People Strategy case study

A Manager Dashboard Designed for Every Kind of Manager

5workshops across manufacturing, office and retail
49requirements in 14 categories
14systems already holding the data managers asked for
6hours of people analytics training for managers

The situation

The question behind the question.

A boutique manager, an office manager and a manufacturing manager lead very different teams, on every continent. All were about to receive the same thing: a manager dashboard, as the group moved its HR data to a new core system with an analytics tool beside it. We were already supporting the group’s people analytics workstream, so the client asked us to go deeper on the dashboard. The information managers wanted existed, scattered across more than a dozen systems. What nobody had settled was which numbers each needed, in which tool, and what they would do with them.

As it was asked

“Help us design the manager dashboard in the new HR system.”

As we reframed it

Design for the managers, not for the system: find what every kind of manager needs, decide which tool serves each need, and make sure a number on a screen ends in a decision.

How we worked

How the work unfolded.

01

Hear each kind of manager

We started by listening to the people who would use the dashboard. After interviews with local HR, 5 workshops of 90 minutes brought together 3 kinds of manager, from manufacturing, the offices and retail, across every continent; retail, the largest population, met 3 times. Each followed the same 3 questions, with live polls: what do you use today and cannot lose, what should work better, what is missing. Because we knew both tools well, the workshops also set expectations in the room: each request was answered on the spot as available at go-live, not available, or to be investigated, with more to come in increments after launch.

02

Sort shared from specific

The workshops produced 49 requirements in 14 categories, from team structure and contracts to absence, development and engagement. We mapped each one to the groups that asked for it and to the system that holds the data today. Only 6 were asked for by all 3 kinds of manager; most mattered to just one. And most of what managers wanted already existed somewhere, in one of more than a dozen tools, just not where they could see it.

03

Give each metric its window

Then the split. Each team metric went to the tool that fits what a manager does with it: Workday for running the team day to day, Visier for trends and comparisons. That split also drew the privacy line: Workday shows managers their own people one by one, while Visier never goes below the group. Every request was tested for relevance to the manager’s decisions, for whether the manager can act on it, and for technical feasibility at launch, checked with the vendors where needed. The result was a list Digital HR could plan against: in the core system at go-live, in the analytics tool, later, or not at all.

04

Teach the reading

A dashboard only helps someone who knows what to do with it. We built the content of 2 people analytics sessions of 3 hours each, teaching one method: state the problem, form a hypothesis you can reject, test it on the data, find the root cause, then recommend and act, without mistaking correlation for cause. Adoption got its own metrics and agreed corrective measures, and weekly clinics supported managers through the first 3 months. The aim is fewer reports read and more decisions taken on the evidence.

The instrument

Every request mapped 3 ways

Who asks for it? Each requirement is tagged with the manager populations that raised it, so what everyone needs is kept apart from what only one group does.

Where does it live today? The system that holds the data now, if any, and whether it is complete, partial or held in a spreadsheet.

Which window tomorrow? The core HR system at go-live, the analytics tool, a later release, or no tool at all.

The answers turn a wish list into a build plan, one the managers had already heard in the room.

What moved

What changed, and what didn't.

6of 49 requirements shared by all 3 kinds of manager
Evidence Decision taken Adopted in practice Measured impact
What moved

The playback gave Digital HR one list, sorted by manager population, by source and by tool. 6 of 49 requirements were common to all 3 kinds of manager and became the shared core. Rather than 3 separate dashboards, managers got one broad enough for all of them, with Visier to slice the data for each kind of team. It went live on that split, and managers went through both people analytics sessions. The client then asked us to read its engagement survey and its HR data side by side.

What didn't move

Not every request found a home: of 49, 21 could not be shown in Workday at go-live, Visier took most of them, and about half a dozen fit neither tool and were left for later. And no manager took part in user acceptance: the dashboard was tested by HR, not by the people it was built for.

What we'd say to a peer

Ask each kind of manager separately, and tell them in the same room what they will get at go-live and what comes later. Then build one dashboard broad enough for all of them and an analytics tool deep enough for each. And teach the reading: a metric no one acts on is only a number on a screen.

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Method note:

Own approach in 4 steps; 5 workshops with manufacturing, office and retail managers, with live polls; requirement map by persona, source and tool; people analytics programme for managers.

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