analysis available. Next, the dashboard will be shared with other management levels and will include more relevant information to provide a 360-degree view of employees and foster the next level of HR analytics based not just on what has happened, but bridging into what could be through data-driven decision-making.